Vista Land banks on OFWs to propel sales in Q4

MANILA, Philippines — Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc. is banking on renewed confidence from overseas Filipinos to propel demand in the fourth quarter.

Vista Land chairman Manuel Villar said the company is excited going into the last quarter of the year with both its residential and leasing businesses continuing with their upward trend.

The company has so far launched P11 billion worth of projects this year, already exceeding projects launched in 2021.

“We are slated to launch more projects this quarter as we take advantage of the renewed confidence from our overseas Filipino buyers. Such confidence is also seen in the performance of our retail stores, which translates to better mall revenues,” Villar said.

Vista Land has seen marked improvement in the foot traffic of its malls as people continue with their so-called revenge shopping. Sales from its residential projects have been on an increasing trend, with overseas Filipinos benefitting from the higher peso value of their dollar remittance. Majority of Vista Land’s buyers are overseas Filipinos.

With zero exposure to POGOs, Vista Land said the company’s leasing portfolio is banking on its residential communities that serve as catchment for its mall developments while BPO and traditional offices are the main tenants of its office space.

“Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, we have managed our leverage by reducing our capital expenditures and taken advantage of our existing land bank for developments, ‘’ said Manuel Paolo Villar, president and CEO of Vista Land.

“Our residential business is self- funding as 80 percent of our buyers are mortgaged finance while the expansion of our leasing business will be through our REIT offerings.

We also have a diversified funding source, which is a factor to our liability management exercise. Our net debt to equity stood at or 0.88 by the end of June 30, 2022.

Overseas Filipinos and our existing communities drive our residential and leasing businesses, respectively and so far, we have seen this to continue,” he said.

Moving forward, Vista Land is launching more projects from its over 60 Vista Estate developments around the country, which is the company’ s version of mixed-use integrated developments of horizontal and vertical residences, commercial spaces and office components.

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The article was originally published in PhilStar Global and written by Iris Gonzales.