I bought a house

I’m still incredulous at buying a house a few days ago in the Philippines. Okay, I’m actually scared. The Contract to Sell that my wife and I signed says the condominium unit costs 3-point something million pesos. That’s the net contract price. Add up the interest and … well, let me just mention the lower figure, it makes the future easier to imagine for now. The unit is on the 20-something floor of ... (name of developer and project deleted) Tower.

We were on vacation in the Philippines and on the last week of our pre-Christmas holiday, the wife and I decided we had found the housing project we had been looking for. But oh we had only a few thousand pesos in our pockets days before the end of our vacation. We borrowed 25 thousand pesos for the reservation fee and to open a checking account. Call me stupid, maybe I am.

It was all lakas ng loob. I’m an OFW, an expat worker somewhere in Southeast Asia. I’ve been working away from the Philippines for three years now to save up for a dream house and when we decided last week to buy a condo unit in ... (names hidden) Residences in Mandaluyong, we didn’t have much in a savings account to convince us that we were ready for this investment. But I was convinced anyway that we would never be ready for this investment even if we waited a few more years to put money in the bank every month. We’ve tried several times to commit ourselves to saving up for prohibitive down payments and each time there was always a reason to bend our own rules on handling our money. So we agreed that buying a house via the developer’s in-house financing would force us to stick with our own money plans.

As I recall how we made that decision, I am biting my nails. There will be no vacations in the next three years, or until such time I get a much higher income. There will probably be no more experiments in the kitchen; the wife will have to prepare meals that cost less. Out with the plan to buy a secondhand car.

What else will we lose in the luxury department?

And how long will I have to work and live outside the Philippines to be able to finish paying the mortgage?

I’m not even supposed to ask myself these questions anymore. I thought to myself as I toured some of the units in a tower ready for occupancy in a few months that I would be focused on earning money to pay for the unit, and not on my fears.

Okay, I will try working harder on visualizing the view of Makati at night from my future condo unit. The lights at the glass towers at Rockwell. Century’s future skyscraper, which they say will be the Philippines’tallest. Uhmm, I’m not sure I’d like to have that monstrous structure in my vista; its location will be a bit too close and may cover too many other buildings behind it…