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SUMMARY
Yes. Property prices in Cebu are still rising, with the latest official Metro Cebu residential index up 9.4% from a year earlier and 1.3% from the previous quarter.
The rise is real, but it has not been smooth. Metro Cebu recorded a sharp 12.2% quarterly jump in Q2 2025, an 8.0% drop in Q3, then two consecutive gains, so the market is appreciating without behaving like a clean one-way boom.
Condos are still moving higher too. The Metro Cebu condominium index rose 9.4% year on year, but demand is concentrated heavily in the affordable and mid-market bands rather than evenly across every tower and price point.
Horizontal housing looks healthier than the condo headline alone suggests. House-and-lot projects and lot-only developments both have take-up above 90% in the Colliers data, giving Cebu a broader end-user demand base than a market driven mainly by preselling investors.
Residential land may be the strongest long-term segment because its supply is structurally harder to expand. The historical appreciation figures covering the wider Visayas are strong, but they should not be read as proof that every Cebu lot will keep compounding at the same rate.
The biggest future pressure sits in condos. Cebu's condominium stock is expected to rise from about 92,270 units at the end of 2025 to roughly 108,900 by the end of 2029, adding close to 17,000 units and making weak or interchangeable projects much easier to bypass.
Higher prices are not being driven by a mortgage frenzy. Metro Cebu residential loan counts fell 23.6% year on year in Q1 2026, which suggests that cash buyers, OFW-linked households, stronger borrowers and developer payment structures are doing more of the work.
Cebu's economy is still expanding, but the backdrop has cooled. Central Visayas growth slowed from 7.4% in 2024 to 3.7% in 2025, while Cebu office transactions and net take-up rebounded sharply, giving the housing market a real employment-side support even as growth normalized.
Affordability is becoming the clearest ceiling. Most condo take-up is clustered around roughly ₱2.5 million to ₱7 million, and the cheaper end also dominates house-and-lot demand, which tells us buyers are still active but increasingly price-sensitive.
The useful conclusion is not that “Cebu property” will all keep rising together. Scarce land, strong house-and-lot projects and genuinely differentiated condos still have a good case for further appreciation; generic units facing years of new supply could stay flat even while the citywide index keeps climbing.
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Are property prices in Cebu still rising?
Yes. Cebu property prices are still rising today, with the latest official Metro Cebu residential index up 9.4% from a year earlier.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Residential Property Price Index also rose 1.3% from the previous quarter. So the annual increase is backed by another quarterly gain rather than resting entirely on an old comparison.
The path has been messy, though. Metro Cebu prices fell 1.0% quarter on quarter in early 2025, jumped 12.2% in the following quarter, dropped 8.0%, then rose 4.6% and 1.3% over the next two quarters. Over the full year, prices clearly moved higher, but Cebu has hardly been climbing in a straight line.
That makes the headline answer fairly simple: Cebu is still appreciating, although a 9.4% market-wide increase does not mean every condo, house and plot of land gained close to 10%.
| Metro Cebu RPPI | Q1 2025 | Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 | Q4 2025 | Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Index | 137.2 | 153.8 | 141.6 | 148.2 | 150.0 |
| YoY change | -1.7% | 11.5% | 3.8% | 7.0% | 9.4% |
| QoQ change | -1.0% | 12.2% | -8.0% | 4.6% | 1.3% |
Why is it so hard to say whether Cebu property prices are rising?
Cebu property prices are rising overall, but “Cebu property” covers several markets that are moving at different speeds.
A new condo beside Cebu IT Park, an older resale unit in Mandaue, a house-and-lot project in Consolacion and residential land farther from the urban core can behave very differently.
The data sources also measure different things. The BSP index is especially useful because it is built from actual bank-financed transactions and adjusts for differences between properties. Online portals cover many more listings, but an asking price only tells us what an owner wants to receive.
For this reason, we put more weight on actual transaction prices, Colliers’ supply and take-up figures, economic data and developer sales patterns. Together they show a Cebu market that is still getting more expensive, with a widening gap between strong and weak properties.
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Is Cebu’s 9.4% price rise as strong as it looks?
Cebu’s 9.4% annual property-price increase is real, although the headline makes the acceleration look a little stronger than it probably is.
The comparison starts from a soft period. Metro Cebu prices were down 1.7% year on year in the first quarter of 2025, so today’s annual increase partly reflects the market recovering from that weaker base.
Still, the underlying index moved from 137.2 to 150.0 in a year, and prices increased in each of the two latest quarters after the sharp mid-2025 drop. We therefore see a genuine recovery rather than a flattering annual percentage created entirely by base effects.
The cleaner reading is that Cebu has returned to appreciation. Assuming prices will now keep rising at around 9% every year would go much further than the evidence supports.
| Signal | What it tells us | What it does not prove | Our reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| +9.4% YoY | Prices are well above early 2025 | Cebu will keep rising 9.4% a year | Strong rebound |
| +1.3% QoQ | Prices are still moving higher | Growth is accelerating | Positive |
| -8.0% in Q3 2025 | Quarterly prices remain volatile | The long-term rise ended | Uneven market |
| Two latest quarterly gains | Recovery continued after Q3 | Every Cebu property is rising | Broad trend remains positive |
Are Cebu condo prices still rising?
Yes. Metro Cebu condominium prices are still rising, with the latest BSP condo index up 9.4% year on year and another 1.1% from the previous quarter.
The longer run also points upward. Metro Cebu’s condominium index was 128.6 at the end of 2024, reached 133.6 in early 2025 and climbed to 146.2 one year later.
Demand is much stronger in the affordable and middle of the market than at the expensive end. Colliers data showed that units priced at roughly ₱2.5 million to ₱7 million generated more than 70% of Cebu condominium take-up during the first half of 2025. Its latest residential research continues to show economic and affordable housing driving Philippine condo demand.
That makes today’s condo market more selective than the headline index suggests. Well-priced projects with a real location advantage can still do very well. Expensive units competing with many similar towers have a much less convincing resale story.
The luxury end shows how wide the gap has become. Rockwell’s Villas at Aruga has been marketed at roughly ₱590,000 per square meter, far above the broader Cebu preselling average of around ₱168,000 per square meter recorded by Colliers in 2024. Cebu clearly has buyers at that level, but it is a much thinner market and should not be used as a proxy for ordinary condos.
| Metro Cebu condos | Q1 2025 | Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 | Q4 2025 | Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BSP condo index | 133.6 | 143.1 | 139.6 | 144.6 | 146.2 |
| YoY change | 1.5% | 12.2% | 10.0% | 12.5% | 9.4% |
| QoQ change | 3.9% | 7.1% | -2.5% | 3.6% | 1.1% |
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Are Cebu house prices rising too?
Yes. Cebu house prices are also rising today, so the market’s appreciation goes beyond condominiums.
The BSP recorded Metro Cebu house prices 9.4% higher than a year earlier, with another 1.5% increase from the previous quarter.
Horizontal housing also has strong underlying demand. Colliers’ latest Visayas-Mindanao research found house-and-lot prices across the region rising by roughly 2% to 6% annually between 2016 and 2025. Cebu has the largest house-and-lot stock among the main VisMin markets tracked by Colliers, with cumulative take-up around 93%.
Earlier market data put roughly 61,000 Cebu house-and-lot units as already taken up, leaving only about 5,000 available.
That looks healthier than a market driven mainly by investors reserving preselling condos. A large share of Cebu’s house-and-lot demand comes from people buying an actual home, particularly in the economic and mid-income segments.
Is land still the strongest Cebu property segment?
Probably. Cebu residential land currently has the strongest mix of scarcity and long-term price growth, although the clean historical price series covers a broader Visayas area rather than Cebu alone.
Colliers found lot-only prices across Central Visayas, Western Visayas and Davao rising roughly 7% to 13% a year between 2016 and 2025. House-and-lot projects increased more slowly, around 2% to 6%.
Cebu itself also has very little unsold inventory inside the projects Colliers tracks. The average lot-only price was around ₱21,000 per square meter in 2025, while take-up reached roughly 94%. Around 22,000 Cebu lots had already been sold, with only about 1,000 remaining.
We would be cautious about projecting another decade of 7% to 13% annual gains. A plot in Cebu City has little in common with land in a peripheral municipality. Still, scarce residential land has one obvious advantage over condos: developers can build thousands of additional apartments, but they cannot manufacture another central Cebu site.
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Could Cebu’s condo building boom eventually stop prices rising?
Yes. Cebu’s large condo pipeline is the biggest reason we would not assume today’s price growth will continue across every project.
Colliers expects Cebu’s condominium stock to increase from roughly 92,270 units at the end of 2025 to about 108,900 by the end of 2029. That adds close to 17,000 units, or around 18% of the existing stock.
About 7,000 units are expected in 2026 alone. Roughly 2,000 more are scheduled in 2027, another 2,000 in 2028 and around 6,000 in 2029.
Cebu can handle more supply than Metro Manila currently can. Colliers estimates Cebu needs roughly three years to absorb its condo inventory at the present sales pace, while Metro Manila’s latest inventory life is around 6.8 years. That is a meaningful gap.
Still, 17,000 new units will give buyers far more choice. Older buildings, poor locations and projects with little differentiation could easily see flat resale values while the wider Cebu index continues rising.
| Cebu condo supply | Approx. units |
|---|---|
| Stock at end-2025 | 92,270 |
| Expected 2026 completions | 7,000 |
| Expected 2027 completions | 2,000 |
| Expected 2028 completions | 2,000 |
| Expected 2029 completions | 6,000 |
| Expected stock at end-2029 | 108,900 |
| Increase from end-2025 | ~18% |
Are buyers actually paying these higher Cebu property prices?
Yes. Cebu still has enough real buyers to support higher property prices, especially in affordable condos, house-and-lot projects and residential land.
Colliers recorded about 5,250 Cebu condominium units taken up in 2024, 21% more than the previous year even though developers launched fewer units. By mid-2025, around 86% of the condo inventory tracked by Colliers had been taken up.
Horizontal housing was tighter still, with house-and-lot projects around 93% taken up and lot-only developments near 94%.
The composition of demand is useful here. Roughly two-thirds of Cebu condo sales have been concentrated in affordable-to-mid-income price bands, while economic housing has generated a large share of house-and-lot sales.
Cebu also has several different pools of buyers. Local households, OFW families, employees in the services and outsourcing sectors and investors looking for rental income all participate. Colliers has highlighted OFW demand repeatedly, while BSP household data showed 17.1% of remittance-receiving households allocating money toward real-estate purchases in the relevant survey.
So higher prices are being supported by actual take-up. Speculative preselling exists, especially in condos, but Cebu currently has a much broader demand base than a pure investor market.
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Is Cebu’s economy strong enough to keep property prices rising?
Yes, although Cebu’s economic backdrop is less powerful than it was a year earlier.
Central Visayas grew 3.7% in 2025, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, down sharply from 7.4% in 2024. The regional economy still expanded to around ₱1.32 trillion, and real estate and ownership of dwellings grew 4.8%.
A more direct Cebu property indicator comes from offices. Colliers recorded roughly 121,000 square meters of Cebu office transactions in 2025, up 71% from the previous year. Net take-up reached close to 100,000 square meters after only around 4,000 square meters in 2024.
That office rebound is important because Cebu remains a major outsourcing and corporate-services hub. More occupied offices mean more workers who need homes or rentals around Cebu City, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu.
The latest PSA releases also show that all 33 highly urbanized cities covered nationally recorded economic growth in 2025, while new city-level Cebu data have now been released for Cebu City, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu. The broader picture remains one of economic expansion, just at a more ordinary pace.
| Cebu / Central Visayas indicator | Earlier reading | Latest reading | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regional GDP growth | 7.4% in 2024 | 3.7% in 2025 | Slower |
| Regional GDP | ~₱1.28T | ~₱1.32T | Higher |
| Real estate & dwellings growth | — | 4.8% | Positive |
| Cebu office transactions | ~71,000 sqm | ~121,000 sqm | +71% |
| Cebu office net take-up | ~4,000 sqm | ~100,000 sqm | Sharp rebound |
Why are Cebu prices rising when housing loans are falling?
Cebu property prices are rising even though bank-financed purchases have weakened, which tells us this is not a broad mortgage-fuelled buying frenzy.
BSP data showed the number of residential real-estate loans granted in Metro Cebu falling 23.6% year on year in the first quarter of 2026. Condominium loans fell 25.4%.
That is a large drop. It suggests higher prices and financing costs have already pushed some buyers out, while households with cash, OFW income or stronger finances are still able to transact.
Developers can also keep headline selling prices firm while making deals easier through longer payment plans, discounts on fees and other incentives. That helps explain how official property prices can rise even when the number of mortgage-backed purchases falls.
Financing has become slightly more supportive lately. Pag-IBIG increased its maximum housing loan to ₱10 million and introduced promotional rates including 4.5% for qualifying lower-priced loans and 5.75% for larger loans, initially fixed for three years.
For now, weaker mortgage activity looks like a brake on Cebu price growth rather than the start of a broad decline.
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Is Cebu property becoming too expensive for local buyers?
Yes. Affordability is becoming one of Cebu property’s biggest problems, and recent data make that concern harder to ignore.
Sales are already heavily concentrated toward cheaper housing. More than 70% of Cebu condo take-up in the first half of 2025 came from projects priced around ₱2.5 million to ₱7 million. Economic housing below roughly ₱2.5 million also represented more than 40% of house-and-lot take-up.
Costs keep moving the other way. Developers have warned that expensive land, construction and financing are making it harder to produce lower-priced homes in Cebu.
Earlier this year, local industry representatives also claimed that more than 10,000 housing units were waiting for Licenses to Sell. DHSUD-7 disputed that figure and said only two applications were pending before the regional office, so we do not treat the 10,000-unit claim as an established supply bottleneck.
Household budgets are under fresh pressure too. According to the latest Philippine Statistics Authority release, Cebu City consumer prices were 8.4% higher year on year in July, while inflation in Cebu Province reached 10.9%. Even though those figures cover much more than housing, such increases leave households with less room for mortgage payments.
This is probably where Cebu’s price growth eventually hits a ceiling. Buyers still want homes, but the market is already showing developers where purchasing power starts to run out.
Which Cebu properties are most likely to keep rising?
Cebu residential land and well-located house-and-lot projects currently look strongest, while condos require much more careful selection.
Lot-only developments combine around 94% take-up with the hardest supply constraint in the market. House-and-lot projects have roughly 93% cumulative take-up and draw heavily from end-users and OFW families.
Condos are more mixed. Official prices are still rising, and well-priced units in strong employment or tourism locations can continue doing well. But Cebu is also adding close to 17,000 units by 2029, which gives buyers plenty of alternatives.
That makes location and uniqueness much more important. A condo beside a major business district, airport, university or genuinely scarce waterfront area has a clearer reason to hold value. A generic tower surrounded by future competing supply has a weaker case.
If we had to rank the segments today, scarce land comes first, strong end-user house-and-lot developments follow, and differentiated condos come after them. High-priced interchangeable condos carry the most obvious risk of disappointing owners even during a rising Cebu market.
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What could make Cebu property prices start falling?
Cebu property prices would become vulnerable if the incoming condo supply met weaker jobs, weaker borrowing and slower sales at the same time.
Some ingredients are already visible. Metro Cebu mortgage counts have fallen sharply. Thousands of new condos are coming. Central Visayas growth has slowed from 7.4% to 3.7%. Affordability is also getting tighter.
For now, the stronger indicators still outweigh those risks. Affordable housing continues selling, house-and-lot and lot-only take-up remains above 90%, office absorption has rebounded and Cebu’s condo inventory burden is much lighter than Metro Manila’s.
The first cracks would probably show up in individual condo buildings rather than across Cebu all at once. Owners of older or interchangeable units could see resale prices sit flat for years while scarce land and good housing projects continue gaining value.
That is the scenario we would watch most closely from here.
So, are property prices in Cebu still rising?
Yes. Cebu property prices are still rising, and the latest official transaction data support that conclusion.
Metro Cebu residential prices are 9.4% above their level a year earlier. Condos and houses are both higher, while land and horizontal housing continue showing very strong take-up.
But Cebu has already moved into a more selective phase. Mortgage activity is weaker, affordability is tight and almost 17,000 additional condos are expected by 2029. Those pressures make another easy, market-wide surge much less likely.
The clearest conclusion is that Cebu remains an appreciating property market, but owning “something in Cebu” is no longer enough. Scarce land, good house-and-lot projects and condos with a genuine location advantage can still climb. Generic units facing lots of new competition may barely move even while Cebu’s headline index keeps rising.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether property prices in Cebu are still rising by combining price data with evidence on demand, supply, financing, affordability and the strength of the local economy. We did not let one headline statistic determine the answer.
We gave the most weight to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Residential Property Price Index because it is built from actual bank-financed residential transactions and adjusts for differences between properties. We looked at both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter movements, as well as the underlying index levels, so a favorable base effect would not be mistaken for fresh acceleration.
We then split the market by property type. Condo, house-and-lot and lot-only evidence was assessed separately using Colliers’ Cebu and Visayas-Mindanao residential research, including take-up, pricing, inventory and the development pipeline. Broader Visayas data were used only where they helped explain a structural trend that does not have a clean Cebu-only historical series.
Demand was tested against actual take-up rather than launch announcements alone. We also compared the residential price trend with BSP mortgage activity, Pag-IBIG financing changes and developer payment behavior to check whether higher prices were being supported by a broad credit boom or by a narrower group of buyers.
Economic support was assessed using Philippine Statistics Authority data for Central Visayas and Cebu-area cities, together with Colliers’ Cebu office-market figures. We also used PSA inflation data to judge how much pressure household budgets are facing as property prices rise.
When sources conflicted, we favored the primary or official source. One example is the claim that more than 10,000 Cebu housing units were waiting for Licenses to Sell: DHSUD-7 publicly disputed that figure and said only two applications were pending before the regional office, so the larger number is treated as a contested industry claim rather than a fact.
Key sources used for this analysis include the BSP Residential Property Price Index, the BSP RPPI methodology, the BSP methodological note on the revised RPPI, Colliers’ July 2026 VisMin residential report, Colliers’ Q2 2026 Philippine residential report, Colliers’ Q4 2025 office report, PSA’s 2025 Central Visayas economic release, PSA Provincial Product Accounts for Central Visayas, PSA’s July 2026 Cebu City inflation release, PSA’s Cebu Province inflation data, the BSP Consumer Expectations Survey series, the government release on Pag-IBIG’s ₱10 million housing-loan ceiling, and the Philippine Information Agency report on DHSUD-7’s response to the claimed Cebu License-to-Sell backlog.
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