Housing starts rise in July

Businessworld - BUILDERS BEGAN work on 35% more housing projects last month than in June despite the onset of the rainy season, industry researcher BCI Asia said in a statement last week.

Construction starts in the residential sector reportedly increased to P5.6 billion in July from P4.1 billion in June.

“Residential construction starts short-term growth can be partly attributed to perceived economic growth of our country, and stable OFW (overseas Filipino workers’) remittances,” Ian Paolo Reyes, chief data analyst of BCI Asia Philippines, said in the statement.

Based on BCI Asia research, 85% of residential construction start projects in July were classified as small, while 4% were medium, and 11% were large projects.

“Small residential projects are helping to push the growth of residential construction,” Mr. Reyes said.

“These small projects are very responsive to economic conditions. They have short lead time from concept stage to construction stage, meaning they start soon after being planned,” he said.

“This is also to say that when economic short-term performance is good, we usually see more of these types of projects,” he added.

“[With] large projects, we cannot expect [construction for] them to start right away because stakeholders would want to assure that the long term demand in housing is continuous and stable,” he said further.

Earlier, the firm said total construction starts in June, which includes the public sector’s projects, totaled P4.5 billion, a 56% increase from May.

For latest update on real estate development and its RA 9646, the Real Estate Service Act of 2009, visit www.ra9646.com.