By Luisa Maria J.C. Jocson
VISTA LAND & Landscapes, Inc. will be focusing on vertical housing in cities with the launch of their new Vista Estates development and slowly leave the mass housing business, its chairman Manuel B. Villar, Jr. said.
“We want to launch a major shift in Vista Land. We are leaving mass housing. No more socialized housing. We are changing to vertical. That is the ball game,” Mr. Villar said in a press conference on Thursday.
“These areas are so expensive it doesn’t make sense to not make it vertical, in fact, some are nearby existing malls,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Vista Land is launching its Vista Estates program, an integrated, mixed-use urban development for commercial, residential, or office spaces.
Under the program, some 44 estates are expected to be developed in the span of a year across 23 cities nationwide. Each estate spans approximately 100 hectares and will cost around P136 billion to develop.
“I was supposed to launch this two years ago, but the pandemic happened. We can put so many buildings nationwide in key cities. This is the way of the future and we should have done this five years ago. For the next five years, this will be our shift. Our percentage of vertical [housing] will go up,” he said.
“To be fair, the per capita of Filipinos have come up significantly. We are close to moving up [as] an upper middle-income country,” he added.
Mr. Villar said Vista Land will continue to develop horizontal housing in provinces, while cities will be shifting towards vertical real estate.
“We will remain the leader in housing… horizontal is my bread and butter. Inevitably, the vertical will exceed the horizontal. As to when, we don’t know,” he added.
Vista Land is the holding company of the Vista Group, which is engaged in the development of residential subdivisions and construction of housing and condominium units.
It has six wholly-owned subsidiaries, namely: Brittany Corporation; Crown Asia Properties, Inc.; Vista Residences, Inc.; Camella Homes, Inc.; Communities Philippines, Inc.; and VLL International, Inc. The company also has an 88.34%-owned subsidiary, Vistamalls, Inc.
At the stock exchange on Wednesday, Vista Land shares went up by two centavos or 0.76% to close at P2.65 apiece.