8990 Housing Development top PagIBIG Fund developer

Business

Companies

by VG Cabuag - January 28, 2016

By VG Cabuag
Mass-housing developer 8990 Housing Development Corp. emerged as the top
developer in terms of take out value of state-owned Home Development Mutual Fund
(Pag-IBIG Fund), in an award dominated by small- and medium-sized property firms.
Among the other awardees, only Lumina Homes, a unit of publicly listed Vista Land
and Lifescapes Inc., belongs to the countrys top property firms.
Vista Land is known for its horizontal developments, such as subdivisions and villages,
with its brands such as Camella Homes.
The top 10 developers were 8990, The New Apec Group of Companies, Homemark
Inc.; Fiesta Communities Inc. and affiliates, Borland Development Corp., Charles
Builders Group, AXEIA Group, Johndorf Ventures/Prohomes Development Corp.,
Lumina Homes/Household Development Corp. and P.A. Alvarez Group.
Januario Jesus Atencio, president and CEO of 8990 Holdings, said he credits the strong
partnership of developers and Pag-IBIG Fund for making it to the top of the list.
The fund also achieved lower interest rates, lower insurance premiums, lower monthly
amortizations that account for the successful performance of the Fund in 2015, and this
has resulted in a better housing finance environment for the mass-housing market,
Atencio said.

In the first three quarters of 2015, 8990 was able to increase its land bank with the
acquisition of 25.4 hectares in Legones, Iloilo, and 60.2 hectares in Cabug, Bacolod. This
brought the companys total land bank to 503 hectares.
Pag-IBIG is now a P397-billion corporation, with a 43-percent growthin five years,
and a gross income of P34.8 billion, Pag-IBIG Fund Chairman Chito Cruz said.
The fund also registered a 70-percent increase in net income to P20 billion, and declared
a dividend of 4.9 percent, the highest since 2011.
Cruz said there was a 17-percent increase in housing takeouts amounting to P50 billion.
Many developers decided not to use Pag-IBIG after the loan mess it faced some six
years ago in 2010, when officials of Globe Asiatique allegedly did not remit billions of
pesos of homeowners amortization to the agency and other applying homeowners by
creating ghost buyers and padding of sales.
The agency then promised to set up some safeguards to prevent such scams from
occurring, but some developers were still lukewarm on returning to the Fund as
financing through banks are also at a comparable rate compared with Pag-IBIG.
8990 itself left Pag-IBIG in 2011 when the new administration came in, as the agency
became strict and tightened home lending rules.
Atencio said the company started returning to the fund in 2014 when the agency
instituted better housing finance policies lowered interest rates, reorganization of
housing departments and created teams to improve developer-client relations.