Creba expects Marcos gov't to prioritize housing

Real estate industry leaders voiced hope that the country's housing backlog now affecting some 6.7 million poor families will receive higher priority under the administration of President-elect Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr., according to a report by Manila Times.

Congratulating President-elect Marcos on his overwhelming victory at the recent polls, the Chamber of Real Estate and Builders' Associations Inc. (Creba), led by its national chairman, Charlie Gorayeb, and national president, Noel Toti Cariño, said that the industry looks forward to housing concerns being included among the new administration's priority agenda.

'Myriad of problems besetting the housing effort have remained unresolved, the major ones being lack of affordable and effective homebuyer financing mechanisms that targeted the truly underprivileged, inaccessibility of land, over-regulation and bottlenecks in the licensing and permitting processes for land and housing development, especially at the local government level,' Gorayeb said.

Gorayeb said that with the Marcos win, the housing sector anticipates a cohesive, concrete and well-targeted approach toward a lasting solution, as the incoming president's forebears had pursued in the past.

According to Gorayeb, Creba is currently finalizing legislative proposals for a comprehensive public housing program and a homebuyer financing assistance program as part of its five-point housing agenda which targets the production of 500,000 units per year or a total of 10 million homes in two decades to underpin a necessarily massive national housing effort.

Cariño, on the other hand, pointed out that housing the underprivileged is not only a social and moral imperative for the government but also an economic one, since housing activity catalyzes business opportunities in dozens of downstream industries.

'No doubt President Marcos' newly appointed economic team of illustrious experts is well aware of this, and thus we are hopeful they will be supportive once they have studied our recommendations,' Cariño said. %u200B%u200B