REAL ESTATE portal Lamudi revealed that more prospective homebuyers searched for luxury properties in January to March.
Based on its latest quarterly report, the P12 million to P20 million price range posted the highest lead growth by 18 percent from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022.
In terms of properties for rent those leasing for P30,000 to 60,000 attracted the highest increase by 40 percent during the periods in review.
Meanwhile, at least four cities in Metro Manila were among the top 10 most searched places across the country from January to March of this year.
Home seekers from the National Capital Region (NCR) still preferred to stay within the metropolitan areas as nine cities within Metro Manila attracted the majority of their leads—from Quezon City to Makati, Taguig, Pasig, Parañaque, Manila, Mandaluyong, Las Piñas and Muntinlupa, respectively—except for Antipolo at the bottom of the list.
Nearly a third of all leads from Luzon-based house hunters went to cities within the NCR, with the first top five being Quezon City, Makati, Taguig, Pasig, and Manila, as Mandaluyong settled at the ninth spot.
Outside of Metro Manila, they chose to reside in Antipolo, Baguio, Santa Rosa and Dasmariñas.
The Queen City of the South took most of the leads in the Visayas region, with Cebu City, Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue being the top three sites, as Talisay at the seventh place.
Anurag Verma, director of broker classifieds and partnerships at Lamudi, said this could be attributed to the recently completed infrastructure developments in the province, including the Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway, which is by far the longest bridge nationwide.
The top executive said it is worth highlighting modern infrastructure in locations to enable property seekers to ascertain how much time and money they can save by investing in a particular area.
The remaining six cities were split between cities in Metro Manila (Makati, Quezon City, Taguig and Manila) and neighboring islands in Visayas (Bacolod and Iloilo).
Leads from those in Mindanao consistently look for housing units located in Davao City, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu City, Quezon City, Makati, Manila, Taguig, Pasig and General Santos City from the fourth quarter of 2021 to first quarter of 2022.
Pasay was the new addition to the in-demand cities from home seekers in the southern part of the country during the period.
By and large, condos and apartments saw the biggest hike in leads for types of property in the first three months of the year, which stood at 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively.
Per island group, the former garnered most of the leads in Metro Manila and Mindanao, while the latter had the highest number of inquiries or searches in Luzon and Visayas.
Overall, other estates also got strong interest nationwide, such as land (14 percent), commercial (13 percent), and house (five percent), the Lamudi study showed.
The property marketplace attracts more than two million potential property seekers every month. That generates about 10 percent conversion into inquiries.