HLURB Watches ‘Illegal’ Condo Advertisers

A national government agency tasked to monitor lands, classified for housing has started monitoring media outfits used for illegal advertisements.

Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) Regional Director Alexes Roy Lopez on Friday said they are tasked to protect the rights of prospective house and lot buyers from unscrupulous people who entice them to buy house and lot or condominium units, through media advertisements.

Lopez said starting last Thursday, HLURB monitoring groups nationwide were so busy scanning newspapers, listening radios, and even watching televisions anticipating to catch illegal advertisers.

“These are the groups’ menu every morning or the whole day reading newspapers, listening radios and watching televisions to comply their job”, Lopez said.

According to Lopez the law is very strict to slap a penalty of P10,000 for the first offense against any advertiser who make advertisements without a permit issued by HLURB.

He said only HLURB offices can issue such license for anybody who wants to put ads selling house and lots or condo units.

He said HLURB offices nationwide have piles of permit applications everyday, however due to lack of manpower these applications are just dumped in their office waiting for the exact time the evaluators can finish processing it.

These may be the reason why some who can not wait their permit, would take advantage and silently pay ads in the newspapers, radios and televisions inviting people to buy their stocks.

Earlier reports reaching through HLURB offices complaining about newspaper ads whose advertisers were non existence after receiving big amounts of money as advance payments for house and lots sell.

“So we clarify the matter that the law is strict to penalize them, and we are tasked to investigate any law violators,” Lopez said.

Here in Central Visayas, the HLURB7 has not yet found any violators of the law, but “we are also inviting the public to help us in this tasked by just dialing our Telephone number, 2544564, in case you can discover any violator,” Lopez said.

He added its easy to identify the violators by calling back their number indicated at their ads and investigate them if they are licensed or not.

The HLURB monitoring task forces are busy everyday to ensure that nobody can be swindled by the unscrupulous advertisers, Lopez said.