Will property prices rise in Davao City?

Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Davao City

Are Davao City property prices actually rising now?

Davao City property prices are still moving higher overall today, but land and house-and-lot projects have a much stronger case than ordinary condominiums.

The latest Colliers research gives us the clearest split. Across the major Visayas and Mindanao markets, house-and-lot prices rose by roughly 2% to 6% a year between 2016 and 2025. Residential lots performed much better: Colliers found average annual gains of about 7% to 13% across Central Visayas, Western Visayas and Davao Region over the same period.

Demand is still healthy too. At the end of 2025, take-up rates for horizontal projects across these regional markets generally stood between 87% and 96%. Davao remains one of the main residential growth centers outside Metro Manila.

Condos need more caution. Colliers has continued to describe Davao as one of the strongest provincial residential markets, but the city is also one of the places expected to receive a large share of the roughly 45,000 new condo units coming to Visayas and Mindanao between 2026 and 2029.

That creates a very different setup from residential land. Good land becomes harder to reproduce as the city expands, while developers can keep launching another tower when condo demand improves.

Our reading is straightforward: Davao property prices are still rising, but buyers should expect a much wider gap between the winners and mediocre projects than they saw during the city’s earlier expansion.

Davao property segment	Latest useful evidence	Price direction	Our reading
Residential lots	7–13% annual gains across key VisMin regions, 2016–2025	Strong	Best structural case
House and lot	2–6% annual gains across VisMin	Rising	Healthy end-user market
New condominiums	Davao remains a major development market	Mixed upward	Project selection matters
Secondary condos	More competition from new projects and developer financing	Uneven	Weakest case for broad appreciation

Why is it so hard to say whether Davao property prices will rise?

Davao property prices are difficult to forecast because the city has a scarce-land market and an expandable condo market behaving very differently.

A good subdivision lot in an established part of Lanang, Bajada, Matina or Buhangin cannot simply be recreated next door. New roads, offices, schools and retail can bring more buyers into the area while the amount of prime land stays limited.

Condominium supply works differently. When demand around a business district improves, developers can respond with another tower. Davao is already attracting a meaningful share of the new condominium pipeline expected across Visayas and Mindanao through 2029.

Davao’s enormous land area complicates the picture further. New infrastructure can make one parcel much more valuable because it suddenly has better access. The same road may also open thousands of additional hectares farther out, giving developers more places to build.

So the useful question is which parts of Davao are becoming scarcer relative to demand. That tells us much more than treating one developer’s preselling price as evidence for the whole city.

Is Davao’s condo market still strong right now?

Davao’s condo market is still healthy enough to support good projects, but the easy phase when almost any new tower could ride the city’s growth story is fading.

Colliers continues to rank Davao among the stronger provincial residential markets. Earlier market data showed cumulative condo take-up around the high-80% range, and some individual developments sold considerably better than that.

Yet the latest national and regional property data point to a more price-sensitive buyer. Colliers says affordable and mid-income condominiums are attracting the strongest demand, while developers have been using flexible payment plans and promotions to move ready-for-occupancy inventory.

Davao also faces more competition ahead. Colliers expects roughly 45,000 condo units to be completed across Visayas and Mindanao between 2026 and 2029, with Cebu and Davao together accounting for more than 60% of that incoming supply. That implies more than 27,000 units across the two largest markets combined.

This is where headline take-up figures can mislead investors. A project can sell most of its original units because buyers received long payment schedules, low initial cash requirements or preselling prices. An owner trying to resell a completed studio three years later competes against developers offering fresh units with fresh financing.

We still like selected Davao condos in locations with genuine rental demand, but citywide double-digit condo appreciation looks increasingly difficult to justify.

Condo-market fact	What it tells us	What it does not tell us	Price implication
High historical take-up	Developers found buyers	Resales are equally liquid	Positive, with limits
Affordable units leading demand	Buyers remain active	Buyers will pay any price	Price-sensitive market
45,000 VisMin units due in 2026–2029	Regional supply is expanding	Every city will be oversupplied	More competition
Cebu + Davao >60% of new supply	Davao is a major construction hub	Every Davao project is weak	Selection becomes crucial

Is Davao City still growing fast enough to push home prices higher?

Davao City is still gaining residents, but population growth has slowed too much for demographics alone to drive another major property boom.

The Philippine Statistics Authority counted 1,848,947 people in Davao City in the 2024 census, up from 1,776,949 in 2020. That is an increase of about 72,000 people in four years.

The more revealing number is the growth rate. Davao grew by an average of 1.00% a year from 2020 to 2024. The comparable rate was 1.70% between 2015 and 2020 and 2.42% between 2010 and 2015.

So Davao is still growing, but it is doing so at less than half the annual pace recorded in the early 2010s.

Demand is also concentrated. Talomo alone had 467,813 residents in the latest census, while Buhangin had 311,932 and Poblacion 182,755. Those three districts account for more than half of the city’s population.

That concentration can keep pressure on well-connected housing even if citywide growth slows. Matina, Maa, Buhangin, Lanang and nearby employment corridors do not need a 2.5% citywide population boom to remain desirable.

Still, the demographic tailwind is weaker than it used to be. Future price gains will have to rely more on income growth, jobs, infrastructure and land scarcity.

Is Davao’s economy strong enough to keep property prices rising?

Davao’s economy is growing fast enough to support higher property prices, although the pace points toward steady appreciation rather than a runaway boom.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, Davao Region’s economy grew 5.1% in 2025. That was slower than the 6.3% recorded in 2024, but it still beat the Philippines’ 4.4% national growth rate.

The region generated about ₱1.14 trillion of economic output at constant prices. Services accounted for 62.1% of that economy, industry for 24.7%, and agriculture for 13.2%.

Several employment-heavy industries grew quickly. Public administration expanded 13.4%, health and social work 9.8%, and transportation and storage 8.2%. Wholesale and retail trade alone contributed around 1.5 percentage points to the region’s total 5.1% growth.

Household consumption also rose 4.7%, while gross capital formation increased 7.0%.

Those figures give Davao a better property foundation than a market driven mainly by developers selling units to other investors. More jobs, transport activity, retail and professional services create people who actually need somewhere to live.

The slowdown from 6.3% to 5.1% still deserves attention. There is enough growth to support rising prices, but nothing here requires prices to jump 10% or 15% citywide every year.

Does Davao’s office boom really help residential property prices?

Davao’s unusually tight office market is one of the strongest current arguments for housing demand around the city’s main employment corridors.

Colliers’ latest VisMin research puts Davao office vacancy at only about 3%. Other major Visayas and Mindanao office markets currently sit around 16% to 34%.

That difference is huge. Earlier Colliers figures showed roughly 379,000 square meters of top-grade Davao office stock, with only about 21,000 square meters vacant when the vacancy rate was still 5.5%. The market has tightened further since then.

BPO and outsourcing companies have been a major part of that demand. Large operators such as Concentrix, Alorica and Teleperformance already employ workers in the city, while Davao continues to attract companies looking for lower operating costs outside Metro Manila.

Office demand feeds residential demand in a fairly direct way. Thousands of workers commuting to Bajada, Lanang, Matina and other business areas create a reason to rent or buy nearby, especially as Davao traffic makes long daily trips expensive in time.

The 3% vacancy figure also gives us a useful contrast with the condo story. Davao has very little spare office space today, while developers have much more ability to add residential units. Properties near proven job centers therefore look better than condos sold mainly on the promise of future neighborhood growth.

Will all the new housing supply stop Davao property prices from rising?

New housing supply should keep Davao condo prices from running too far ahead of demand, while the latest construction numbers look much less threatening for ordinary houses.

Colliers expects about 45,000 new condominium units across Visayas and Mindanao from 2026 through 2029. Cebu and Davao are expected to account for more than 60% of the total. Davao therefore remains one of the places where condo buyers need to watch the pipeline carefully.

The broader construction market tells a different story.

The Philippine Statistics Authority recorded 2,111 approved constructions across Davao Region in the first quarter of 2026, down 12.0% from a year earlier. Residential construction fell 6.7% to 1,316 projects.

Single houses accounted for 1,222 of those residential permits, or nearly 93%. Only one residential condominium building permit appeared in the regional count for the quarter, although a single condo permit can obviously represent hundreds of units and billions of pesos of development.

Construction value also cooled. Total approved construction value across the region dropped 10.2% year on year to ₱7.63 billion. In Davao City itself, construction value fell 22.5% to ₱4.27 billion.

At the same time, building is getting more expensive. The region’s estimated average construction cost rose 15.2% year on year to ₱13,621 per square meter. Davao City had the region’s highest residential construction cost at about ₱16,520 per square meter.

Those cost pressures give existing homes some support because replacing them becomes more expensive. Condo buyers face the opposite force from the large pipeline: more units competing for the same tenants and future buyers.

Davao construction indicator	Latest figure	Year-on-year change	What we take from it
Total regional constructions	2,111	-12.0%	No construction boom
Residential constructions	1,316	-6.7%	Housing starts are softer
Single houses	1,222	—	93% of residential permits
Davao City construction value	₱4.27bn	-22.5%	Development value slowed
Regional average construction cost	₱13,621/sqm	+15.2%	Replacement costs are rising
Davao City residential construction cost	₱16,520/sqm	—	Highest in the region

Will the Davao City Bypass Road push land prices higher?

The Davao City Bypass Road should lift land prices around the right interchanges, and the project is now advanced enough that buyers no longer have to treat it as a distant promise.

The 45.5-kilometer bypass is designed to connect the Toril side of Davao with the northern corridor toward Panabo. The project includes twin tunnels stretching about 2.3 kilometers.

According to the Regional Development Council’s latest project monitoring, overall construction reached 38.33% by April 2026.

The headline number hides a big gap between packages. Package I-1 was 69.19% complete, while I-2 and I-3 were only 2.24% and 4.01%. The locally funded Package II-1 and II-2 sections were much further ahead at 88.82% and 80.96%.

That variation is exactly why “near the bypass” is too vague to be an investment thesis.

The road is supposed to cut the journey between the Sirawan area and Panabo dramatically. When travel times fall that much, land that used to feel too remote can become realistic for housing, warehouses, retail or mixed-use projects.

We would focus on parcels with practical access to completed or genuinely progressing interchanges. A property several kilometers from an entry point may benefit far less than marketing material suggests.

The bypass should create real land winners. It will also open more peripheral land for development, so simply buying farther from the center will not guarantee scarcity.

Will the Davao-Samal Bridge raise property prices around Lanang and Sasa?

The Davao-Samal Bridge gives Sasa and the northern Davao corridor a real long-term property catalyst, and construction has now passed the halfway point.

The roughly four-kilometer Samal Island–Davao City Connector is designed to replace the current dependence on ferries with a permanent road connection between Davao City and Samal.

DPWH reported that physical progress had reached about 61.3% by late June 2026. Construction was slightly ahead of its scheduled progress at that point, with completion still targeted for 2028.

There is a funding issue worth watching. DPWH said it requested about ₱4.86 billion for the project during 2026 but had initially received only ₱314 million. Officials maintained that construction was continuing, though a prolonged funding gap could eventually affect the schedule.

For property, the bridge strengthens an area that already has several sources of demand. Lanang has offices, hotels, SM Lanang, established residential projects and relatively convenient airport access. Sasa adds the port and the mainland side of the new bridge.

Samal tourism creates another layer. Davao Region has been recording millions of domestic and international visitor trips, and easier road access should deepen the economic connection between the island and the city.

The biggest potential revaluation should occur where the bridge improves a property’s everyday usefulness. Land with good road access around Sasa has a clearer case than an unrelated condo several kilometers away marketed with a distant bridge view.

Can better roads actually slow price growth in some parts of Davao?

Better transport can make some Davao land much more valuable while giving buyers more alternatives farther from the center, which may hold back prices in older suburban locations.

The bypass is a good example. A household that currently needs to stay close to central Davao because outer districts involve a painful commute may be willing to move farther away once the trip becomes much faster.

That raises demand around new access points.

Developers then gain something too: more usable land. Areas that were previously too inconvenient can support subdivisions, warehouses, retail centers and eventually denser housing.

This changes the scarcity map. An older subdivision may still appreciate, but part of its historical advantage disappears when several newer districts become practical places to live.

For investors, infrastructure rewards precision. The biggest gains tend to happen where access improves disproportionately, particularly around interchanges and roads connecting employment centers.

Buying “somewhere near future infrastructure” is much weaker than identifying exactly which journeys that infrastructure will shorten.

Are Davao house-and-lot properties a better bet than condos?

Davao house-and-lot properties currently have a cleaner path to price appreciation than ordinary condos because demand is strong and every sale includes scarce land.

Colliers’ latest VisMin research shows house-and-lot take-up rates ranging from 87% to 96% across major provincial markets at the end of 2025. Davao is one of the largest horizontal residential markets in that group.

Prices rose by an average of roughly 2% to 6% a year from 2016 through 2025.

Those gains look less exciting than the jumps sometimes advertised on condominium price lists, but they cover almost a decade. They also fit the underlying market: affordable and mid-income housing remains the strongest residential demand segment outside Metro Manila.

A house-and-lot buyer owns something that becomes harder to reproduce as the urban area fills in. A condo buyer owns a unit that may be competing with several hundred similar units in the same tower and thousands of new units across the city.

Current construction data reinforce the difference. Residential permits across Davao Region fell 6.7% year on year in the first quarter of 2026 even as construction costs rose.

We would still reject overpriced peripheral subdivisions sold mainly around future-road hype. But in established neighborhoods or genuinely improving growth corridors, house-and-lot property looks like the safer Davao appreciation trade.

Why have residential lots been such strong performers around Davao?

Residential land has been one of Davao’s strongest property assets because urban growth keeps creating new uses for a fixed amount of well-located land.

Colliers found that residential lot prices across Central Visayas, Western Visayas and Davao Region rose by an average of roughly 7% to 13% a year between 2016 and 2025.

Even the bottom of that range compounds quickly. A ₱3 million parcel growing at 7% annually becomes worth about ₱5.5 million after nine years. At 13%, the same starting value reaches roughly ₱9 million.

Several buyers compete for these parcels. Households want residential lots. Developers need land for subdivisions and towers. Businesses need commercial sites. Infrastructure can suddenly make previously awkward locations usable.

Rising construction costs can strengthen the appeal of land too. PSA figures put Davao City residential construction costs at around ₱16,520 per square meter, the highest among the provinces and highly urbanized city in Davao Region.

The danger comes from assuming the past decade can simply repeat. Another nine years at 13% would more than triple prices again. Local incomes, rents and commercial activity would eventually need to catch up.

Land remains our preferred long-term Davao segment, particularly around established or improving corridors. We would just use a much lower future return assumption than the best parts of the 2016–2025 record.

Average annual land gain	₱3m after 9 years	Increase	How we see it
5%	₱4.65m	+55%	Reasonable long-run scenario
7%	₱5.52m	+84%	Strong
10%	₱7.07m	+136%	Very strong
13%	₱9.01m	+200%	Hard to repeat indefinitely

Are borrowing costs still holding Davao home prices back?

Expensive financing is still holding Davao home prices back today because many local buyers simply cannot absorb much higher monthly payments.

The effect is easy to see with a mortgage.

A ₱5 million loan over 20 years costs roughly ₱38,800 per month at 7% interest. At 9%, the monthly payment jumps to about ₱45,000.

That extra ₱6,000-plus arrives without the buyer receiving a larger home.

Developers can soften the problem through stretched down payments, low reservation fees and longer payment periods before bank financing starts. Those offers help primary sales stay active, but they do not make the finished property more affordable once the owner needs a mortgage.

They can also make the resale market harder. A private seller may want ₱6 million in cash or bank financing while the developer next door lets a buyer spread the equity portion over several years.

This favors buyers with cash, substantial OFW remittances or strong incomes. It hurts leveraged buyers in the mass and mid-income markets most.

Lower rates would give Davao housing another push. While borrowing remains expensive, moderate appreciation is much easier to defend than rapid citywide price increases.

Is inflation eating most of Davao property owners’ gains?

Inflation is high enough to wipe out a large part of the paper gain on ordinary Davao property.

The latest Philippine Statistics Authority figures put Davao Region inflation at 8.4% in July 2026, up from 8.1% one month earlier. Average inflation over the first seven months of the year reached 6.5%.

That is a very high hurdle for property.

Suppose a Davao house rises 5% in nominal value over a year. With regional consumer prices rising 8.4%, the owner has gained pesos but lost purchasing power before paying any selling costs.

A property rising 10% is in a different position. It stays ahead of current inflation, although transaction costs can still eat a meaningful part of the real return.

The comparison is particularly relevant because Colliers’ historical house-and-lot appreciation range was roughly 2% to 6% annually. Returns near the bottom or middle of that range would currently fail to keep pace with inflation.

Residential lots have historically performed better, but even there we should avoid confusing a peso price increase with genuine wealth creation.

This makes the next phase of the Davao market tougher for investors. A property that merely “goes up” may still be a disappointing investment once we compare the gain with inflation, financing and selling costs.

Could floods and earthquakes hold down property prices in parts of Davao City?

Flood and earthquake exposure can absolutely hold down individual Davao property prices, and we expect the difference between resilient and vulnerable locations to become more visible over time.

Davao buyers received a sharp reminder of structural risk during the 2023 Mindanao earthquakes. High-rise buildings were inspected after the tremors, and concerns around individual condominium projects affected buyer confidence.

Flooding creates an even more local problem. Davao City planning and disaster-risk maps identify differences in flood, liquefaction, landslide, storm-surge and fault exposure across the city.

Broad neighborhood labels are not precise enough. Parts of Buhangin, Sasa, Talomo or other large districts can behave very differently depending on elevation, drainage and exact position.

A property that repeatedly floods will have higher repair costs, more difficult access during storms and a smaller future buyer pool. A nearby property on better ground may face none of those problems.

As Davao becomes more expensive, buyers have more reason to check these details. Paying ₱10 million or ₱15 million for a home gives people a strong incentive to compare hazard maps, drainage, building engineering and past incidents before signing.

High-quality projects in safer micro-locations should command a growing premium over superficially similar properties with obvious physical risks.

Which Davao neighborhoods have the best chance of rising in price?

Lanang, Sasa, Bajada, Matina and selected parts of the city’s outward growth corridors have the clearest combination of real demand and future catalysts.

Lanang already has employment, hotels, shopping, condominiums and airport access. Davao’s office vacancy has fallen to only about 3%, and the northern corridor captures a meaningful part of the city’s BPO and commercial activity. The Davao-Samal Bridge adds another reason for the area to matter.

Sasa has more upside from infrastructure, although individual locations vary much more. The bridge, port and airport give the district strategic value, but buyers need to inspect the immediate surroundings rather than buy the district name.

Bajada remains one of the safer established choices. Abreeza, hospitals, schools, offices and major roads already generate demand. The trade-off is price: obvious central locations are rarely cheap.

Matina and Maa have deep residential demand and benefit from commercial projects such as Davao Global Township and nearby employment centers. Here, building quality and hazard exposure deserve close attention before buying.

Tugbok, Mintal and parts of Toril offer more speculative land upside. New roads and the bypass can make these areas much easier to reach, while entry prices can still be lower than in mature districts. The counterweight is abundant land supply. Developers have plenty of room to create competing projects.

For us, the strongest locations have at least two independent reasons to attract buyers. Jobs plus infrastructure is better than infrastructure alone. Existing commercial activity plus scarce land is better than an empty parcel whose entire pitch depends on what may eventually be built nearby.

Davao area	What supports prices now	Best fit	Main problem
Lanang	Offices, airport, retail, hotels	Quality residential / land	Higher entry prices
Sasa	Samal bridge, port, airport	Selected land	Very uneven micro-locations
Bajada	Established jobs and amenities	House/lot, selected condo	Much is already priced in
Matina / Maa	Residential depth, township growth	House/lot, selected condo	Hazard and project selection
Tugbok / Mintal	Urban expansion, road upgrades	Land / horizontal	Plenty of developable land
Toril	Southern growth, bypass	Land / house-and-lot	Farther from major job clusters

So, will property prices rise in Davao City?

Yes. Davao City property prices should keep rising overall, but we expect land and good house-and-lot properties to do considerably better than the average condo.

The current evidence is strong enough to support that call.

Davao Region still grew 5.1% in 2025, faster than the national economy. Davao City has almost 1.85 million residents. Office vacancy has dropped to around 3%. Horizontal housing continues to post high take-up. Residential land across the broader regional group that includes Davao produced strong appreciation over the past decade. Two major transport projects, the bypass and Davao-Samal Bridge, are already well into construction.

There are clear brakes too. Davao’s annual population growth has dropped from 2.42% in 2010–2015 to 1.00% in 2020–2024. Regional inflation has lately climbed above 8%. Financing remains expensive. Davao and Cebu will absorb most of a large VisMin condo pipeline through 2029.

Those pressures should prevent the whole market from rising together.

For ordinary Davao housing, low-to-mid-single-digit nominal appreciation over the next few years looks more credible than another broad double-digit surge. Prime land near genuine commercial or infrastructure improvements can beat that. Good established house-and-lot communities can also outperform. Some condos may rise strongly, especially differentiated projects near jobs, but buyers can no longer assume that the city’s growth will rescue an average unit bought at an aggressive preselling price.

Davao is still becoming a more valuable city. The opportunity lies in owning the parts of it that remain difficult to reproduce.

Who is the author of this content?

BAMBOOROUTES

A team specialized in real estate investing in APAC countries (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, etc.).

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Davao City. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.