Vancouver & Manila - Two cities reaching for the skies

Really a tale of two cities with the same story in terms of real estate!

Vancouver - with a growing Filipino community, recently rank 3rd in minority here in Canada, more and more Filipinos who live here somehow will eventually go back to where they belong, as the saying goes " there's no place like home".  " There is a market for Filipinos living in Vancouver, because at the end of the day, they will still go home to where they were born" said Dextre Hubag of international marketing director for the development company Century Properties Inc.  Hubag visited Vancouver 2 years ago as part of their show promoting condominiums to Filipinos here which turns out to be worth the trip.  He mentioned that while most Filipinos who own their place here in Canada, they also wanted to invest a second home in the Philippines.

Manila - the same goes to the flow of investment as Vancouver is increasingly becoming popular in Manila due to it's educational system, (UBC in particular) a lot of wealthy Filipinos are also looking to buy homes in BC, they are looking to buy properties and settle down here with their children while in school.

Both cities real estate skyrocketed in the past years.  "It's really, really expensive" Julius Guevara (head of research and consultancy for Colliers International in the Philippines) said of the luxury project, designed by clusters of celebrity arcitect and high end designers like Versace, wherein one bedroom units are priced $330,000 and two bedroom units are about $976,000.  " Less than a fraction of a percent of the population can afford this" as mentioned by Guevara.