Filipino-Americans Prefer PH Houses Over Condos

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Despite the condo boom happening in Metro Manila and other major cities across the Philippines, it seems that many Filipinos based in the United States still prefer to purchase houses.

This is according to latest data from global property portal Lamudi Philippines, which looked into the search behavior of online house-hunters from January to June 2015. According to the company, almost 8 million searches were conducted in the website during the time period, and 5.28 percent of that traffic comes from USA, a country with a significant Filipino population.

More than half (57.83 percent) of all these searches from U.S.-based property-hunters in Lamudi.com.ph were for houses, according to the company’s data. Condos are the second most searched property type, comprising 16.58 percent of all searches, followed by land/residential lots (13.64 percent), apartments (8.54 percent), and foreclosures (2.35 percent).

The city most Filipino-Americans are searching for is Quezon City, at 20.35 percent of all searches for the first half of 2015. Makati comes in second at 8.49 percent, then Manila at 5.33 percent. Interestingly, Tagaytay and Baguio are the fourth and fifth most searched cities by U.S.-based online property-hunters (5.10 and 4.91 percent, respectively), outranking other popular Metro Manila LGUs like Taguig, Pasig, and Mandaluyong.

When looked at the state level, search traffic going to Lamudi.com.ph during the first half of 2015 came from California (34.41 percent), followed by New York (7.77 percent), Texas (5.93 percent), and Florida (5.11 percent).

Buying, apparently, is also more popular among U.S.-based property hunters: 65.73 percent of all searches were for for-sale properties, while 34.27 percent were for rental properties.

According to Lamudi Philippines Managing Director Jacqueline van den Ende, this latest data analysis from the website shows that when it comes to property-hunting, U.S.-based Filipinos are traditional in many sense, preferring houses over condos and other property types.

“This I think is akin to the Filipino mind-set that a landed property is a safer and more viable investment vehicle, as land values rarely stagnate, especially when its location is highly sought after.”

Van den Ende also added that this data analysis will also help property developers plan their marketing strategies targeted at Filipino-American customers. As the Philippines’ largest population of overseas Filipinos and biggest source of foreign remittance, Filipino-Americans are a consumer market with formidable size and potential.

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