The Philippines is not a place that many people consider when they think about property investment, and they would be right to ignore it. With property hotspots springing up around the world in the last two years to replace declining markets in the west, many countries have been overlooked. However, two recent events have catapulted the small country to the international stage in the property market, as many analysts are now predicting good times ahead for the country.
The first is the announcement by property investment firm David Stanley Redfern Limited that they have expanded their holdings into the Philippines and are selling apartments in Manila starting at GBP 26,000.
Reasons cited by the firm in doing this include protections for a 12% annual yield on property investment in the Philippines in 2008 as well as an expected rental yield of a similar amount. Another reason has to do less with the property market and more with general development in the country. In the second quarter of 2007, the Philippines reported a GDP growth rate of 7.5% which actually surpasses that of either India or China. All of these different factors have combined to result in a DSR Ltd. endorsement of the Philippines as one of the world’s newest up and coming property markets.
The second event was the reporting of tourism figures for 2007 by the Filipino government in which they cited that foreign tourism had increased 8.7% and surpassed the country's yearly goal of 3 million tourists.
According to the tourism department, "2007 has been a year of breakthroughs for Philippine tourism, as visitor traffic and tourist spending soared to unprecedented levels."
The combination of these two events has led the Philippines to center stage with increased scrutiny by international property investors leading into the New Year, and with more people starting to put money into the economy and fuelling the growth of property markets, it is quite possible that the Philippines will emerge as a strong competitor to other nearby Asian property markets.