The right to a roof

The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2024 Philippines has concluded its search for the country’s most visionary leaders shaping opportunities and transforming industries. It is a program of the SGV Foundation, Inc., with co-presenters: the Asian Institute of Management, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Philippine Business for Social Progress, and the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Jacinto Ng, Jr.
Group Executive Officer
Raemulan Lands, Inc.

JACINTO “JUN” NG, JR. has always considered architecture as a passion. Growing up, he learned about mass housing developments through his father’s business.

This early knowledge and experience would eventually serve him working with the partner company, Raemulan Lands, Inc., which builds socialized housing for the low-income market. Raemulan Lands is the partner company of Extraordinary Enclaves, Elanvital Enclaves and Everyhome Enclaves of the Joy~Nostalg Group, which includes various companies in property development, power, hospitality and culinary, and leasing.

While in college, Mr. Ng apprenticed under architect C.Y. Lee in 1991. He then came home to the Philippines and started working for Extraordinary Development Corp., a residential development company, partly owned by his father. He remembers coming up with the idea for mass low-income housing during this time.

“I wanted to find joy in what I should be doing next, while connecting it with my High School motto of being a Man for Others and being a UP Iskolar ng Bayan,” he recalled.

Mr. Ng then started looking into socialized housing. He discovered that there was a housing backlog of around four million houses and knew there was a market there.

When he started housing development in 2016, the appraised value of one house was P630,000. He priced the housing to match the Pag-IBIG Fund’s (Home Development Mutual Fund) ceiling price, which at the time was at P450,000. This made it highly affordable for minimum wage earners since the monthly amortization would be cheaper.

“There’s a small margin,” Mr. Ng said. “And that’s when I decided my challenge is to figure out how to make it work with that margin.”

He said they followed Pag-IBIG’s rule where buyers do not have to pay any equity if the appraised value of the house is equal to or higher than Pag-IBIG’s ceiling price. Under the Pasinaya Homes brand, their first groundbreaking socialized housing project, Raemulan Lands was able to develop more than 30,000 homes in eight years.

Presently, the price of a house is P750,000, which is still below the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development’s (DHSUD) ceiling price of P850,000.

Mr. Ng believes in uplifting the social welfare of every Filipino, and central to this is the empowerment of communities and protecting the homeless. Through the Joy~Nostalg Foundation, Inc. (JNF), Raemulan Lands has implemented successful programs on values and skills development. These include the Home Empowerment Learning Program (HELP), a financial and housing literacy initiative that has educated over 106,000 individuals and expanded into the digital platform HOPEFUL.PH.

“The mission is to home the homeless, which means that it is our intention and our goal to really build communities,” he said. The master-planned communities they establish are designed to promote sustainability and to have a long-term positive impact on the residents.

By also leveraging the synergy between Raemulan Lands and Joy~Nostalg Solaris, Inc. (JNSI), the solar energy company of the Joy~Nostalg Group, Mr. Ng has created a sustainable energy solution. He came up with the idea of installing rooftop solar panels on the houses in their projects since they already own the land.

To get the homeowners to allow the usufructuary rights of the roof, JNSI subsidizes the cost of the house to enable the developer to sell the socialized housing unit and for the buyer to purchase that unit without need for equity. On top of that, JNSI monetizes the would-be daytime energy use and aggregates it as a fund for annual community improvement projects in the socialized housing development and donates it for the community’s use.

JNSI’s renewable energy initiative, NING*NING, has installed 5 megawatts (MW) of rooftop solar energy in Pasinaya Homes Prime Central, Cavite composed of over 2,000 rooftops. This will be the first Utility-Grade Socialized Housing Rooftop Solar Energy in the Philippines and in the world.

Raemulan Lands is currently looking to expand its housing developments to different provinces. They are participating in the Pambansang Pabahay Para sa Pilipino Program with their first project being an eight-story condominium called Pasinaya Heights in Cabuyao, Laguna. For their energy projects, JNSI is currently building a 65-MW solar farm in Iloilo. They are also planning to participate in the government’s Green Energy Auction Program (GEAP) to install more rooftop solar panels on their houses and are also researching on the installation of 35-MW rooftop solar panels in future socialized housing projects.

For his part, Mr. Ng believes minimum wage earners should be recognized for their resilience and valuable role in society. He sees them as individuals who, despite challenges, make meaningful contributions to their communities, the nation, and the world at large.

Media sponsors are BusinessWorld and the ABS-CBN News Channel. Gold Sponsors are SteelAsia Manufacturing Corp., Uratex, and Converge ICT Solutions, Inc. Silver Sponsor is International Container Terminal Services, Inc. Bronze sponsor is Lausgroup Holdings, Inc.

The winners will be announced on Oct. 23, 2024. The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2024 Philippines will represent the country in the World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2025 in Monte Carlo, Monaco in June 2025. The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program is produced globally by Ernst & Young (EY).