Thursday, November 19, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES [ BusinessWorld Online ]
Roxaco Land Corp., the property arm of Roxas group of companies, plans to spend P1 billion for four new projects in the next three years, including a foray into the tourism and commercial sectors.
At the sidelines of Roxas & Co., Inc.’s stockholders’ meeting yesterday, Roxaco Land President Francisco F. del Rosario, Jr. said the group would launch next year a six-hectare property development in Tagaytay that aims to attract “second-home” buyers.
Mr. del Rosario said the property would offer 60 open lots and an additional 15 to 20 villas to be packaged into houses and lots. The lots will have a size of between 300 square meters (sq. m.) to 400 sq. m.
The lots, he said, would be sold at below P10,000 per sq. m., making it cheaper compared with existing developers that are selling lots between P12,000 to P13,000 per sq. m. Buyers can also enjoy the amenities of a resort which the company will build within the area.
“The entire property will be managed by the resort and the homeowners can avail [themselves of] the services being offered by the resort. Should this be successful, we will replicate it in the other parts of the country,” Mr. del Rosario said.
Aside from its Tagaytay project, another residential project in the pipeline is phase two of The Orchards, the group’s joint venture project with Marilo Corp. in Nasugbu, Batangas, he said.
But unlike phase one where the company sold only 900 open lots, phase two will have house-and-lot packages, catering to the “affordable” markets and priced within state-led Pag-IBIG Fund’s housing loan package.
“We are taking advantage of the housing backlog [by developing new projects] but the group also wants to venture into the hotel and tourism area because the government is promoting this sector,” he said.
To jump-start the firm’s entry into the tourism sector, Mr. del Rosario said Roxaco Land will open a businessman’s hotel “in the emerging business district of Greater Manila.” The hotel, he said, would be seven stories high with an average room rate of P3,000 a night.
Roxaco Land will likely spend as much as P300 million for this new project, he said, while another P350 million will be earmarked for the company’s planned commercial center on its 3.2-hectare lot in Nasugbu. The new commercial center will have a gross floor area of 18,000 sq. m.
Roxaco has a hundred hectares of land in Nasugbu and a number of residential and resort projects like the Peninsula de Punta Fuego, an 88-hectare residential beach resort in Batangas. The company is looking into developing other properties for expansion since most of its projects are almost complete.
The property developer is also looking for joint ventures with other real estate firms as it widens its geographical scope beyond Batangas to go to as far as Bohol and Camarines Sur in Bicol for tourism projects. -- Kristine Jane R. Liu
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