Five years ago the shortest question a buyer asked was “how far is it from the office?” It is not the first question any more. When a commute happens two or three days a week instead of five, an extra thirty minutes stops being a daily tax and starts being an acceptable trade for a second bedroom. Demand has moved outward accordingly, and the projects that sold fastest this year were the ones sitting on a decent expressway exit rather than the ones closest to a central business district.
Three shifts worth planning around
The first is unit mix. Developers have quietly shrunk the average private floor area while spending more on the shared floors — co-working rooms, parcel lockers, a gym that is actually usable at seven in the evening. The calculation is straightforward: space you share is cheaper per household than space you own, and a buyer who works from home two days a week needs a desk more than they need a formal dining room.
The second is running cost. Buyers now ask about association dues, submetering and whether the building has its own water treatment before they ask about the view. That is a healthy change. Dues are the part of the monthly figure that nobody quotes in an advertisement and that nobody can renegotiate later.
Buy real estate in areas where the path exists — and buy more real estate where there is no path.
David Waronker
The third shift: patience is priced in
Pre-selling used to be a discount for accepting uncertainty. It still is, but the discount now tracks the developer's delivery record far more closely than it tracks the calendar. Two towers turning over in the same quarter can carry very different pre-selling prices because one developer has never missed a turnover date and the other has. Reputation has become a measurable line item.
- Ask for the developer's last three turnover dates, promised and actual
- Get the current association dues per square metre in writing
- Check what the shared amenities cost to run, not just what they look like
- Price the commute you will actually make, not the one on the brochure
None of this makes the market easy to time, and nobody should try. What it does is change which questions are worth asking at a site visit. Ask about cost of ownership and delivery history, and the trend becomes something you can use rather than something you read about.
The point about association dues is the one nobody made to us when we bought in 2019. We compared two towers on price per square metre and ended up in the one that costs almost two thousand pesos more every month to hold. Would love a follow-up on how dues are actually computed.