MANILA, Philippines — Gokongwei-led Robinsons Land Corp. (RLC) targets to launch at least two more residential projects for the remainder of the year after seeing strong demand in the market during the first half despite high inflation and high interest rates.
RLC Residences’ senior vice president and business unit general manager John Richard Sotelo said that while the company remains cautious, it is optimistic that the trends seen in the first half would continue for the rest of 2024.
“With the news from the government that there are indications that they may cut rates in the second half and the inflation trending down, then that speaks well for demand from real estate perspective, whether on the development or investment side,” Sotelo said during an economic forum organized by the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines and San Miguel Corp. yesterday.
“We see and hear the call of the government to continue the pace of increasing our construction efforts so for Robinsons Land, we will continue to build and launch new projects,” he said.
On the residential side, Sotelo said RLC has introduced about P21 billion worth of new projects in the past four months and it intends to launch at least two more projects for the rest of the year.
“We have a slew of projects we can choose from on what to launch. I think we’ll probably launch one to two more projects for the rest of the year, depends on which location. It’s a push button. We’ll figure out what’s the best place to go there,” Sotelo said.
“One of them most likely might be our property in Sierra Valley in Cainta. We already launched four towers there. We’re thinking of launching two to three more because demand has been very good. If we launch another one after that, we’ll see, depends on how the market goes. If the trends continue, you should see us continuing to launch more projects,” he said.
Asked on the value of the projects, which the company intends to launch for the year, Sotelo said it would depend on the kind of development.
“In the residential segment, the premium segment is doing better than the rest so if we launch another premium segment tower then that might be another P8 billion to P12 billion. If we decide to launch on the mid-segment, that’s about P4 billion to P5 billion so we’re seeing how the market goes,” he said.
As one of the leading diversified real estate firms in the country, RLC offers its residential condominium projects under the RLC Residences brand and its housing subdivisions under the Robinsons Homes brand.
Meanwhile, Sotelo said RLC and its partner Hongkong Land are currently looking for their next project in the country.
RLC and Hongkong Land, through their joint venture company RHK Land, are developing their pilot project, The Velaris Residences in Bridgetowne estate in between the cities of Quezon and Pasig.
“We’re considering a lot of options. From an RLC standpoint, we have land bank up north in Montclair in Porac. We also have some land bank in Cebu so for RHK, we’re thinking about where to go,” said Sotelo, who also serves as president and CEO of RHK Land.
“We could also go horizontal because Hongkong Land has a sterling reputation in other countries for doing really great horizontal projects as well so we’re not sure yet (on our next project). It, could be vertical, horizontal, could be mixed development,” he said.
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