What I Wish I'd Known Before My First Visit to a Pre-selling Condo

Pre-selling condos in the Philippines are sold like timeshare and reviewed like supermarket items: a tarpaulin outside the mall, a smiling broker, a glass model in the showroom, a free coffee, and a contract that quietly assumes a great deal about you. I spent a Saturday afternoon at one in Mandaluyong in 2025 and ended up signing a reservation form I hadn't really read. That afternoon cost me about ₱25,000 in non-refundable fees by the time I figured out the unit I'd "reserved" was on a floor that didn't get direct sun until 2 PM.

If I were doing it again from scratch, I'd walk in knowing these things.

The price you see is not the price you pay

This is the one that catches everyone. The big number on the brochure ("Studio units from ₱4.2M!") is the contract price. It does not include the transfer fees, the documentary stamp tax, the registration, the title transfer, what the building calls "miscellaneous fees" — those are real, typically 8% to 14% of the contract price, sometimes more — the move-in fees, the parking slot if it's separate, and the association dues from acceptance onwards.

A ₱4.2M condo on the brochure is, in practice, a ₱4.7M to ₱4.9M condo by the time you have the keys. The broker is not lying; the brochure just isn't designed to give you the full number.

Before you sit down with anyone, ask for a one-pager with the "total payout" including all fees, broken down. If they won't put it in writing, they don't want you to do the math.

The model unit is bigger than your unit

Always. I don't know if it's a developer rule or a guild secret, but the showroom is built about 12 to 18% bigger than the delivered unit. The walls are thinner, the kitchen counters more shallow, the ceiling sometimes 10 cm higher.

What you can do: ask for the exact floor plan, with measurements, of the specific unit you're being shown. Compare it to the showroom. If the showroom is labelled "Type B Studio Premium" and the unit on offer is "Type C Studio", they are not the same thing. Sometimes the difference is a metre of floor space; sometimes it's a window.

I once had a broker tell me, with a straight face, that the showroom and the actual unit "had the same footprint, just different finishing". They did not. The actual unit was 4 sqm smaller.

Turnover dates slip. Plan for it.

A condo sold today as "RFO Q4 2027" will almost always be delivered Q1 or Q2 2028. Sometimes Q3 2028. Sometimes 2029. This is normal and the contract usually allows a 12-month grace period before any penalty kicks in.

What this means for you: if you're buying because you need a place to live in by a fixed date, pre-selling is not for you. Buy RFO. Pay more, sleep better. If you're buying as an investment and the start of your rental income can slip a year without changing your life, pre-selling is fine.

I know friends who waited 28 months past the original turnover date on a project in QC. They were fine in the end. But they paid rent somewhere else the whole time, which nobody included in the original maths.

"Reserved" is not the same as "bought"

The reservation form is a contract. Read it. Specifically read the clause about what happens to the reservation fee if you back out. In most contracts I've seen, anywhere between 50 and 100% of the fee is forfeited, plus any documentary fees you've paid by then.

Reservation fees in 2025 are typically ₱25,000 to ₱100,000 depending on the developer and the unit price. That's not a casual amount to lose. If you're not 90% sure about the unit on the day, take the brochure home and come back during the week. The deal will not disappear. If the broker tells you it will, that's a pressure tactic, not a fact.

Bring a piece of string

I'm serious. The single best tool I own for buying real estate in the Philippines is a 4-metre piece of string with knots every 50 cm.

You walk into the model unit, you measure the bedroom yourself, you measure the kitchen counter, you measure from the door to where the bed would go. You find out whether your queen-size mattress fits with the door fully open. You find out whether the bathroom door, when open, blocks the toilet.

Floor plans lie about a lot of things. They don't lie about distances. But you have to do the measuring yourself.

One last thing

The broker is not your friend. The broker is also not your enemy. The broker is paid on commission and the commission is tied to you signing today. That is a real conflict of interest and it doesn't make them dishonest, but it does mean that everything they say should be weighed against what you can verify in writing or with a tape measure.

If they're a PRC-licensed broker — and you can check on verification.prc.gov.ph in 20 seconds — they have an actual professional code of conduct to follow, and most of the ones I've met do. But "most" is not "all", and you are the one who lives with the unit for the next fifteen years.

Walk slow. Bring string. Read the fine print at home.