tips to look for in a condo before buying

[OTEP]

Check niyo din if kaya mag-enforce ng building admin ng rules. Yung ibang building admin, simple rules lang hindi pa ma-enforce like not putting anything sa common areas. Yung ibang neighbors panay ang lagay ng floormats sa tapat ng doors nila (sa corridor). Bawal nga ito dahil common area pero hindi ma-enforce ng admin. Ang masama pa, ang dudumi at ang babaho nung mga floor mat na nilalagay nila.

Yung ibang unit owners din nagtatago ng pets sa units eh nakalagay na sa contract na bawal ang pets. Peste talaga. Minsan pagbukas ng elevator, eye to eye yung maliit na bata at malaking aso. Pano kung sinakmal ng aso yung bata?

Check niyo din how large the elevators are. Some condos have eleveators that are so small, hindi kasya yung standard ambulance stretcher. In an emergency, this could spell the difference between life and death.

[_Qwerty_]

Build-To-Own
User-Friendly Proposition in Condominium Development
By Chino S. Leyco
The Sunday Times
June 10, 2007

Build-To-Own is the latest concept in property development that has piqued the interest of hopeful homeowners. What does it mean and how does it help bring down the cost of owning or investing in a condominium unit?

With BTO, homeowners directly engage the services of a team of construction profesionals who build their homes at direct cost. Thus, non-project related add-on costs usually tacked on by middlemen developers are eliminated.

The system is explained thoroughly by Terence Daniel Yu, chief executive architect and senior associate of G&W Architects, Engineers, Product Development Consultants, a 35-year-old firm that bills itself as the only “architect-led,” not developer-led, company.

Terence Yu says they are called “business architects” for having come up with the idea of BTO, which gives homeowner protection through the involvement of a trustee bank.

“In our BTO, instead of building for developers, we build for the end-users. Therefore, the end-user only pays for the cost of the construction,” he says, noting that people normally go to a developer when buying a condo unit. “But the developer does not really take care of the construction because he is not a construction expert,” he points out.

Terence’s brother, Gibson Austin, BTO business development head, further relates that the firm eschews speculative market prices and uses actual costs as bases for pricing its units.

In the BTO system of G&W, payments made by unit owners go directly to a depository and disbursement bank, which ensures that the fund will only be used for its intended purpose.

Gibson says the buyer can save 40 percent by directly hiring construction industry professionals, the same people that developers hire to design and build their projects.

“Forty-percent savings is realized by eliminating the middleman developer’s profits, overhead, interest expenditure, and other nonbuilding related costs,” says Gibson. “BTO projects have significant savings,” he adds.

He shares that other condo developers require buyers to pay 12-percent value-added tax, documentary stamps tax and transfer taxes upon condo turnover.

“With BTO projects, you will only pay the registration fees and your share in the legal fees for forming the condominium corporation,” Gibson clarifies.

Besides cost savings, investors and end-users of BTO projects are rewarded with high-quality condominium development and property management services. All these add up to better property values for your condominium investment.

Terence affirms that the construction industry is growing not only in the Philippines but elsewhere in Asia. For architect-businessmen like the Yu brothers, being in this business at this time is “a good long-term investment because the prices of the steels, concrete continue to go up.”

And for property speculators, it means condo units will be more expensive to build in next years.

Gibson says, “the reason why consumers feel that there is an improvement is because of speculations.”

According to him, some companies speculate to spike up the cost of their development higher. “That’s how they make profit, but that is not a healthy way to do business because the consumers will suffer,” Gibson says.

The G&W has invested in its new building, the Blue Sapphire, a 27-story residential and commercial condominium development in Bonifacio Global City that will be completed in two years.

“The buyers are really the end-users,” Gibson elaborates, observing that “more people from different countries want to live here.”

Blue Sapphire is situated in Crescent West, the best area in Global City; sandwiched between Manila Golf and the 2.7-hectare Crescent Park.

Because G&W is an architect-led firm, buyers can expect an innovative design combining function and aesthetics. It boasts a unique corner layout ranging from one to three bedrooms that can be customized to suit the needs and lifestyle of the unit dwellers.

[_Qwerty_]

From sweeping floors to building towers
Smell opportunity to make money
By Tina Arceo-Dumlao
Inquirer
http://business.inquirer.net/money/t...ticle_id=70516


MANILA, Philippines—Real estate developer Delfin Lee says one thing he learned from sweeping floors and carrying goods at the family lumberyard as a child was to smell an opportunity to make money.

Lee tells SundayBiz in an interview that because he was always at the shop floor—during weekends and school breaks—he would end up discussing business ideas with the other workers and owners of neighboring shops on España in Manila.

He developed his business sense as he grew older, and soon, he was deep into a trading business that covered all sorts of products, such as steel and, of course, lumber.

“I would import everything that was in demand,” Lee says. “Whenever anybody needed something, I would look for the supply.”

He expanded later to manufacturing, producing fabricated steel and it was from his people at the trading and manufacturing businesses that he got the idea in 1992 to go into real estate.

“At the start, I just wanted to build nice homes for the employees. Everything grew from there,” the 51-year-old Lee says.

The Santa Barbara Villas I project in San Mateo, Rizal was set up in 1994 and the buyers then were able to get a two-room unit for just P150,000, partly through a loan from Pag-Ibig.

The first 300 units were bought by employees and some friends, but the project later expanded to cover 2,500 duplex, single-detached and row-house units.

He initially thought that going into socialized housing through his new firm Globe Asiatique Realty Holding Corp. would be as easy as setting up a trading and manufacturing business. He could not be more wrong.

The financial, marketing and operational problems sometimes became too much that there were times when Lee just wanted to wash his hands off the project and give up.

Lee says that deciding to stick it out in the real estate industry despite the problems was one of the hardest decisions that he had to make.

“It was such a losing proposition because I was hit by the Asian crisis and it took me over three years to get paid for the homes by Pag-Ibig. In the meantime I was losing money. If it were not for my people, I would not have stuck to it,” Lee says.

It was fortunate that he did because the market turned and it became easier to get payments from government housing agencies.

Lee was thus encouraged to give housing another try in 2000 and the result was the Santa Barbara Villas II primarily marketed to the police force, soldiers and teachers.

Globe Asiatique’s big break, however, came in 2003 when he came up with the idea of putting up a condominium project right in Metro Manila that will be covered by the maximum P2-million loan allowed by the Pag-Ibig Fund.

The result was the GA Tower on Edsa right beside the Boni Avenue. MRT station, the first to be developed jointly by the private sector and Pag-Ibig.

“People thought I was crazy for going into it. But I told them, maybe I see a market you don’t,” Lee says.

He did, indeed, because all 648 units of the first tower were sold out in just three months. The clamor for more units led to the GA Tower II, and the units were immediately sold out too.

Homeowners have moved into the first tower in 2005 and the next tower will be ready by June next year.

Lee attributes the fast take-up to the investments of overseas Filipino workers—who account for about half of its sales—and more importantly, to the demand by the working class looking for affordable housing near the places where they work.

He says that being the first company to cater to the housing needs of this market has positioned Globe Asiatique well to take advantage of the undeniable rebound in the real estate market.

Globe Asiatique is now knee deep in many other projects, with more coming up, that Lee says he has permanently left his trading and manufacturing days behind.

These include The Enclave at Angeles City, Pampanga and the higher end GA Sky Suites at the corner of Quezon Boulevard and Edsa, near the Quezon Boulevard MRT station.

“I am now full time into real estate development because I also thought that this is the kind of business I can leave to my children, unlike trading which calls for personal relationships,” he says.

And what he wants his children to know is that it pays to keep their ear to the ground and to listen to what the market wants from their housing projects.

“I did not have any single study made on my projects before we put them up. I relied more on gut feel and always listening to the customer. It is not about what I want, but what they want,” he says.

It was from talking to potential customers, for instance, that he got the idea of putting up an affordable condominium.

It was also the customers who told him to go for a two-story unit because they want to rent out the other two bedrooms to save on the amortization cost.

“I believe that Filipinos do have money. If they see product, they will go for it and there will always be a demand for housing,” he says.

Globe Asiatique will continue to look for opportunities in the condominium market for the middle-income market but he says he still sees great potential for growth in the socialized or affordable housing market, the ones that cost about P750,000.

It is also in this arena where he believes he will derive the greatest fulfillment.

As his experience with the Santa Barbara showed him, a house is not just a house to the masses. Because they have their own home, and a greater sense of security, they feel better about themselves and their community.

“This is also the whole idea why I went into this business. I wanted to help elevate their lifestyle,” he says, “I want to see ordinary Filipinos live with their families in a nice house they can call their own.”

[109]

ano ang ideal floor level ng condo? 4th, 5th, and 6th maingay daw kasi malapit sa parking. ano advantages and disadvantages ng mataas na floor...say 20th floor up?

[Galactus]

^^^ Pag may fire or very strong earthquake, its hard to climb down the emergency stairwell.

We bought a unit sa Manhattan Garden (Araneta Center, Cubao). Pre-selling pa lang naman, 2012 ang move-in. We were offered a choice: 4th floor or 24th. We chose the latter, because of the view. Late na when I realized that when a disaster strikes, baka mali desisyon namin.

[badsekktor]

ok ba yun raya garden sa may bicutan?

[bunge]

ok ba yun raya garden sa may bicutan?

Oks na oks yon. At sobrang mura talaga ang price nila. Maganda ang development ng DMCI. Mabilis ang bentahan ng mga units nila. Tingin ko pulido talaga ang gawa. Ang di ko lang talaga nagustuhan e yong ingay ng mga sasakyan. Kasi nga tabing tabi ng SLEX. Pero kung wala kayong problema sa ganong klase ng ingay, ayos na investment ang Raya Garden. May development din ang Robinson's na kahilera nito. Mukhang nagiging residential development na ang service road area a. Doon sa may sucat, meron din tinatayong Tribeca, mura din daw.

[oliver1013]

Sa fort talaga pinaka the best ngayon, kaso lintek may kamahalan talaga.

[sherwintommy]

Just want to ask opinion from our tsikoteers in the real estate business...meron kasi pre-selling na condo , developer is City Century , it is called the Gramercy and the site is along Yakal street, formerly International School. 24 hrs daw ang mall dito eh... Good buy ba to for investment?....

[smooth]

great thread

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