Megaworld still on top of its game

THE WORLD Finance Plaza is an attractive BPO location inside the McKinley Hill Cyberpark at the BGC.

Megaworld Corp. chair and CEO Andrew Tan must be all smiles these days. Just recently, two leading global real estate advisers have placed his property development company on top of their respective rankings.

CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) Philippines named Megaworld as the country’s top residential condominium developer after launching (together with its subsidiaries, Empire East and Suntrust Properties) more than 40,000 condominium units between 2000 and 2011, a feat that enabled the company to corner 16 percent share of the market, a 4 percent lead over its closest competitor.

In fact, the overall volume of units launched by Megaworld in the same 12-year period represents an estimated total aggregate saleable area of about 1.9 million square meters—a 16.5-percent market share that is 5 percent ahead of the company’s closest competitor.

Largest builder

A few weeks earlier another independent property adviser, Colliers International, came out with its study citing Megaworld as the country’s largest builder of residential condominiums in terms of units completed in 2010 and those that will be completed between 2011 and 2016.

With this achievement, Megaworld is able to capture 18 percent of the market, a 4-percent advantage over its closest competitor.

“We are very proud to be declared the undisputed leader in residential and office condominium development here in Mega Manila. And we will do our best to continue to lead in these two important segments of the property industry. In fact, we are set to launch 11 new residential condominium projects this year, and with more office developments in the pipeline over the next few years, expect Megaworld to remain at the forefront of innovations in the country’s real estate industry,” Tan vowed.

Last year, Megaworld put on a stream of eight new projects: One Eastwood Avenue at the developer’s pioneering 18-hectare Eastwood City township in Quezon City; 101 Newport Boulevard and Belmont Luxury Hotel at the 25-hectare Newport City in Pasay City; One Uptown Residence at the new 16-hectare Uptown Bonifacio in the Global City; Tower 1 of The Viceroy at the 50-hectare McKinley Hill in Fort Bonifacio; the second tower of Manhattan Heights, the third phase of the 5.7-hectare Manhattan Garden City at the Araneta Center in Cubao; the 31-story Greenbelt Hamilton in the Makati CBD; and Eight Newtown Boulevard, Megaworld’s first luxury residential project in Mactan, Cebu.

Additional projects

ONE Uptown Residence is an exclusive, internationally planned community at the BGC.

Expect additional projects this year as CBRE Philippines estimates at least 14,000 units coming from Megaworld. While it expects Megaworld’s market share to decrease slightly, it added that with more than 740,000 sq m of residential condominium units to be launched this year, Megaworld will still be leading with the highest total market share—at  15.3 percent—based on the total saleable area.

Such feat may no longer be surprising for a company that in 1998 applied for a special economic zone license with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority to transform an isolated portion of Libis in Quezon City into something that was still unheard of in the country at the time.

It was a bold move for Tan considering the country was in the middle of the Asian financial crisis and every investor is cautious with his/her money.

A year later, Eastwood City was born and this 17-hectare master-planned, self-contained community became the country’s first IT Park, ushering in the birth of the Philippines’ business processing and outsourcing sector.

Today Eastwood City is not just home to the country’s largest business process outsourcing community but a premier residential, business, commercial and entertainment community where one could live, work, play and learn.

Successful projects

After Eastwood City, there is simply no stopping Tan from coming up with one successful project after another—five-hectare sprawling township called Forbes Town Center in Bonifacio Global City, the 50-hectare McKinley Hill also in BGC, the 5.7-hectare Manhattan Garden City located at the Araneta Center in Cubao, Quezon City, the 25-hectare Newport City with its centerpiece, the Resorts World Manila.

Tan, whose business empire is now pegged at P180 billion in total assets, informed that Megaworld still has a land bank of 230 hectares of “prime land” in “growth areas,” a developable area of 2.29 million sq m, of which one million sq m will be developed into residential areas, and around 886,000 sq m for office space.

And with such rapidly growing real estate empire, we can only guess at where Tan’s next project will be.