The Chamber of Real Estate & Builders’ Associations Inc. (CREBA) has expressed opposition to proposed bills in Congress increasing the mandatory balanced housing compliance quotas for subdivision and condominium developers.
CREBA said in a statement the move will bring a screeching halt to projects that are in the pipeline and will only suppress the newly-found resurgence of the property sector from the negative effects of the pandemic.
The group expressed alarm over House Bill No. 1234 filed by Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy which will jack up mandatory compliance by condo developers to up to 20 percent, while House Bill No. 3589 filed by Rep. Michael Romero will require subdivision compliance to as much as 25 percent.
“Such changes are untimely and anti-development,” CREBA said, adding sudden changes in regulations will be economically disadvantageous, risky even, for developers.
The Urban Development & Housing Act or UDHA in 1992 imposed upon developers of subdivision projects the responsibility to build socialized housing units equivalent to 20 percent of their total project area or cost in order to help accelerate the country’s housing production rate in exchange for various types of incentives.
Republic Act No. 10884 of 2016 reduced the balanced housing quotas for subdivisions to only 15 percent to make it easier and more realistic for developers to comply with and still be able to effectively uphold its core and crucial mandate to deliver housing units for the marginalized beneficiaries.
Condominium developers, in turn, started carrying the same social burden for up to 5 percent of their total project area or cost since 2016.
Noel Cariño, CREBA president, said any further attempts at over-regulation or over-taxation by the legislature or regulatory bodies will ultimately affect affordability because developers have no choice but to pass on any additional cost to the homebuyers.
“The new requirement will be a huge threat to job creation, tax generation and the massive cross-industry value-chain of opportunities that would have been stimulated by new housing construction activities,” Cariño said.
CREBA emphasized private sector will be in the best position to help realize the current administration’s vision for an increased annual national housing production target of up to 1 million homes, with less bureaucracy and quicker release of licenses and permits, more loanable funds from government financing institutions through a Comprehensive Home Financing Program, among others. Irma Isip
