Will the Resa law affect the brokers only?… Think again!

After my article in this column and my other article in another paper, after discussions in several forums and conferences, after meeting with several heads of sales organizations of different developers, sales agents have now realized that this so-called RESA law is no longer a joke. For the longest time, people thought that selling real [...]

Will the RESA law affect the brokers only? Think again…

Property buyers will be happy to know that our government has been taking serious steps to provide protection for them, and thus encouraging them to invest more in Philippine real estate. There is already the Presidential decree 957 (Subdivision and Condominium Buyers Protection decree) and the Republic Act 6552 (more popularly known as the Maceda law, which is about Protection of Buyers of Real Estate on Installment Payment).

The monster killer called IFRIC 15

For the past few months, a lot of developers who knew about IFRIC 15, a new accounting reporting system scheduled to be implemented on January 1, 2009, with a retroactive application, were really worried. I was also very surprised to learn that very few developers have even heard of this issue.

It is how you look at things…

Since the issue on the crashing stock markets started hitting the newspapers, I have been asked almost every day about what is going to happen next. How is it going to affect our real-estate industry here in the Philippines? So I decided to ask other experts to validate my theories. What I find very interesting is that suddenly there are so many experts in the newspapers with different takes on the issue and opposing predictions. But even some of the most respected and experienced economists wrote that it is very difficult to make accurate predictions on what is going to happen next.

Sometimes it is better to be wrong…

Following the recent headlines for the past two weeks about the mother of all bailouts, some prophets (of doom) have started to take advantage of the opportunity again to ride on the issue. Then what? Hoping that people will believe them, stay on the sidelines, observe, stop investing, keep their money and wait and see. Then what? Money stops circulating in the system then they go out and proudly say to the world…See! I told you so! These self-fulfilling prophecies feed the vicious cycle that often leads to the people’s negative reaction if not outright panic. I am talking about real estate.