⌛ Greedy Landlords

Our landlord just called me and told me they would raise rent from P40K a month to P45K a month when our contract is up in a couple of months, and they would do 6 month contract in stead of the year we have now.

When we rented this house a year ago, the rent was 40,000 a month which was USD $800

Now with his greedy increase the rent is $1000

In the year we had the house here, they have done NO improvements what so ever, we are the ones paying a gardener to keep the garden in shape and we do small repairs and stuff.

This is not the first time I am leaving a house because of greedy landlords... Too bad I like the house here, but NOT $1000 a month like it...

Sure the house here has a WOW-factor, but once you have lived in it ofr a while it shows a lot of flaws.

 

That's bad to have landlords like that,because the tenant is a foreign expat ,with no qualms they raise the rental when they like . Can only ill wish no one rents that house for a long long time...that will serve their stinky greed .

 

Better buy

To me it seems better to buy, in future this is getting worse I am sure. And you are living there long enough to know where, what and how much.

 

Sorry to hear of your rental problems dane, to buy or rent is a difficult call. I am renting at the moment, and to buy a nice property here say 6-11m peso,it would take even at 40.000 peso month 11-to 20 years in rental to get your money back plus you lose the freedom to move if you get tired of the place, not easy to sell here, even real nice properties can take a age to sell, I would only buy if I had a real strong marriage, If your in your 50s or 60 the argument against buying is very strong.and I have not even mentioned the property laws here, plus termites and other natural disasters. even if you come across a few bad landlords, you will find a good place in the end if you persist in your search.

 

To Buy or Not To Buy

At the rate of 46per. $869 to $978 is 12.54%. Which is a big jump no matter where you live. As for my it would be time to move and/or BUY.

My 2¢
Jim

 

It's true it 's harder to dispose property in the Philippines once you have it.
Also unless you feel like staying the rest of your days in the place and feel at home and presence of deep bonding to put your money at stake for property,if not having any of those ,then don't buy.

It's bad when there's vague laws to property rental which protect tenants and restrict unscrupulous landlords of their abusive whims raising the rental price as they want or when they want it.

 

that sucks

My bad experience with bad landlord is that they didnt want to give back the deposit. In the end, they kept it for 6 months, and they deducted almost half of the amount for ridiculous reasons. Didnt want to fight in court so i cut my losses.
There are bad landlords, no question about it.
Not to make light of your situation, i think perhaps your statement of "WOW" factor (you were obviously very pleased with the house and the owner knew it) and the fact that you were the one who improved the house for free, made the landlord think you are someone he could easily take advantage of.
This speaks a lot about the personality of the landlord, and if i were in the situation, once i have a bad taste in my mouth, i would get the hell out no matter how nice the house is. After all, a "house" has a lot to do with one's "feelings". And if the landlord is a jerk, i would not be enjoying the house, and certainly would not want to do any improvements on the house, which would lead to further dissatisfaction and so on. So i would move if this happened to me. 6 months lease? What the hell does he think his house is?
Perhaps few expats should get together and build a nice apartment complex as a corporation, and rent it out at fair rates to other expats moving to duma. Good for renting expats, and good for existing expats looking for additional income.
How about making that a topic of next monthly meeting?

 

One thing I recognized here since I am down in this area, that landlord become crazy. One of the reason is for sure that more and more expats coming down and there will always be one who will pay that price, because for him it's 'cheap' to pay $1000 for a beachfront location a month. I met some guys here who sold there property in Europe, having enough money to pay that amount. the last 10 years of their life. In my neighbouhood is a place, where a british guy has a nice piece of land. He lifes in the back and built another nice house in the front, one year ago it was 10K. Now he builds some Appartments next to it and he want to rent the old one for 17k with a cash deposit of 6 month. the apparments (6 in the one block) is also 15K. And he will always find the western 'peso-milionair' who will pay the price.

I was looking for a small house w/ 2 bedrooms in walking-distance to my workingplace for a reasonable price cause my little castle is a bit small now as my little princess is with us and goes to school here, but forget about it. Everything what is inbetween 10 - 15 minutes walking-distance to Atlantis is not affordable or just crab with leaking roof, no good water-supply or not safe for my little-little one.

Now it's our area here, in 5 years it will be like this on Siquijor.

cheers

Rhoody

 

Build your own house, my way

FOr people who are renting long term (more than 1 year) in dumaguete....are they renting because they dont have lump sum for the construction of their own house, or because they dont want to take risk for some reason with their money?
If they have a lumpsum, and have made FINAL DECISION on living in duma, I think they should BUILD their own house... If that decision is made....
The building cost estimates most contractors give are simply ridiculous: 13thou to 17 thou per square meter. This means that if you are building a 100sqm house, it will cost you 1.3 mil to 1.7mil! That's only about 900square feet. This does NOT include any landscape or furnishing.
This is a ridiculous pricing by any comparison.
Forget this. I suggest to you the following approach:
1)go for 5-6thou per sqm.
2)forget about the filipino style construction with the steel roofing and moulding trimming around the ceiling, etc. The steel roofing (of any kind) requires that you use wood type products to finish it out from in interior as well as around the exterior perimeter of the roofline. If you lived in philippines a few months, you will know that wood and philippine do not mix well. With all the H2O and termites and high temperature, ALL WOOD will warp, crack and become damaged in no time, leading to all kinds of problems; unsightly at best. In addition, such roofing will cause your interior to retain heat (even if you have cement boards for ceiling).
3)thus, i suggest you go for 100% concrete housing. THat means concrete roof. So basically you have concrete, modern style house (will look very nice, like malibu style, if designed correctly). And minimize the number of windows (how many times have you actually looked out the window lately?). But the ones you will have, make it nice (not like you are imprisoned in your own home by those ugly prison steel bars! use some creativity and have the steel worker design curved lines. same cost, much better effect). Have STEEL DOOR and CONCRETE DOOR JAM.
4) If you follow the above, you will basically have a modern style house with nice windows and burgler safe door. Plus, the temperature inside the house will stay cool all day and night, saving quite a bit on aircon costs. And you will certainly not have any termite problems. No rat problem either, because there is NO SPACE between the roof and ceiling (unlike traditional filipino designs). Having rats run across your ceiling and who knows what else are holding fort above your head as you sleep at night? YUKKKKKKKK!
5)And have an OPEN LIVING interior layout. Lot of filipino architects are used to designing a shoeboxe houses with 5 bedrooms inside (also the reason why their quote per sqm is so high)! Why? does this have to do with average of 38 children per family???? Duhh! Well you dont have that problem, so have everything OPEN, which means NO WALLS (except CR and perhaps your bedroom--but even bedroom, why keep it walled, unless you have a maid?). This will lead to nice, spacious house that is efficient and clean, wear and tear safe, burgler safe, and hurricane safe. Oh, and the cost per sqm would be abou 5thou per sqm.
6)As ad added bonus, you can actually USE your roof as a roof deck to look at the stars at night! Cant do that with steel roofs!
7)and, if any any point in the future you want to sell it, it would be an easier sell because you spent less money on it, and the interior being open means that the new owner can design it anyway he wants to without having to knock down walls.
8)anyway, that's my suggestion...

 

I still persist in my view that buying is in most cases better than renting, only NOT when you talk about prices of a house more than 4 million, is it higher do not read furher.
First know the prices of the houses, they are asking many times far too much.
The value is a normal rule: Around 10 times the yearly rentprice. But: Inflation makes the rent higher and in renewing contract there is a big risk of a big rise, so the 10 year rule will be shortened. Prices go up fast nowadays.
So freedom in moving cost a big amout of money.
If it was a house of more than 6 million I would rent, not in the last place because I cannot afford to buy such a house (not even to rent monthly), but the risk is big if you do not like the place.
But of course this all is a personal decision and depends on the situation.