About 200 housing developers who are members of the Organization of Socialized Housing Developers of the Philippines (OSHDP) held their first national convention in Davao City last August 19-20, aimed at knowing the direction of the government towards addressing the housing needs of the working class in the country.
Sol Lagmay, vice president of OSHDP Davao chapter, said that they want to know which direction the government is heading.
She said that a clear cut direction is needed, especially for socialized housing, adding that with the big demand for socialized housing there are some concerns that their sector need to thresh out with other government agencies.
According to Lagmay, there is a big demand for socialized housing, especially in Davao, saying that if they look at the profile of the working class, this is the sector that needs housing of this type.
She admitted that there are only about seven developers here engaged in socialized housing, the reason for which is the high cost of raw land.
Properties here she said are quite expensive, and developing units for socialized housing compared to low-cost subdivisions is almost the same that is why many would rather choose to build low-cost or middle level subdivisions.
Lagmay also said that socialized subdivisions nowadays are built with amenities unlike before when they only allocated open spaces.
“But we see this as marketing strategy because buyers, even for socialized housing, already check on what other amenities the subdivision has other than roads and drainage,” she said.
The other concern that Lagmay raised was the attitude of borrowers as to their obligation to pay their loan.
She said with the buyback mechanism of Pag-IBIG Fund, they are strict on terms of loan approval because this will become a problem later on.
“We would rather do it the right way, like conducting a comprehensive background investigation of the borrower to save us from incurring problems in the future,” she said.
Lagmay said they welcome this scheme applied by the Fund because it will also protect them — their company, the borrower and the government housing institution.
As to the public-private partnership scheme, she said, the government really must be strict in the implementation so as to avoid another “Balikatan”. The borrowers must be screened thoroughly and government must also come up with realistic projects where homebuyers are given options that they can really afford to pay based on their net take home pay. [Prix D. Banzon]
Lagmay also mentioned that the slow release of Transfer Certificate of Title (TCT) by the Register of Deeds (ROD) has a big impact on the processing of documents, especially with Pag-IBIG Fund because the latter would require the TCT in the takeout of loans and this becomes a nationwide problem.
She said there is really a big effect in the conversion and take out because from only a number of days waiting period before it will take months now, even for the issuance of a certified copy of the title although she said they don’t have problem with Pag-IBIG because a takeout would only take seven days for as long as the requirements are complete.
She said they even learned that their counterpart in Marikina would rather have the ROD operations be back to manual to ensure a speedy delivery of the required documents.
“I know the problem is temporary but with the voluminous records stored through the years this will take time,” Lagmay said.
She said they expect positive updates from the Land Registration Authority (LRA) as the computerized land titling process will also be discussed.
Meanwhile, Dennis Molina, public information officer of OSHDP Davao, said they incur losses in terms of financing because their supposed collection in that particular period will also be delayed as ROD could not release to them the corresponding titles. The amount could be rolled out as additional capital for their project, he said.
When ROD implemented their computerization system starting January this year the process of release became slow and the period of waiting is longer, said Molina.
