Gumboc speaking at Ayala Land's first sales meet in HK for the year |
It’s open season
for buying properties in the Philippines again, and a big number of those
putting their bets on the country are young Hong Kong residents.
This is according
to Bing Gumboc, president of Ayala Land International Sales Inc, who came to
Hong Kong over the weekend to attend various events lined up to celebrate the 10th
anniversary of its subsidiary in the city.
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Speaking to a group of media people on June 7, Gumboc happily revealed that sales of the Hong Kong office had already hit 50% of its target for 2023 in the first five months of the year alone, and that the biggest buyers were local residents, whose accumulated stake has already grown six times compared to last year.
This suggests that while tens of thousands of Hongkongers have chosen to emigrate elsewhere amid the unstable political climate and the severe pandemic restrictions in the city, many chose to buy properties in the Philippines without actually settling there.
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And buy they
do, with not a few locals reportedly snapping up entire floors in Ayala’s prime
developments. Insiders say that if Philippine laws did not forbid them owning land, they would buy even whole buildings.
While no actual
figures for the total investments from Hong Kong were readily available, the big
rebound in sales has prompted Ayala Land to celebrate its local office’s
anniversary in a big way.
Prospective buyers listen intently to Gumboc's pitch at Novotel |
Aside from hosting dinner for some 200 prospective investors at Novotel on June 8, Ayala Land also co-presented the Philippine Independence Day Ball at the Conrad on June 10, and the Filipino community celebration on Chater Road the next day.
Gumboc readily
admitted that the global slump from the pandemic hit Ayala Land as hard as it
did most other businesses. In fact, she said they were told to stop all sales
activities in 2020 to cut back on the losses, even as the company remained open and did not fire any of
its staff.
The gloom was
felt more in Hong Kong up until early last year, when the city’s officials finally
decided to ease up on the pandemic restrictions and ordered that a Covid-19 infection
be treated just like any other ailment.
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“By January this
year when they started opening (Hong Kong), bumalik na din ang sigla ng market,
that’s why we are here,” said Gumboc.
Filipinos,
particularly migrant workers, are also showing a renewed interest in putting
their hard-earned money in an Ayala property.
In a recent two-day sales event in Dubai, most of those who packed the venue were Filipino migrant workers, said Gumboc, although they showed preference for the more affordable properties like those in the Amaia to the Avida range.
These are priced upwards
of Php4 million for those in the urban areas, and slightly less in the
provinces.
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Ayala is hoping
those who are here would turn up again in large numbers as they did during the first
years of the Hong Kong office being set up,
once they realised the value of buying a property that they can be proud of,
and bank on.
Gumboc said that
the prices of their properties have gone up by around 85% since they set up in
Hong Kong a decade ago, a rate of return that should convince even those on a tight budget
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