Philippines: rental yields in Manila range from good to excellent

Yields in Metro Manila are exceptional, by international standards.

However transaction taxes (known as 'capital gains taxes', but not actually such), and (if observed) official income tax rates applicable to non-resident investors, are high. You may think that it will be easy to avoid these taxes, it being the Philippines. But it ain't necessarily so. Once the local authorities have their eye on you, they won't willingly let go. Plus, the sheer bureaucracy of actually paying can be irritating.

Buying prices for condominiums are from US$2,800 to US$4,200 per square metre, considerably up on previous years. Unusually, yields are not always highest on the very smallest units, which suggests that smaller condominiums are oversupplied. It therefore makes a lot of sense to get a larger unit, since the general management cost and hassle of a larger unit is less.

The highest-yielding units that we found are 50 square metre units in Ortigas (which have gross rental yields of nearly 9%). Great! We don't have enough information to know whether these high yields apply in Ortigas to other apartment sizes.

The year before last we found that yields were surprisingly good generally on very large condominiums in Metro Manila (250 square metres), at around 9%, but this year we were not able to assemble a database of this dimension. This may be an optimal size for investment.