When we started building our vacation house, we asked to talk to the landowner because if we didn't buy the land and then build the house, we might have problems later on.
The owner of the land said he would sell it to us if we would buy the whole area where he was building the house. The price was 1 million pesos.
My wife and I had talked about buying it in two years, but yesterday my wife's brother contacted him and said that he was willing to sell it for sale.
I don't know why the landowner changed his mind. The price was 1,000 pesos per square meter. The price per square meter (3.3 square meters) was 7,425 yen. Land in the countryside is still cheap. However, the 725 square meters of land I bought the year before last was even cheaper. I think it's a reasonable price since this land is closer to the center of town.
The building area (floor area of the first floor) of the house to be built is about 65 square meters, so the minimum size is 100 square meters, but this is a bit small. My wife was thinking about 150 square meters, but we decided to buy a 200 square meter house because it would be better to have two parking spaces.
The surveying and registration fees are separate, but only the land cost 200,000 pesos. My wife said she would pay half of it, so I had to pay 100,000 pesos (226,000 Japanese yen).
A foreigner cannot be the owner of land in the Philippines, so it will be in the name of my wife.
I don't think property values will continue to rise as it is a rural area that takes more than an hour to drive from Cebu City, but the population of the Philippines is growing and the middle class is definitely increasing.
Therefore, the land myth that land can go up but never down is still alive, as it was in Japan in the past.
The campus of the Cebu Institute of Technology is going to be built nearby, and the town will grow little by little.
Since land is a valuable asset in the Philippines, I think it is a good purchase for my wife and children's future.
