Property developer Empire East Land Holdings Inc. aims to sell more than P14 billion worth of residential units to home-seekers this year, matching last year’s performance in reservation sales, citing a still buoyant property market.
“Sentiment is still positive. There is real need for real estate especially for end-user market,” Empire East president Anthony Charlemagne Yu told reporters after the company’s annual stockholders meeting Tuesday.
At the same time, Yu said the economy was very liquid and real estate remained a very good investment option.
To cope with its schedule of delivering properties to home buyers, Empire East expects to spend about P5 billion for capital spending this year. It aims to pour in P5 billion to P25 billion into construction and development work in the next five years.
“We now have P2.9 billion worth of properties in our landbank, with an aggregate area of 404 hectares,” Yu reported during the meeting.
In 2015, reservation sales—an indicator of future revenue growth—amounted to P13.88 billion.
This year, Yu said Empire East continued to post reservation sales of more than P1 billion, sometimes hitting as much as P1.8 billion.
“We sold about P14 billion last year. We hope to exceed that (this year),” he said.
Yu said Empire East was mostly catering to the end-user market, although for its high-end brand “Empire East Elite,” he said there were buyers who were from the investor segment.
In the next few years, Empire East intends to build some commercial portfolio for leasing with its upcoming mixed-use projects, such as Empire East City in Pasig and the Broadway Centrum redevelopment in Quezon City.
Yu said the master plan for the 23-hectare Empire East City was still being fine-tuned. “We are in discussions with some other groups for possible joint venture in that area where we will introduce component which we have not done before,” he said.
For Broadway, he said it was possible that it would be a mixed-use project with commercial and residential components, taking advantage of its proximity to schools. Doris Dumlao-Abadilla