Philippine Daily Inquirer, in its 11 April 2011 issue,  reported the statements of a fund manager who specializes in real-estate investments in a recent conference sponsored by UBS.

The fund manager is Mr. Brett Gordon, founder of Panna Capital who formerly served as in-charge for real estate investments at Dutch pension fund giant APG investments.

Here are some key takeaways:

• He singled out the affordable housing market as being attractive to investors, along with “pre-IPO opportunities” for growing private developers who have yet to list their shares on the Philippine Stock Exchange
• The implementation of REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) will be very interesting for foreign investors
• ASEAN (or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is massively overlooked as a growth story, especially on the residential side
• He also singled out Indonesia and the Philippines as being attractive real-estate investment markets because “the demographics are ‘to die for,’” referring to the young population with growing disposable incomes and attractive prevailing mortgage rates offered by banks, as well as the high margins earned by developers.