Your Lola was right. Build your own house

Ask any Filipino what their family told them about building wealth, and the answer almost always starts with land. Buy your own lot, build your own house, and keep it in the family.

It is the kind of advice passed down by a Lola who has seen how difficult it can be to save over the years, and who understands the value of turning hard-earned money into something tangible, something that lasts for future generations.

It may sound old-fashioned today. After all, there are condos, rent-to-own options, and more ways to buy a home than ever before. But the housing market offers a useful reality check: it can tell us what people are buying, and what they are not.

What the condo market tells us

Metro Manila currently sits on over 80,000 unsold condominium units, according to Colliers Philippines. The worst oversupply is concentrated in the lower mid-income segment (P3.6 million to P6.99 million) and in the affordable segment (P2.5 million to P3.59 million), which together account for 69 percent of unsold ready-for-occupancy units.

To put it into perspective, if the MOA Arena can hold about 20,000 people, this number could fill four arenas, and every single seat is empty.

At current absorption rates, it would take about 6.8 years to sell what is already built. If developers stopped building condos today, Metro Manila would not clear its existing inventory until well into the 2030s.

In real, inflation-adjusted terms, residential property prices in the Philippines are still roughly 37 percent below where they were before the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Nearly three decades later, condo investors have still not recovered their value in real terms.

More than an investment

David Cruz is a commercial real estate investor who acquires and manages multi-tenant commercial properties across Metro Manila, leasing to medical clinics, studios, and professional offices. He evaluates properties based on yield, occupancy, and long-term value retention.

"There is a fundamental difference between real estate as a business investment and real estate as a family asset," says Cruz. "In commercial real estate, I look at cash flow, tenant quality, lease duration, and location economics. But when a Filipino family is deciding where to put their life savings, the calculation is completely different."

For Cruz, it comes down to permanence. A family buying a condo is buying a unit in a tower where they share walls, hallways, and parking with 500 other families. A family building on their own land is buying something their children and grandchildren will inherit. In his view, for that purpose, land and a custom-built home will always outperform a shared unit.

The Philippine construction market is valued at $45.48 billion, growing at about 6.5 percent annually through 2031. Residential construction makes up 41.9 percent of that market.

Major developers are reading the same data. Colliers has urged firms to expand into provincial markets, where demand for house-and-lot projects has held up better than for condominiums. They are following the demand, and the demand is clear: Filipinos want to build.

The risk nobody warns you about

Here is where the conversation usually ends. The data, the culture, and the developers all seem to agree: build. Filipino families take the leap and yet, few stop to ask what that decision actually demands of them.

Building a custom home is not the same as buying a condo unit. When you buy a condo, the developer handles everything: the architect, the engineer, the materials, the timeline, and the quality control. You inspect a finished unit, sign the contract, and move in. The risk is in the market value, not in the construction.

When you build a custom home, you become the project manager overnight. You hire the contractor, approve the plans, release the milestone payments, and evaluate whether the work matches the specifications. And if something goes wrong, you are the one who bears the cost.

"This is the part of the conversation that nobody has honestly with Filipino families," says Cruz. "Everyone tells them to build. Nobody tells them how exposed they are once they start."

A P15 million custom home is not just the best investment most families will ever make. It is also the most complex project they will ever manage. Most of them are managing it for the first time with no professional support, independent oversight, or a system to verify that what they are paying for is really what they are getting. A progress photo will not tell you if the rebar is the wrong grade or if the cement mix was watered down. It only shows you a finished surface.

The value of owning land and building your own home is real. The 13.1 percent appreciation confirms it. The cultural wisdom confirms it. The market trajectory confirms it.

But value without protection is a gamble. And a P15 million gamble is not one any family should take without the right safeguards in place.

The bottom line

Your Lola told you to buy land and build your own house. She was right about the what, and the question now is how.

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