Placing the customer at the center
(Third of four parts)
We continue the saga of Jacinto “Jack” Ng Jr., who worked tirelessly to manage the real estate business of his family and their partners.
Myriad obstacles popped up, until that fateful Black Saturday in March 2016, when Jack renewed his sense of purpose with a verse in John’s Gospel, where Jesus prayed for His disciples to “have the full measure of my joy within them.”
The certainty that Jesus was joyful despite trials and rejection buoyed Jack, who realized that his mission was to serve the poor through the construction of quality affordable housing.
“Rather than the developer at the center, now it is the customer—the buyer of low-income housing,” says Jack.
This means never pricing houses beyond the reach of minimum wage earners, who had recourse only to Pag-Ibig’s maximum loan of P450,000 at that time.
“If you look at it from their perspective, they don’t have enough savings to pay for the price difference,” says Jack. “They go more into debt while trying to make these payments. More often than not, they cannot complete the payments, so they forfeit the house and end up poorer.
“Developers also end up being unable to predict which projects will push through and which will get canceled, so construction is inefficient and piecemeal. The situation can be improved on both sides.”
Jack set to work. He compared the growth rates of Pag-Ibig socialized housing price ceilings over the years, and plotted these against those of the construction price index.
He made a key discovery: “The cost of construction was not really outpacing the increase in loan ceilings. A profit margin was theoretically possible, and I just had to figure out how to make it a reality.”
Placing the customer at the center, Jack realized that dwellings could be sold at Pag-Ibig’s price point, so that the buyer need not put up any equity. Instead, they can pay back the original loan in more manageable increments over the next 30 years.
Filled with renewed zeal, Jack established the Joy-Nostalg Foundation in 2016 to “sustain responsible homeownership and prevent poverty slippage” through information sessions.
“We show buyers the full picture of homeownership, what the reality of paying back a Pag-Ibig loan over 30 years looks like,” says Jack. “And for those who choose to proceed, the foundation comes in afterward to guide them as first-time homeowners. And since the majority at the project sites are women and children, the foundation also creates youth and women’s programs to empower the community.”
Jack also founded Extraordinary Enclaves as the socialized housing company for Raemulan Lands Inc. The organizational structure was designed to be as efficient as possible.
“Selling at the loan ceiling opened doors to more streamlining,” says Jack.
For example, because all construction funding came from Pag-Ibig, there was no need to hire payment collectors. Since the developer also did not have to wait for buyers to finish payments, there was no uncertainty about how many units to build. The company could build hundreds of townhouses at a time, unlocking economies of scale.
“Socialized housing is not easy,” says Jack. “Implementation is very mabusisi (finicky/troublesome). But after my self-discovery, I think the onus should be on the developer—the ones like us who studied and finished college—to solve these problems and present the minimum-wage buyer with solutions, rather than forcing the burden on them by saying, ‘You have to pay more.’”
An architect, Jack designed quality townhouses as big as possible, given budget and land constraints, rather than expecting buyers to make extensions or improvements themselves. Decent living spaces uplift human dignity, so flush toilets were installed, and exteriors brightly painted—“After all, colored paint costs the same as white!”
From 2017 to 2024, 50,000 out of Raemulan’s 57,000 units were socialized housing. The company housed the homeless and boosted construction-related small- and medium-scale enterprises across six provinces, garnering numerous accolades.
