A LONG WAY DOWN

Once upon a time, a guy with more confidence than experience decided it was a good idea to bomb the downhill road in Tagaytay on a skateboard.

He had been skateboarding for exactly ONE week.

He pushed off.

At first, it felt incredible — the wind, the speed. Halfway down, he realized he was going way too fast. Instinct took over; he jumped off the board at probably 50 km/h.

He tried to catch himself but physics disagreed. His collarbone smashed into the asphalt and snapped clean in half.

His friends rushed him to the nearest hospital in Tagaytay. After lining up, filling out forms, and waiting in pain, they were told something nobody expects to hear in an emergency:

“We can’t treat this here.”

So they drove to Manila.

Every bump on the road shifted the broken bone. Every curve was a reminder of a bad decision. The drive took two very long hours.

The most shocking part wasn’t the pain. It's that something as basic as fixing a broken collarbone couldn’t be done in Tagaytay. Not a rare disease, not a complicated surgery–a standard orthopedic injury.

End of Story

How is this story relevant to real estate?

See, cities aren’t just clusters of buildings but also clusters of capability.

When things go wrong — medical emergencies, legal issues, business problems — you don’t want charm, views, or fresh air. You want infrastructure. You want institutions. You want hospitals, specialists, courts, banks, and redundancy.

That’s why the best hospitals are in CBDs.

That’s why old wealth lives near them.

That’s why primary homes gravitate to cities, while provinces remain second homes.

Tagaytay is beautiful. But even there, a broken collarbone was too much to handle.

And that’s the uncomfortable truth about provincial luxury properties:

they can be expensive, but they are structurally capped.

Because prices don’t rise on views alone.

They rise on systems — healthcare, transport, talent, institutions, and density.

So when you’re buying a luxury home in the province and imagining its upside potential, ask yourself:

If something goes wrong… how far is help?

That distance (measured in time) is often the ceiling.