If you spend enough time in the Philippines—or apparently even look at property online once—you will see the advertisements.
New condo developments. Resort-style pools. Gyms. Beautiful lobbies. Flexible payment plans.
And plenty of:
**PRE-SELLING. INVEST NOW. LIMITED UNITS AVAILABLE.**
I’ve looked.
I’ve been tempted.
But I still haven’t bought one.
And my biggest concern isn’t actually whether a pre-selling development will be completed.
It’s whether the finished condo will make enough money to justify buying it in the first place.
I see condos everywhere
That was probably the first thing that made me hesitate.
There is so much condominium development and advertising. But I also see plenty of units being advertised for rent and resale, while even more developments continue to appear.
So I keep coming back to one question:
Who is actually going to live in all of them?
Buying a condo is easy to make look attractive on paper. The harder questions come afterwards.
Who rents it? At what price? How long could it sit empty? How many almost-identical units am I competing with?
And after all the costs, what do I actually keep?
I don’t care what it could rent for
This is probably the biggest reason I haven’t bought.
A salesperson can tell me:
“This unit could rent for ₱X per month.”
Fine.
But that’s not the number I want.
I want to know what is left after association dues, maintenance, repairs, taxes, insurance, management, furnishing, refurbishment and vacancy.
Those swimming pools, gyms, landscaped gardens, security guards and impressive reception areas are lovely. But they aren’t free. The owners pay for them.
And if ten similar units in the same development are trying to find tenants, I can’t simply assume mine will be occupied twelve months of the year at the rent shown in a sales presentation.
Then I saw another owner saying almost exactly this
Recently I came across a social-media post from someone describing their experience of owning several condos in Manila.
Their identity isn’t the point. Their experience is.
They described owning three condos, paying association dues across those units and finding that the rental income was lower than expected. They also had another condo whose turnover had been delayed.
A second condo buyer replied that they had bought three units themselves and managed to sell them before turnover.
> In a public discussion, one Manila condo owner described higher-than-expected association costs, lower-than-expected rent and a delayed turnover. Another buyer said they had sold their units before turnover. I have paraphrased the discussion rather than republishing people’s profiles or comments.
*It is one personal exchange, not market-wide evidence.*
One social-media conversation obviously doesn’t prove that Philippine condos are bad investments.
It doesn’t.
But it caught my attention because it described exactly what I had been questioning: the advertised investment story and an owner’s actual financial result can be two completely different things.
That’s the bit I care about.
The market data makes me ask even more questions
My impression that there is a lot of condominium supply isn’t purely anecdotal.
Leechiu Property Consultants’ figures, reported in industry coverage, put active Metro Manila condominium inventory at 82,900 units across 616 actively selling buildings in the second quarter of 2026.
That does **not** mean 82,900 completed apartments are sitting empty. Active inventory can include units at different stages of development and sale.
Colliers’ second-quarter 2026 report also projected Metro Manila residential vacancy reaching 25.6% by the end of 2026, before potentially easing from 2027 as completions slow.
Those are market-wide figures, not a prediction for every building or neighbourhood. Some parts of the market will perform better than others.
But they tell me something important:
There is competition.
If I buy as an investor, I may be competing with other landlords, existing owners trying to resell, investors exiting pre-selling contracts and developers still selling brand-new units.
So the statement “There is housing demand in the Philippines” isn’t enough for me.
I need to know whether there is enough demand for **this particular condo**, at **this particular rent**, at the price I am being asked to pay.
Pre-selling is another risk—just not my main one
I understand why pre-selling is attractive.
You buy before completion, often using a payment plan, and hopefully receive a finished property worth more later.
But I have a personal reason to be cautious.
A friend of mine bought into a pre-selling development in India. It was never finished.
Watching that happen permanently changed how I look at architectural renderings.
A beautiful computer-generated swimming pool isn’t a swimming pool. A rendering of a tower isn’t a tower. And an expected completion date isn’t the same thing as receiving the keys.
That doesn’t tell us what will happen to a development in Manila. It simply taught me to separate what I’m being shown from what actually exists.
Philippine projects offered for sale are subject to registration and License to Sell requirements. The Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development advises buyers to check both the Certificate of Registration and the License to Sell before transacting. DHSUD also publishes a searchable list of Licenses to Sell.
I’d absolutely verify both.
But even when the paperwork checks out, I still come back to the same question:
Will the finished property actually make money?
Why would I automatically choose pre-selling?
If completed units are already available, I’d compare them first.
Maybe an existing owner wants out. Maybe a ready-for-occupancy unit is being discounted. Maybe I can see exactly how the building is being maintained.
With an existing property, I can investigate the real building, real view, real association dues, actual competing listings and actual resale market.
So “Buy now because it will be worth more when it’s finished” isn’t enough for me.
I’d rather ask:
What are finished units worth today?
This is why I became slightly obsessed with property spreadsheets 😜
I don’t only want to know whether I can afford a property.
I want to know whether I should buy it.
Then: what happens while I own it?
And eventually: what happens when I want my money back out?
That became the logic behind the calculators in my Spain Property Buyer Toolkit:
**BUY IT.** What does the property really cost after buying costs?
**RUN IT.** What does the rental actually produce after expenses?
**SELL IT.** If I eventually sell, what could I realistically walk away with?
The legal rules and tax calculations in the guide are specifically for Spain.
But the thinking behind the tools isn’t.
Whether I’m looking at Spain, the Philippines or somewhere completely different, I still want to know:
What will this really cost me?
What do I actually keep?
What happens if my assumptions are wrong?
I want to break the numbers before I believe them
If somebody gives me an expected rental figure, I don’t want to calculate the investment only using their optimistic number.
I want to stress it.
What if rent is 10% lower?
What if it’s 20% lower?
What if the unit sits empty for two months?
What if association dues increase?
What if something needs replacing?
And if I eventually want out, who is going to buy it from me?
If the investment still works when I make the assumptions less optimistic, then I become interested.
If it only works when everything goes perfectly?
That’s useful information too.
Would I never buy a Philippine condo?
I wouldn’t say never.
I’d consider the right one. But I would be much more interested in the numbers than the brochure.
I’d compare pre-selling with resale and ready-for-occupancy units. I’d check actual competing rents, calculate recurring costs, look at vacancy and think about my exit before I bought.
Because ultimately, I don’t want to own an investment property simply so I can say:
“I own a condo in the Philippines.”
I want the property to do what I bought it to do.
And so far?
The numbers haven’t convinced me.
This article reflects my personal experience, observations and investment thinking. The anonymised social-media example represents individual owners’ experiences and should not be treated as evidence of the performance of the Philippine condominium market as a whole. It isn’t legal, financial or investment advice. Always independently verify project approvals, ownership rules, costs, rental assumptions and market information before buying.