SMDC launching 5 condo projects worth P37B

The country’s biggest condominium builder, SM Development Corp., will launch five projects worth about P37 billion this year to address Metro Manila’s housing backlog, despite signs of glut in the real estate sector.

At the sidelines of the company’s shareholders’ meeting on Thursday, the company said it expected sales to remain strong in 2012 as interest rates remained at record lows and the Philippine economy continued to grow.

SMDC said it was also eyeing projects in China in line with the Henry Sy group’s expansion overseas.

“If there’s any saturation in the market, it’s only being experienced by our competitors. Maybe their products are not suited to the market they are targeting,” SMDC vice chairman Henry Sy Jr. said.

The company said it would start building five new projects this year, comprising about 17,300 condominium units.

SMDC president and chief operating officer Rosaline Qua said profit for 2012 was seen rising by as much as 20 percent over year-ago level.

SMDC’s net income surged by 38 percent in 2011 to P4.18 billion, even as the company had put about 300 “slow-moving” condominium units on sale at steep discounts to clear the company’s inventory toward the end of the year.

“That was just P100 million out of our P27 billion in sales last year so it would not have made a difference,” the younger Sy said. The sale, he said, was the company’s “gift” to home buyers, considering that the company had already passed its sales targets at that time.

As a sign of its optimism this year, Qua said the company had set a capital expenditure budget of P20.7 billion, up from the P13 billion spent last year.