Building and Extension on house in Philippines

[JelloShotGirl 0]

Well , we are almost there...we have almost saved enough $$ to put a second floor on our house in the Philippines(metro manila area) I would like any type of advice or imput from anyone who is based in the United States who built or extended a house in RP. I know it will take a few months to build it......any advice on this issue will be appreciated. This is the first time either of us took on a project like this , and we are a little nervous. Thanks

[DouglasFiel 53]

My only poor advise,,, is don't let the contractor know it is being financed by American Dollars,,,

or you could see more of them vanish then you would like.

Seriously,,, get an architect to design and validate the structure. You want to make sure that the

existing structure can handle the weight.

Good Luck,

[jrmejia 31]

I want to hijack this thread.. can I Please please?

I just filed my K-1 for my fiancee in the phil. After I visited her in the phil, I told her I like to build a house there for us for vacationing. We like ormoc, tacloban, or cebu to build the house. Like how much the empty lot cost for 0.4 acre or 2000 sq. meter. We want something very small.

Thanks

[rlogan 2,036]

I built a small house on Mindanao. I've built numerous houses in the USA, log structures in Alaska, and this reinforced concrete block house there in the philippines. I mean I built them myself, not paid a contractor to do it. I run heavy equipment, do carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical - all of it.

Your question is pretty broad - there are some structural issues and some cost issues that are pretty big-picture items like whether the existing foundation contemplated a second story and how much reconstruction you have to do in order to get the second story in. It might be cheaper to build a place from scratch or just buy one if there is too much involved. You can have a structural engineer look at the foundation and whatever is involved in the second story and give you an opinion on that.

Yes, absolutely there is an Americano price and a Filipino price for everything. I wouldn't touch anything with a ten foot pole if I wasn't there doing the construction myself. I want to see receipts and pay the other men on the job with my own hands. I ran into minor corruption and cronyism on things like electrical and phone but my family knew who and how much to pay to speed things up. I couldn't imagine building in Metro Manila. I'm a country boy and cities here are bad enough with ridiculous building code/inspection tyrannies. I would do some study on what it is like in metro manila. Permits, delays, inspections, bribery - that's where it can become a big hassle and I don't know Manila. But I would sure want to find out.

Labor is really, really cheap there. We were paying 200 pesos a day plus snacks for unskilled. 250 for someone with masonry skills. I paid an electrical contractor 350 pesos a day after I left because I had not finished all of the wiring, but he was the most expensive guy, and there wasn't much left to do. So I do think that if you oversee it tightly you can build very cheaply there. If you can't oversee it I think you'll be spraying money like a fire hose.

[kaibigan 8]

I built a small house on Mindanao. I've built numerous houses in the USA, log structures in Alaska, and this reinforced concrete block house there in the philippines. I mean I built them myself, not paid a contractor to do it. I run heavy equipment, do carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical - all of it.

Your question is pretty broad - there are some structural issues and some cost issues that are pretty big-picture items like whether the existing foundation contemplated a second story and how much reconstruction you have to do in order to get the second story in. It might be cheaper to build a place from scratch or just buy one if there is too much involved. You can have a structural engineer look at the foundation and whatever is involved in the second story and give you an opinion on that.

Yes, absolutely there is an Americano price and a Filipino price for everything. I wouldn't touch anything with a ten foot pole if I wasn't there doing the construction myself. I want to see receipts and pay the other men on the job with my own hands. I ran into minor corruption and cronyism on things like electrical and phone but my family knew who and how much to pay to speed things up. I couldn't imagine building in Metro Manila. I'm a country boy and cities here are bad enough with ridiculous building code/inspection tyrannies. I would do some study on what it is like in metro manila. Permits, delays, inspections, bribery - that's where it can become a big hassle and I don't know Manila. But I would sure want to find out.

Labor is really, really cheap there. We were paying 200 pesos a day plus snacks for unskilled. 250 for someone with masonry skills. I paid an electrical contractor 350 pesos a day after I left because I had not finished all of the wiring, but he was the most expensive guy, and there wasn't much left to do. So I do think that if you oversee it tightly you can build very cheaply there. If you can't oversee it I think you'll be spraying money like a fire hose.

100% agreed!

[TripleG 3]

Like Rlogan I have built several houses in the U.S.A. (used to own and operate my own construction business). I also built a small cinderblock house in the RP in Negros Oriental. I wouldn't be involved in a project in the RP unless there was close oversite by someone you deeply trusted like a direct family member an even that could be a sketchy situation. I was living in Negros when we built our house, so I was involved in every aspect and even helped during construction even though its a different type of construction then I have been exposed to. The main structure was basically pole framing followed up with cinderblock walls. My father-in-law and I worked hand in hand and hired day labor guys at 100 peso's per day. 100 pesos is going rate in the province. Anyways there are so many variables and cost fluctuate from area to area. For instance some of the raw materials we used where essentially free because we got them from natural resources. Sand and rock for the concrete, we got from the river bed. I bought the lumber for the house as trees still standing. Paid someone to mill them to my specs. etc. etc. Ran my own plumbing. I was able to keep cost way down by doing certain things like this. PM me your email adress and I will send you pics. of the construction and the cost, but they will certainly be different than cost in Manila.

Wyatt

Edited August 25, 2010 by TripleG

[Ann Marie and Leo 9]

I did a two story house, near Angeles City. It was cheaper to tear down the original structure, and start from scratch than to try, and add on to the existing structure. If you will not personally be there to oversee it, it could cost you a significant amount more (maybe double) than if you manage the cash flow in person, as well as the time to complete the job could easy double. The next best situation would be to have someone you can trust do it for you, but I know of several folks that thought they had a trusted family member handling only to find out that it was too tempting for them to skim some money from the project, and it got worse as the project went on.

In my case I had a family friend who is a honest contractor, and together we search for good quality & reasonable priced materials, I personally paid the workers weekly, and was at the house almost everyday, the result was we built a two story ~2200 Sq FT, 5 bed 2 bath house for around 1 million Pesos taking around 2.5 months. A neighbor who was working in Saudi, and sent the money to the brother of his wife to manage the project, got about half the size house we built, and paid around 2.5 times the cost, and the project ran for almost 1 year.

Good Luck.

[rlogan 2,036]

Wow, Wyatt - you can't afford not to build at 100 pesos a day! Yea, with the milling and gravel - way to go.

Good data Ann Marie and Leo - half the house for more than twice the money and five times the wait. I'm curious what the workers were paid on Luzon if you don't mind saying...

[TripleG 3]

Wow, Wyatt - you can't afford not to build at 100 pesos a day! Yea, with the milling and gravel - way to go.

Good data Ann Marie and Leo - half the house for more than twice the money and five times the wait. I'm curious what the workers were paid on Luzon if you don't mind saying...

Yap wanted to pay the guys more then 100 pesos a day, but it caused too many problems. At one time I was paying them 160 a day and had 10 guys working at one time, during the digging out the mountain process. The problem it caused was that everyone else in the baranguay got mad, because they couldn't afford to hire any of my guys for their projects and it caused bad blood. Also my father-in-law is a very thrifty man, and it caused him a bunch of stress thinking I was spending too much money on labor. The going rate there is 100 pesos a day and they where dang glad to get it. Heck even some of the province kids wanted to help so I payed them 1 piso for every rock they carried up from the river 2 miles a way. You should have seen the piles of rock we had to build the veranda...I finally had to tell them to stop! hahahaha!

[jrmejia 31]

I did a two story house, near Angeles City. It was cheaper to tear down the original structure, and start from scratch than to try, and add on to the existing structure. If you will not personally be there to oversee it, it could cost you a significant amount more (maybe double) than if you manage the cash flow in person, as well as the time to complete the job could easy double. The next best situation would be to have someone you can trust do it for you, but I know of several folks that thought they had a trusted family member handling only to find out that it was too tempting for them to skim some money from the project, and it got worse as the project went on.

In my case I had a family friend who is a honest contractor, and together we search for good quality & reasonable priced materials, I personally paid the workers weekly, and was at the house almost everyday, the result was we built a two story ~2200 Sq FT, 5 bed 2 bath house for around 1 million Pesos taking around 2.5 months. A neighbor who was working in Saudi, and sent the money to the brother of his wife to manage the project, got about half the size house we built, and paid around 2.5 times the cost, and the project ran for almost 1 year.

Good Luck.

Excuse my ignorance, was the $1million was for the both building the house and the lot.

Re -edit,

I think the 1million php was to build the house only right? how much 2200 sq ft lot cost in phil. I am very new to this. I only visited that country once.

Edited August 26, 2010 by jrmejia

[Richard90027 1]

I want to hijack this thread.. can I Please please?

I just filed my K-1 for my fiancee in the phil. After I visited her in the phil, I told her I like to build a house there for us for vacationing. We like ormoc, tacloban, or cebu to build the house. Like how much the empty lot cost for 0.4 acre or 2000 sq. meter. We want something very small.

Thanks

This might be helpful http://www.ayosdito.ph/

[rlogan 2,036]

how much 2200 sq ft lot cost in phil. I am very new to this. I only visited that country once.

Depends on where and how you go about doing it. Philippines is third world and property advertising is not online or even in a newspaper or through real estate companies. In Manila or a very few other big and more modern cities yea - but even there it's spotty.

You drive around looking for signs posted on land or start asking around. Work through your family so you are not paying the Americano price. I would be very careful about the title and have a reputable law company with that kind of experience look at it. I spent a month on Palawan looking at land and learned about the survey system in the Philippines. Very little land is actually surveyed and recorded. There is a class called forest land and then agricultural land if I remember correctly and they have different degrees of security in the survey and title. My memory is a little cloudy on this but some land has just about no security at all and I don't remember how they referred to it but that's why you need to make sure about survey and title.

I'd be way off the mark even guessing about Cebu or Tacloban land price ranges.

[rheanick 42]

Well , we are almost there...we have almost saved enough $$ to put a second floor on our house in the Philippines(metro manila area) I would like any type of advice or imput from anyone who is based in the United States who built or extended a house in RP. I know it will take a few months to build it......any advice on this issue will be appreciated. This is the first time either of us took on a project like this , and we are a little nervous. Thanks

On the money you have saved... put 25% - 50% more on it. Based on my brother's and friend's experience who did construction of their houses in manila, their cost is a lot higher than they predicted. Make sure that you personally know your contractor. Have an electrical engineer and an architect look on your contractor's work regularly. Raw materials are cheaper during rainy season. Have a family member whom you trusted monitor the progress.

[Ann Marie and Leo 9]

Wow, Wyatt - you can't afford not to build at 100 pesos a day! Yea, with the milling and gravel - way to go.

Good data Ann Marie and Leo - half the house for more than twice the money and five times the wait. I'm curious what the workers were paid on Luzon if you don't mind saying...

It went from 250 per day for general laborer, then the majority were 350 for skilled guys, and ~ 450 for the electrician, and a very special wood craftsmen who did custom cabinets, closets and ceilings wood design work.

[Ann Marie and Leo 9]

Excuse my ignorance, was the $1million was for the both building the house and the lot.

Re -edit,

I think the 1million php was to build the house only right? how much 2200 sq ft lot cost in phil. I am very new to this. I only visited that country once.

The million was only for the house, the land was already owned by my ex wifes familly. The cost for land is vastly different depending on location.