Building our House in the Philippines
Part 1
When I decided that we should move permanently to the Philippines in 2004, I was not sure if there would be any problems, or maybe after a while I would decide that it was not for me, so in 2005 I chose to let our bungalow, and use the rent money to rent a better place in the Philippines. I did not expect any problems because we had spent a number of 4-6 months periods here in the past, and I used to describe the Philippines as my second home. We rented for a year in Ayala Alabang, one of the top gated villages in Manila, and the plan was to travel around and see where we would like to settle permanently, but this did not happen and we decided just to move to Palawan where most of Bings family live. This was also one of the places we stayed during our long vacations, the other being Lingayen Pangasinan. When we stayed on Palawan it was at Inagawan, one of the prison farms 1 hour south of Puerto Princesa. This was a bit remote and it was often difficult to get a shuttle bus into Puerto. So in 2000 we built a house for the family just outside the main centre of Puerto Princesa, the original idea was for it to be used also for us to stay on our trips here. A 600 sq mtr lot cost P200,000 and a smallish 3 bedroom house a similar amount.
When we moved here, we could not move into that because it would have meant moving everybody else out to make room for all the stuff/junk we had brought over with us. Also it was very crowded, and we wanted a place of our own. The house is used by Bings 82 year old mother, her brother, wife and three children plus various nephews from Inagawan that we are paying to study here. We rented a place in the town centre and have lived here for 3 years.
In 2007 we decided to build here and spent a long time looking for a suitable lot. We saw some interesting places, but eventually settled on a lot in the district (barangay) of San Jose which is about a 10-15 minute drive north of the city. The 1500 sq mtr lot was a foreclosed bank property, we took this route on the advice of the vice mayor, a childhood friend of the family. It was a very good price, and the Bank did all the paperwork for us and we avoided any problems over ownership, title etc.
My original plan was to borrow P5M on my UK home repayable over 10 years, but because of my age, the time period could only be 5 year so I reduced the loan to P3M. The lot cost P900,000, and after paying for clearing and basic fencing, we had P2M left for the house. While this was going on we found extensive termite damage to the family house so had to have all the internal wood walls stripped out and replaced. The family stayed with us while this was happening.
Continued in part 2.