Expensive house prices in the Philippines

The Philippines has a culture of people who are working full-time abroad, namely Overseas Filipino Workers. About 20% of the local workforce work abroad. They usually earn a better salary than the workforce here, about on average 5 times more per month. With so many Filipinos working abroad, you will have also occasions that a Filipino/a will marry a person from abroad, too. Usually, most of these cases are Filipino women who will marry a foreigner.

This has been a trend that many Filipinos work abroad and marry foreigners for more than 30 years, more so in the last 20 years when there was a world economic boom since the 90's.

With these numbers, housing developers and contractors alike are really targeting these Overseas Foreign Workers and foreign spouses to invest in buying a property in the Philippines. Many buy houses that are renovated in Metro Manila, in the event they have to go back to the Philippines when their job is not there anymore, or the foreign spouse wants to retire there later in life because of many reasons, like a better climate.

I can see, many of these homes are overpriced to reflect on the salary of the foreigner or OFW. They are not really the prices for locals. I find it very shameful on the part of the contractor who build a new house or renovate an existing house. The reason is that he can hire very cheap labor, as a carpenter or mason makes about 3.75 Euro a day, yes a day. Building materials are really cheap here. For example, a regular bag of cement costs about 2.50 Euro. One concrete block to build a wall costs about 10 cents US. All depends on the quality, but most of the contractors buy the lower quality, as the buyer never will see the concrete blocks anyways as they are already hidden with the plastering of the wall when the wall is finished. Ceramic tiles is another one. A nice 16" x 16" tile costs here about 75 cents Euro a piece. Labor to lay those tiles are very cheap, too. I've installed in the house in General Trias, a 900 sq/ft home, tiles and paid the contractor we hired 105 Euro, that is a contractor who hired the tile setter. I can not imagine of how little he paid the worker from the 105 Euro I gave the contractor.

The Spanish were here in the Philippines for about 300 years till the beginning of the 20th. century, and they exploited the Filipino people very much. Now it is happening from their own people.

So, one can build a nice two-storey house for about 20,000 Euro and sell it to a foreigner or OFW for about three times more, quite a nice profit. The local workmen are usually very qualified and do very nice cement work inside and outside the house. These workers usually did not get very much basic education, as their parents were mostly poor and the opportunities for them where not there when they were young, so the educated and the powerful are in a way still exploiting the weak and the lower class, and in turn make a huge profit from low wages and cheap available material on hand.

Market values of houses here in the Philippines are not regulated, so anyone can set their own price, but I have seen houses not being sold for many years. That is why many of the local people have never a chance to own a house, as many of the builders ask too much money and too many builders target the OFW or the foreigner, so to make maximum profit. Where is humanity in this?

In some parts of Canada, you can still find a house that is about 90,000 Euro (about C$145,000), and the wages in Canada are quite high, so most people can really afford a home in their own country.

On the picture, you see this house in Canada standing on a 4.7 acre land, for sale for C$145,000. Most of the homes are better equipped in Canada than most of the homes in the Philippines. Most homes there have already a fridge, stove and dishwasher included. Here, a dishwasher is still unheard of.