Once upon a time, an ex-banker left finance and built a catering business. He was a go-getter. Filipino food? Sure. Chinese? Italian? Japanese? Whatever the client wanted, he would find a way to serve it. Then one day, his son came home from marketing class with an idea: “Why don’t you specialize? Offer fewer things so people will remember you for something.” The father disagreed. Why limit the business when you can cater to more clients, more occasions, and more tastes? So w

Last week, we faced a huge problem fixing a property whose backyard kept flooding. The owner had replaced the water pump a year ago, so when flooding came back, our first assumption was that the pump had failed again. We preferred to wait for the old plumber because he already knew the house and how the drainage system was laid out. That delay taught us something simple: keep your plumbing and drainage plans. Years later, when something breaks, the original plumber may no lon

People still get confused about how Apostilles work, so here’s the simple version. Let’s say the seller is in South Carolina, USA, and you need him to sign an SPA authorizing you to sell his property in the Philippines. The nearest Philippine Embassy is in Washington, D.C., several hours away. Going there just to execute or authenticate the SPA can be a major hassle. So instead, you can have the document Apostilled. 1. Have the SPA notarized. The seller signs the SPA before a

I made this short explainer for whenever someone asks me how a bank-financed property purchase works in the Philippines. Given the current real estate market, sellers may want to be more open to bank-financed buyers. It takes longer to get fully paid, but accepting bank financing can significantly widen the pool of potential buyers. The main problem with Bank-Financed purchases is this: The property is transferred to the buyer BEFORE the seller receives the bank-financed bala

A mystery shopper is someone hired by a company to pose as a regular customer and evaluate the actual customer experience. How quickly did the staff respond? Were they courteous and knowledgeable? Did they follow the proper process? Was the overall experience good enough to make you buy? I think real estate brokerages should be doing the same thing. Try sending an inquiry to your own brokerage using a name and number your team doesn’t recognize. Ask about one of your listings

One of my favorite personal finance books is The Millionaire Next Door. The authors studied actual American millionaires to understand how they built and maintained their wealth. I highly recommend reading it. One concept that caught my attention was their formula for estimating what your net worth should be based on your age and income. It's a simple benchmark to see whether you're accumulating wealth at a pace similar to the millionaires they studied. Expected Net Worth (EN

Most people know that when someone passes away and leaves a property to several heirs, the estate can be settled through an Extra-Judicial Settlement of Estate (EJS). This allows the heirs to divide and transfer the property without going through a lengthy court proceeding. But what if the deceased left only one heir? This is where many people get confused. Since there's no one else to divide or partition the estate with, there's no need for an Extra-Judicial Settlement. Inst

Many lease contracts require tenants to pay advance rent and a security deposit before moving in. Although they are often collected together, they serve different purposes. Advance rent is simply rent paid ahead of time, usually equivalent to two months' rent. Security deposits, on the other hand, are meant to answer for unpaid utility bills, property damage, and other obligations at the end of the lease. It should not be treated as unpaid rent. Here's a mistake I still see i

Question: A Filipino-American buyer who lives in the United States is purchasing a property in the Philippines. To avoid timing issues in remitting funds, the buyer sends the purchase money to a sibling in the Philippines. The sibling then purchases a Manager's Check payable to the seller. Would a bank allow this arrangement, considering its AMLA compliance requirements, even though the Manager's Check is being purchased by someone other than the buyer? A: Yes, the bank will

(This is an update to an old post.) Once upon a time, a real estate broker discovered... ...that his own sister had bought a pre-selling residential lot. Through another broker. A project that–he himself was accredited to sell. 😐 True story. Don't worry—he wasn't upset. ... ... ... Okay, maybe just a little. 😂 Lesson: Don't assume your relatives, friends, or acquaintances know that you can help them with their real estate transactions. Sometimes they simply don't know, or i