Says Ayala Executive – high-end property buyers are back

MANILA, Philippines – The Ayala Group has turned more upbeat on the high-end property market given a recent resurgence in demand from discerning buyers, encouraging the rollout of upscale projects for the rest of this year.

“Confidence in the market has returned. [There’s] a realization that the valuations in the local property market are based on fundamentals, not speculation. Consequently, current prices reflect the true worth of property assets—which are good stores of long-term value,” Ayala Land Premier sales head Tom Mirasol said in a briefing yesterday.

“A recovery in the property market appears to have already started as early as February this year,” Mirasol said. This, he said, had been factored in by the stock market with stock prices of major publicly listed developers now going up sharply.

“All out metrics are up starting the second quarter,” he said. “The worst seems to have passed, and the markets have responded.”

As such, he said ALI was now considering raising the prices of its property units.

“They (high-end buyers) are coming back and they’re coming back in a big way,” said Bernard Vincent Dy, vice president and group head of Ayala Land Premier.

Ayala Land Premier, which sells residential units worth between P4 million and P20 million to households with a combined monthly income of P200,000 and up, has breached the P1-billion mark in reservation sales for June, up from only P400 million in January. The turnout in July is also expected to be robust, Mirasol said.

The group will begin the development of new phases of its existing projects, such as Phase 6 of Ayala Greenfield and neighborhood 7 of Anvaya Cove.

“Ayala Land’s outlook for the rest of the year is good. Continued buyer confidence combined with exciting new launches will see the company through the rest of 2009. We expect to see significant growth in the second quarter and the second half of the year. New projects continue to be planned for projects going well into 2010 and the next five years,” Mirasol said.

ALI president Antonino Aquino said of ALI’s budget for P17 billion for this year, about half will go to residential property development, a third of which will in turn go to Ayala Land Premier.

The high-end property segment accounts for 40-45 percent of ALI’s residential property sales, while the rest was split between middle-income and affordable segments under the “Alveo” and “Avida” brands, respectively. –Doris Dumlao, Philippine Daily Inquirer