AFFORDABILITY is the key reason many Filipinos choose not to buy houses, although the majority of those currently renting are now saving so they can purchase their own homes in the near future, a research conducted by a global property-listing company showed.
This makes the future of local property firms very bright, Lamudi Inc. said.
In its research paper, Lamudi Inc. said 60 percent of Filipinos find it hard to buy their own homes due to high costs.
“Many renters said they were currently looking for property but had not found the right home for their needs. However, the desire to own property remains and may be becoming more prevalent among young generations,” the Real Estate in Emerging Markets report stated.
The majority of those renting their properties, or 88.6 percent, were currently saving to buy their own home, the survey showed.
“Almost all respondents indicated they expected to buy property within the next five to 10 years,” the report added.
Security, meanwhile, fuels the desire of buyers to own a property. Nearly three-quarters of buyers cited security as their primary motivation for purchasing a home.
The report also showed that the country’s economic outlook is the “top constraint on the property market,” reflecting current concerns about a potential slowdown. However, agents and brokers surveyed by Lamudi remain overwhelmingly optimistic about the future of the market. More than 90 percent describe their outlook for the next 12 months as positive.
“The primary conclusion that we have drawn from our research is that the future for the Philippine property sector is extremely bright. In fact, two-thirds of the real-estate agents we surveyed are expecting growth of 8 percent or higher in the property market this year. The country’s real-estate market has emerged as one of the most promising in the Asia-Pacific region,” Lamudi Cofounder and Managing Director Kian Moini said.
The report features a series of in-depth
interviews with key figures from the property industry of each country, including Jose Romarx Salas, head of Research and Consulting at Pinnacle Real Estate Consulting Services.
Salas said the key challenge for the Philippine property market was finding enough land to accommodate development.
“In Metro Manila that’s the challenge: looking for suitable land. Some developers are even willing to bid high, which pushes up already skyrocketing land prices in the capital,” he said.
The report is based on a series of online surveys conducted with house-hunters and real-estate agents in different countries, as well as on-site data from Lamudi’s global network of web sites. The research examines the habits of online property-seekers, while offering insights into the future of the property sector based on interviews and surveys with local property experts.
The customer survey examined house-hunting habits among buyers and renters.