Santa Ana Church, Molo, Iloilo City
My wife and I have chosen the Philippines as our retirement home. Our future in Iloilo was sealed when bought a property and built a house outside of Iloilo City, in the pretty seaside town of Tigbauan, about one-half hour west of the city proper. Iloilo City continues to be our main center for shopping, medical care, dining and other urban amenities and necessities. We’ve posted an extensive account of our house building experiences.
We are pleased with Iloilo. The wonderful people are its treasure. Medical care seems fairly good and educational opportunities are extensive. In fact, Iloilo’s only real industry seems to be education. Thousands of doctors, nurses and seamen are trained every year. There are decent restaurants, and you can find and buy most of what you need at the markets, numerous malls or the downtown commercial area. The city is fairly compact, easy to get around.
Alubihod Beach, Guimaras Island
Although we find much to like about Iloilo City, we are not enamored of Philippine cities in general. Most are conglomerations of concrete buildings, a tangle of power lines, and choked with traffic. The air is dirty with diesel fumes and you’ll be hopping over open sewers. They are almost totally lacking in the trees, parks, bookstores, cycle paths and other charms of urban life elsewhere. They do have elaborate shopping centers which, along with upscale subdivisions, and chain restaurants, are safe, comforting, cool refuges from the realities of urban life in the Philippines. If you’d like to live outside the city, but still have easy access to it, Iloilo has some exceptionally nice small towns with pretty Spanish churches and plazas. We especially like Santa Barbara, Oton, Tigbauan, Miagao and San Joaquin. We love life in our small town, but provincial life can be a big adjustment and is not for everyone. The culture shock is greater. You have to give up that is familiar and comforting; the shopping mall, the supermarket, the chain restaurants. See more discussion at “Retire in the Philippines: How Far from the City”
While we love living in the Philippines, we try to present a balanced view of the pluses and minuses of living in the Philippines. Be sure to read our short essay: “Reality Check: the Philippines – a tropical paradise for the retiree?” Looking for a “good time”? Is Iloilo the right choice for you? See “A Foreigner’s Life in Iloilo City”.
You can explore further using the topics list on the right side of every page. Comments, criticisms and additional information are very welcome. Address to hammerslag@gmail.com or use the comment forms on most pages.
This site is a labor of love, but it does cost money to keep it up and running. So, if the site has been helpful to you, please consider making a donation using the PayPal donate button below. Thank you! Bob and Carol Hammerslag
April 27, 2013 at 11:55 am
Hi, I just read this blog and I’m sorry to say that We are the victim of a bad contractor, it’s a big project,a two storey home with the area of 554sqm for the house alone…we invested almost all of our hard earned money,..it’s an 8 month construction project. We hired a contractor in a package deal, as the months went by, we were on the project site every day looking at the workers doing their job and we are amazed with them working hard..but as the days pass by, we rarely saw our engineer onsite. Instead, he hired an apprentice engineer to supervise on behalf of him. Time came that we confronted this engineer we engaged our contract with about his supervision and he said, with modern technology nowadays I can supervise through my phone!! What?? Are you serious? You can supervise the big project with your phone anywhere you are? And that triggers our trust in him, lots of left over cement outside as everybody rushes to go home, using 1 week old hollow blocks in our expensive project plus lack of supervision of our engineer…finally 5 months of contsruction we decided to stop the construction by sending our engineer an email ordering him to stop the work and vacate the place..last day of their work he paid his people and move some of his stuff out of our property but left his two workmen inside our property, claiming that the project site is under his full responsibility..we went to the police asking them to get those two trespassers he left on our site but the police did not do anything..right now the construction is on hold and we got our attorney to file a case against our engineer for the lack of supervision, fraud, poor workmanship..the moral lesson here is that, please be careful with whom you are going to trust your project here in the Philippines, know your contractor well, gather information about him and his background, do not be easily carried away with his kind words about the project.. Be wise and don’t just leave the project without leaving somebody else whom you trusted to oversee it..take it from me, we are the victim of a greedy contractor!!
But we will fight for our right and give this contractor a lesson. It’s a good thing we took pictures from day 1 of the construction started until the last day they leave..
Sincerely,
Mymy79
April 17, 2013 at 8:05 pm
Thanks Bob – great site. Will be living in Argao Cebu by year end 2013. Will be building a small B&B in the backyard of your ocean front property. Your experiences are wonderfully presented here and will certainly guide me as I look at what is needed. Hope we can cross paths someday.
Kind regards,
Billy
fallonwm@gmail.com
March 28, 2013 at 10:32 am
Hi Bob and Carol, I always love to read “My Philippine life” it’s really worth to read..this is my second message to you ,we are building a two storey house here in antique,it’s a big project and spend more money on it but our engineer designed to use a gypsum board as our partition inside our entire house..I was just wondering if having gypsum board installed in our house is worth the price that we paid to him..?is it prone in termites someday? Thank you
Myra…
March 28, 2013 at 11:06 am
Hi Myra,
Good to hear from you again. I’m sorry to say that I have no experience with using gypsum board (“sheetrock”) in the Philippines. I would want to be certain that it is of a “waterproof” type. For me, it would come down to cost. Hollow block is good in that it is pretty impervious to water damage, insects and other pests, so I would be dubious about paying more for gypsum board — if that’s the case. Another question I’d have is the stud system to hold the gypsum board up. Of course running electrical and plumbing would be easier with gypsum board as would after-c0nstruction changes. Perhaps other readers with more experience can comment. Best regards, Bob and Carol
January 20, 2013 at 11:40 am
Norvel and Melinda,
Thanks for your kind words. We’re glad the site had been of use to you. Frankly, I just don’t know much about homeowners insurance. We don’t have any. A couple of observations. First, don’t invest money in the Philippines that you can’t afford to lose. Secondly, you would have to do careful research into strength and integrity of the insurance company. Philippine institutions do fail. A major disaster could quickly bankrupt insurance companies. There are subsidiaries of foreign insurance companies here, but I don’t know enough about how they are structured to know if the mother company would be required to bail out a Philippine subsidiary. If anyone has knowledge or comments on property insurance, hopefully they’ll jump in here.
Regarding auto insurance, we do have that. We have a 2008 Toyota Innova which we bought new. The annual insurance (collision, comprehensive, property damage and liability) costs P10,000. Most of the cost is in the comprehensive coverage. We have never had a claim, so we don’t know how well it works. When we bought our Toyota, the dealer provided one year of insurance. We have continued with the same insurance company, assuming that Toyota would not use a unreliable insurance company.
Hope this helps and that you are successful in finding the perfect retirement spot. Take your time.
Bob and Carol
December 10, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Hi good evening,my boyfriend and I were building a retirement house in Antique,it’s a big project that we in trust to our Engineer,our Engineer is the one who is buying the materials after a month I felt like our Engineer is charging every materials that he purchased..Is it possible to get the all the purchased receipt from him? I don’t want to be taken advantage..thanks
Myra,
December 18, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Myra,
If you turn your project over to someone else to manage, they are of course going to want to make money. How much they will take will depend on the arrangements you have with them. It’s best that these be negotiated in advance with proper safeguards. Even if you get receipts, you can’t be sure that the receipts are accurate. I have been present when purchasers tried to get receipts from a building materials supplier which show a higher cost than actually paid. It’s ideal if you can hire an engineer or architect to oversee the project for a fixed or daily fee and you buy the materials. You don’t say if you are living elsewhere than where your house is being built. If so, it’s a difficult situation. Best wishes,
Bob and Carol
December 23, 2012 at 10:02 am
Myra, We waited until we were both retired to start building our house in Panay. I’ve been retired for a year and a half now and living in a hotel while we build our retirement home. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. This way, it is realizing our dream home and personalizing it. It also is a good transition from working ourselves off for the past 35+ years and to leisurely live off the fruits of your labor. I have kept every receipt of every item we’ve purchased and every kilo of nails, square meter of gravel, sand, etc, are all captured in my spreadsheet. We were going to do a quick house to live off of while we made our big house, but this bungalow is proving to be a work of art and love that it is still not done yet. I cannot wait to finally move into our bungalow!!!
You should ask for receipts from here on out. The only receipts I get that doesn’t have an official store stamp are for the gravels and sands. All other receipts from the stores are listed in quantity, description, units purchased, and extended cost.
Good luck on getting past receipts! Let
November 6, 2012 at 1:43 am
My wife put me on to your site–delightful! Great details, nicely laid out, but most importantly perhaps, very informative.
My Filipina wife and I have been married for…JEEZIS, 27 years now with two adult kids and have realized that retiring to ‘fantasy islands’ of her homeland makes the most economic sense for us. I’m 59 and she is 57 and we just returned from Negros where we just purchased two contiguous lots in a Talisay subdivision just north of Bacolod. She herself is an Illonga who speaks Illongo and was born in Iloilo.
We are fortunate that most of her relatives are pretty well established and not ‘in need’ so once we make the move (hopefully in the next three years) we will have a built-in network of family who have on-the-ground living experience we can take advantage of. One cousin has purchased lots in a neighboring subdivision and will be a close-by neighbor–though in Bacolod, no one is really very far from anywhere.
Looking forward to puttering through your web pages and learning from your own experiences–an invaluable website. One thing we have been subscribed to emotionally and intellectually is to learn to lower our expectations–being a homecook who hoped to replicate some of my dishes here was a shocking revelation in itself, as even finding such ‘basics’ as cheeses, cream, and such was an uphill climb–even in Manila. Baking a tart here…in this heat and humidity..that was a challenge as well. So yeah–dealing with everything one expects to have here in the States…it’s gonna be different.
Thanks for your site!
October 21, 2012 at 8:19 pm
I compliment you on your wonderfully informative site. As a fellow blogger also with a site about “my life in the Philippines” I see how much time and effort you have put into your site and in the process helping future expats facilitate their move to the Philippines. Keep it coming.
Sincerely
Corey
June 22, 2012 at 3:38 am
Hi Bob,
We love your site! It’s truely informative and I especially like how you explain things, even the details, in the big picture.
My parents are from Manila but I was born and grew up in Chicago where I still live with my wife and kids. I can’t even speak the language! My wife of 9 years is from Jaro and I share many of your same thoughts on Ilonggos and Iloilo. For the past few years, we’ve been constructing our future life in Iloilo/Bacolod. You cannot imagine how valuable your site has been to us, me in particular.
As a Civil Engineer I can appreciate your segment on concrete quality, beam/column design, and reinforcement steel, all familiar to me. But I admire the quality of your house goes far beyond that.
Anyway, Thank You for your site, your information is descriptive and factual. When I’m there, I often get biased opinions without explanations. Everything from banking to local places has been useful, we’ll gladly make a donation and hope you continue but the website is already worth its weight in gold. It almost feels made for me specific!
Mark
June 6, 2012 at 5:50 am
I’m so happy to found your blog! I was born and raised in Tigbauan until 7 years old, then moved to Manila until I was 22, and now living in California for 10 years. I feel proud that you picked that city for your retirement.
Your post about driving to Boracay from Antique lead me to your site. I missed my hometown.. and will definitely on my itinerary to visit in July. Keep blogging about life in Tigbauan/Iloilo.
May 21, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Bob and Carol,
Why did you choose Ilolio over Bacolod? I”m just curious because I had plans on moving to bacolod and the only other city I passed thru was Manila (not a big fan of all their traffic and complete lack of trees).
Zac
May 22, 2012 at 2:25 pm
We spent time in Cebu City (several months), Dumaguete, and Bohol. Then we were to go to Iloilo and finally Bacolod. Then we would decide. We found a great apartment in Iloilo and just never left. I think Bacolod would be an excellent choice.
May 13, 2012 at 9:25 pm
hi howru sir?
am from pakistan
and i want to live and work in philipine
tell me if iwill come on visot visa can i live and work there?
and tell me is pakistani live there now?
shahzaibfaizali@yahoo.com
May 5, 2012 at 7:54 am
As an Iloilo resident of sorts, would you be able to advise me of the availability of hiring a 1500-2000+W petrol generator for a job? Thanks, Frank – email nationalfrank@yahoo.com
May 5, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Frank,
Unless you only need the generator for a day or a week, I’m sure you would be better off buying one than renting. You’ll likely be gouged on rental costs. I say this based on the rental prices I have seen quoted on cement mixers. See http://myphilippinelife.com/wiring-in-a-240v-backup-generator-in-a-swer-area/ for our experience in buying a generator. We paid P13,000 for a 3,200 watt unit. Consider buying and reselling when done with it.
Bob
April 8, 2012 at 7:55 am
I love your site but I must take issue with your statement that big cities in the Phils are devoid of trees or parks. I have been to the Philippines five times in the last twenty years always staying in Cebu City. There are trees and parks and I’ve never had trouble finding a shady spot to rest while sightseeing. Even in Manila we visited a park with trees.
December 31, 2012 at 11:31 am
Where are the parks in Cebu City? I lived there for several months before moving to the province. Didn’t see any decent parks, lots of traffic and pollution though…and malls.
January 23, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Hi Bob.
A big thank you for this site. Having just about finished building our house in Miagao, I thought I’d quickly share our experiences of building in the Philippines.
Bureaucracy: firstly if you can make sure that the land you purchase has a mother title, whilst this is common sense an entire street in Miagao recently found out that they don’t have titles to the land they have been using for decades (this included a small shopping arcade as well) because the mother title was never transferred. in respect to planning permits we did it wrong, in that we had an architect produce a fencing permit some months before we did the house plans this cost us money, we also decided to build a buhay kubo (nipa hut) you also need a native house permit for that, we should have gone straight for the house permit and architects plans this would have covered the fencing and we could have had the native house permit thrown in.
The Date: We have discovered that most Filipino’s or OFW’s tend to build between Jan and April, this means that Material prices go up in late December, luckily we started building in October.
Building: we chose to use a builder (who employed his own crew) at 40% of material costs, initially people/friends thought this was on the high side, we have subsequently found out that this is about average (35% to 55%) seems to be the going rate. luckily for us our builder is very good and issues of foundations and placement of steel bars or poorly filled columns have not occurred (many thanks Bob for your detailed information about the pitfalls).
Money: We’ve on budget to spend about Php 1.3 million for a 135 square meter house (Architect estimated Php 1.9 million), I think this is exceptionally good value for money, we decided to spend more that originally budgeted on the Roof and Windows putting us about 150k over original budget, but this was money well spent, following Bob’s example we insulated our roof, initially our builder was not in favor of insulation, but our roofing contractor fitted the insulation and put up the support wiring for free.
In short you can build to a high standard and not spend the earth, the secret seems to be Know your material prices, Don’t be afraid to walk away from a supplier and Never accept the first price quoted (wait or ask for the best (cheapest) price.
Bob, Once again thanks for your site.
April 14, 2012 at 7:03 am
Hi Ed,
Thank you for your comment. My wife visited the company at the end of March, along with our future master carpenter (MC), just to be sure if the materials, etc. are compatible by quality, cost, and workmanship, as they claim. The estimate that we received from them was about PHP 750K for panels only. The house will be 1-1/2 storey and when added the concrete core to be placed in the panels, footings, slab, etc. the price came very close to a conventional construction by CHB (nearly 2M). If one considers inexperienced helpers with MC, which adds to the cost of labor, the CHB seems more economical. Our design is complete for conventional method, and I believe we can have it built very competitively. It may take a little longer, but with good crew we should be OK. I have been calculating, recalculating, trying to fit it in a reasonable budget, but I guess we just need to cross the bridge and do it. We will be watching for all pittfalls mentioned by Bob, and try to avoid them. I just have to learn to bite into my tonque.
Thank you all for your comments, and once we build it, you all will be welcomed to come, stay and enjoy it with us.
Jan
January 21, 2012 at 3:53 am
Hi,
I’m a student, and it is really hard to find good info about the Philippines. This is a really good site and it is really useful and interesting. If you could, could you post something about schools there, I’ve been pondering it for ages now.
Thanks again Bob and Carol,
Susy-Terra
January 16, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Hi Bob,
I saw your site while looking for Iloilo resources. I am going to iloilo this Saturday for the Dinagyang Festival 2012. It was nice to know and see people from all over the world retiring here in the Philippines. It is my goal to promote the Philippines in my own small way thru our site, Philippine Travel Photos (www.philtravelphotos.com). You can check it out.
And I would like to invite you and your wife to an email interview for the site, if you don’t mind.
I hope to have a favorable response from you and if you will allow the interview, you can send your personal email for a formal invitation in my email.
Thank you for choosing Philippines as your 2nd home.
Mabuhay!
LAR
January 11, 2012 at 5:26 am
Hi Bob,
I read the blog from time to time, now more frequently than before because my retirement day is coming closer and closer (720 calendar days)–not fast enough. I believe last year someone expressed the interest to build their house by utilizing “sterling developmend and construction” company’s panel walls instead of CHB. I wonder if anyone else has an experience with this type of construction. Their page shows the methodology and quality, but there is no feedback from the customers. If any of your readers have experience, good or bad, it would be nice to read about it in your blog. Still planning to build in Bulacan, and I assume that I will need to start about 10-12 months before retirement.
Jan
January 2, 2012 at 11:29 am
Hi Bob and Carol,
I would like to know about bank borrowing for building or purchasing a home, do banks loan at at what kind of rates? I am married to a Filipina and i will have approx 5,000 us income a month when i retire there in about 10 years. I may wish to purchase sooner than wait 10 years.
Terry
January 5, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Terry,
$5,000 per month should allow you to live very nicely. For the most part, mainstream Philippine bankers are conservative in their lending practices to ordinary folk. Expect that a substantial down payment will be required and interest rates will be much higher than those in the US. It’s hard to predict if real estate prices will be higher in five or ten years. Places like Cebu City have been booming. Iloilo is more restrained. Maybe wait a few years to see if there is a Philippine real estate bust.
Bob and Carol
January 8, 2012 at 3:59 am
Happy New Year Bob and Carol! Cost of residential land in the Philippines is not coming down. In Antipolo, Rizal it’s slighly going up. In my hometown of Miagao, Iloilo some farmlands outside the poblacion are going for 1000 pesos per square meter, while lots inside the town proper are around 3000 pesos per sq. meter.
Terry, if you want to build a house in the Philippines now for your yearly vacation, it might be advantageous for you to obtain a home equity loan from U.S. and pay everything cash. As Bob is saying U.S. interest rate is much lower, plus you can deduct that interest from your income tax. Happy New Year!
October 14, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Terry,
10 years is a long time from now. I would keep my ears on the ground and be on the look out for foreclosures. With the US and Europe entering a second round of economic turmoil, this round unfortunately is expected to hit OFW’s all over.
You can expect to see cracks in the Philippine real estate boom as soon as 18months from today.
If you could get some equity together, say US$ 20k you could snap up good deals when foreclosures start rolling. Housing loan rates are going down so you could finance the balance locally.
Hope this helps.
November 1, 2012 at 11:43 pm
If I may, 10 years from now is a long time. Too many changes in our lives can happen in 5 years, much more 10.
I was going to retire this year and bought a house in Baguio City last year but my boss of 27 years convinced me to continue working until my full retirement age which could be 3.5 – 4 years from now. Although I haven’t changed my mind and still plan to retire back home, I suggest you wait until at least 2 years prior to retirement.
Mr. Monreal’s suggestion that you get an equity is sensible. Bank interests in the Phils. range about 7.5 to 11%. If you are older and over 60, the bank will ask you for a substantial downpayment and will loan you only the appraised value of your future home and the interest will be high, not to mention that your mortgage will only be for about 5 years. Of course they don’t want the loan to outlive you.
The one advantage though of getting a loan through the bank is they will make sure that your title is free and clear. I’ve heard too many horror stories concerning shady titles and too many claimants after the fact.
The housing market in the Phils. has not been affected by recession like here in the US. In fact in Baguio, their prices are so high as buyers are competing with too many foreigners who’s got the money while my Balikbayan friends are thinking they are dirt cheap. You’d be surprised.
Good luck!
December 15, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Having spent most of my life in Zamboanga City, Mindanao, am looking forward to settle down in my hometown – TIGBAUAN – after my compulsary retirement from gov’t service early of 2012.
November 10, 2011 at 11:34 am
Hi Bob,
Maybe I am just missing it but on your home page here, I can’t find a list of articles by date. How can I see if there are any new articles without going through the list of categories one at a time, which would take a long time?
November 12, 2011 at 8:47 am
Lance, good suggestion. I used to have a “recent posts” section. I will be sure to reinstate it. Thanks again for the suggestion.
Bob
October 17, 2011 at 4:52 am
Bob,
Just a follow-up to my previous post on newsfeeds. Http://myphilippinelife.com/feeds take you to the feed page, which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/myphilippinelife.com, and I was able to add that to my smartphone. Woohoo!
You might want to update your homepage link “Subscribe to MyPhilippine Life by RSS.” It is currently a circular reference to the homepage.
Kind regards,
Dan
October 14, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Hey Bob, just wanted to see how you and Carol did throught the storm. Hope all is well with the two of you and your house did good as well. Have a great day.
Bill
October 22, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Hi Bill,
We have weathered all the typhoons pretty well. In the worst case the water built up inside our perimeter walls, like a 1,500 square meter swimming pool, but when it gets to the level of our two big gates, it goes out under the gates. It never threatened the house.
Thanks!
Bob and Carol