Priced out of Metro Manila, Filipinos are looking elsewhere for homes

The search for affordable housing is creating a new growth market for property developers in Southern Luzon.

The Philippine housing market has a strange mismatch. Metro Manila has tens of thousands of unsold condominium units, yet millions of Filipinos still struggle to find homes they can afford.

The problem, then, is not simply a lack of housing. It is a mismatch between what the property industry can build profitably and what many Filipino households can actually pay for.

That is creating an opportunity farther from the capital, where land is cheaper, larger communities can be developed and house-and-lot projects can reach a much wider pool of buyers. Colliers Philippines said economic and affordable housing became the primary drivers of condominium demand in the first half of 2026, while developers are increasingly expanding into provincial markets where horizontal projects continue to see strong take-up.

For NextAsia Land President and COO Dustin Carreon, the size of that opportunity is the reason the company chose affordable housing over the luxury market his family originally built.

“Premium housing, you’re targeting less than 1% of the population,” Carreon said. “With affordable, you can target 90%, 95%.”

That calculation has shaped much of NextAsia’s business, from the areas where it buys land to the size and price of the communities it develops. Its projects are concentrated in Southern Luzon, with homes generally priced around ₱2 million to ₱3 million.

The strategy sounds straightforward until the economics of building an affordable house are considered.

A developer still has to acquire land, build roads and utilities, provide amenities, secure financing and construct the homes, all while keeping the final price within reach of households that may have little room in their monthly budgets.

For NextAsia, land acquisition has consequently become a major part of the business. Carreon said the company is “heavy on acquisition,” with the developer looking to secure roughly 50 to 100 hectares a year as it expands its pipeline.

The company has also chosen to concentrate its development activity in Southern Luzon rather than spread itself across the country. In a 2024 interview, Carreon explained the strategy simply: “It makes sense for us to saturate the availability of land and the market.”

That approach allows a developer to build at greater scale while serving areas where infrastructure and employment are expanding. It also gives buyers a different proposition from a Metro Manila condominium, with more space and community amenities at a price point that remains within reach of a broader market.

But affordability is not only about the sticker price.

Carreon said younger buyers are highly conscious of the monthly payment, while many potential homeowners are still renting or living with their parents. NextAsia’s target households can have combined incomes of around ₱30,000 to ₱35,000, putting the monthly cost of ownership at the center of the buying decision.

That changes what developers have to put into the product. Reliable water, internet connectivity, open spaces and amenities become part of the value proposition, while features such as solar streetlights are being considered partly because they can reduce long-term community costs.

The opportunity, then, is bigger than simply moving homebuilding out of Metro Manila.

The property companies that can make affordable housing work at scale will have to solve several problems at once: secure land cheaply enough, build efficiently, keep monthly payments manageable and locate communities close enough to jobs and infrastructure that buyers can actually live there.

That makes affordable housing less of a low-cost alternative to the traditional property market and more of a potential growth engine in its own right.

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