Condos & food stand franchises for investment.

hi Filipeanut,

Welcome to Expat.com

Hopefully members who are more knowledgeable on this matter will respond to you soon.

Kind regards

Filipeanut

Condos are actually being sold during pre-sell to get the best price. Once its finished completion, the condo price shoot up to almost double the price.

If you pay cash, you get 5 to 10% discount and no questions ask. If you obtain financing, banks ask for 10%, 20% to 30%.

10% to 20% if you have co-guarantor or co-payor

30% if you have really great credit and debt income ratio of 20/80.

Please note that banks hardly approve loans if you do not have 30% downpayment.

On top of that banks ask about :
- who is the developer
- your income
- your job and how long have you been working
- income tax return
- US based applicant have to agree with credit check (low scores dont get approve)

Banks dont question your choice of developer if its Ayala or other approve developer. Banks normally just accept MOU issued by Ayala to you. If your credit rating and income combined is acceptable to the banks, banks will then grant you the loan and monthly payment starts 30 days from loan issuance.

Here's what I did, at the time of pre-sell I took 2 condos of Ayala properties (remember that banks prefer developers with good names). One condo is bank financed (after my 30% downpayment) and the other one is self-financed by Ayala. All transactions were done in Ayala offices.

The condo which is in-house financed by Ayala has a payment schedule of 10, 40, 50 (5 years to pay). It means I have to pay 10% downpayment, 40% payable in 59 months and 50% payable on the 60th month.

Two years before turned over, my equity of the condo financed by Ayala have now reached 30%, I ask a Philippine bank that has a branch in California to refinance my loan and it got approved. The reason why it was approve, my equity is at least 30%, stellar credit and good income ratio based on the income tax return that I provided.

Since the refinancing, my monthly payment is now $372 per month.

Perhaps you may do the steps that I did if you do not have 30% downpayment. Most developers offer in-house financing with a 10% downpayment with good interest rate.

Be careful in choosing a developer, some developers could not finish the project on time, you ended up spending more or developers go bankcrupt, you may ended up unfinished condo and still paying your loan to the bank.

Nowadays, a lot of banks are not that strict when it comes to downpayment. A friend of mine was able to acquire a condo during pre-sell with a 15% downpayment.

You do not have to get pre-selling condos. There are condos that are being sold at a bargain price too but its not easy to find.

As for food franchises I dont have a clue on that. I used to know a friend who wanted to open a Mikuni franchise or similar but after the housing meltdown, she shelved her project. It turns out too just to pay the franchise she needs 300K. A Philippine food franchise may be 50% cheaper.

Thank you so much! Great to hear info from someone who has hands-on experience.

Are you renting out your condo as well? Are you able to turn out a profit every month with $373/mo as the cost?

You mentioned a good developer and after some research and asking more questions many people recommended DMCI (dmcihomes dot com).

To start im planing to call around for P500k-1.5m already-finished condos or studios and placing a 40% downpayment.

P500-1.5m condo with P200k-600k downpayment (US$5k-14k based on P43 to US$1).

With a 5 year plan, the remaining payments comes out to about $400 a month.

Pre-sale

Concerning pre-sale, this is still very attractive since the a condo I visited (Gateway in Manila) has pre-sale studios available for no downpayment at all in a nice location.

But because it will take 5 years to build and $500/month without any rent income, this makes it a bit difficult for me to swallow.

This was my first condo visit so hopefully I can find more affordable pre-sale properties in the near future.