SMDC: The future is bright and modular

MANILA, Philippines – The future units of the middle income residential developer SM Development Corporation (SMDC) will come in the form of modular compartments designed to morph and change to suit the customers’ desired space.

Speaking on the sidelines of the SMDC annual stockholders meeting on Wednesday, April 24, vice chairman and CEO Henry Sy Jr. said he aims to address what the customer wants: choice.

“This is the age of choices. If you are alone, why do you want to have 3 bedrooms?” Sy Jr. said as he explains the new modular designed units that will be featured in SMDC’s upcoming residential developments.

According to Sy Jr, the units will be smaller, about 18 to 24 square meters. They will have enough space to fit a queen-sized bed, sofa set and small dining table.

Depending on the consumers desired sized, they can choose to buy two or 3 separate units of this size. The dividing wall will then be adapted to merge the two units into one.

“It will be like a hotel room,” said Sy Jr. added.

Sy said this new concept will be launched in their upcoming projects in the 3rd quarter of 2013.

What the customer wants

He said that while he has not yet seen this on the market in the Philippines, he is confident it is what the consumers want.

“I have a lot of units that are small in other projects. These are the ones that are being sold first, so by deduction it should be easy to sell,” he said.

While the price ranges have not yet been confirmed, Sy said he would be able to give discounts if units were bought in bulk to be made into a bigger apartment.

Sy would not consider their development in the lower-end of the market. “I could not specifically say that our market is the low-end market and the other is the high-end market because if you could see our lobby, it looks much more than high-end. It is just the sizes which people need that are affordable.” 

Location, design, size

Other ingredients that made up a ‘blockbuster’ unit according to Sy are location, design and size. “These 3 things together would produce a blockbuster development.”

“We’ve been in the business for the last 8 years so SMDC has already gathered a lot of data information on what has the highest volume of sales that could give you the maximum profit margins,” he added.

In terms of location, Sy said developments situated near MRT stations and commercial space sell well.

This year, the developer plans to launch 3 to 4 new projects and will expand on 3 projects. This new expansion will add 30,000 new units of new inventory.

Over the next 3 years SMDC will spend P71 billion to drive this expansion.

For 2013 SMDC will spend approximately P20 billion in capex of this amount around P13 billion will be for project development and 7 billion for land banking. – Rappler.com