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Are rents in the Philippines still rising now?

Yes, rents in the Philippines are still going up in some important markets, but the latest data shows nothing close to a nationwide rental surge.

The freshest institutional readings make the split unusually clear. JLL's latest Manila residential review says rental growth is continuing at a modest pace, alongside positive absorption and a small improvement in vacancy. Colliers is more cautious: its latest residential report still expects Metro Manila condominium vacancy to peak at 25.6% and describes the broader leasing market as weak enough that large rent increases remain difficult.

Both can be true because the market has become extremely uneven. A good apartment in BGC can gain tenants and push its rent higher while hundreds of similar units elsewhere in Metro Manila struggle to find occupants.

The same pattern appears outside the capital. Cebu has much healthier residential absorption, Davao asking rents currently look fairly stable, and Philippine Statistics Authority data shows rental inflation running faster in some regions than others.

So if someone says “Philippine rents are rising,” we would call that partly true. These days, the location and type of property tell us much more than the national label.

Part of the market	What is happening now	Main pressure	Our read
Prime Metro Manila	Rents edging higher	Stronger tenant demand	Rising
Wider Metro Manila condo market	Vacancy remains very high	Too many available units	Mostly flat
Cebu	Demand relatively healthy	Large new pipeline	Firm but selective
Davao	Asking rents broadly stable	Balanced local market	Mostly flat
Other regional markets	Mixed	Local jobs, supply and inflation	Uneven

How can Philippine rents be rising when so many condos are empty?

Philippine rents can rise while condominium vacancy stays high because tenants are concentrating in a much smaller group of locations and buildings than the headline supply numbers suggest.

That is the key to reading the market.

Colliers expects Metro Manila residential vacancy to reach 25.6% before easing from 2027 onward. That is an extraordinary amount of unused stock: roughly one unit vacant for every three occupied units in the market Colliers tracks.

Yet JLL's latest residential figures show positive absorption, slightly lower vacancy in its tracked market and modest rental growth. Tenants are coming back, but they are not spreading evenly across everything that was built.

A modern furnished condo beside an office in BGC is only a partial substitute for an older unit several kilometres away. Building management, traffic, walking distance, amenities, unit size and the quality of the furniture can change the tenant pool completely.

The result is a rental market with plenty of empty housing overall and genuine scarcity in specific pockets. Once we separate those two things, the contradiction mostly disappears.

Are BGC and Makati rents going up faster than the rest of Manila?

Yes, BGC and prime Makati currently have a much better rental setup than most of Metro Manila.

Colliers has repeatedly identified Makati CBD and Bonifacio Global City as the areas leading the rental recovery. The reasons are fairly straightforward: both put high-income residents close to major office clusters, international employers, restaurants, malls and schools, while the better buildings have a limited number of genuinely comparable units.

Office conditions strengthen that advantage. In its 2026 office research, Colliers found that premium and Grade A Makati office buildings were already recording slight rental increases because good-quality space was becoming harder to find. Traditional companies still represented 67% of Metro Manila office transactions in Q1, and IT-BPM firms, global capability centres and managed offices continue to support employment in the main business districts.

Return-to-office policies also make distance matter again. Someone working most days in BGC has much more reason to pay extra for Taguig than a fully remote employee did a few years ago.

That gives landlords in the best BGC and Makati buildings more room to raise rents today. The advantage drops quickly once we move into areas with dozens of near-identical vacant units.

Where is Metro Manila's rental oversupply worst?

The Bay Area remains the clearest weak spot in Metro Manila rentals, and its oversupply is severe enough to distort the picture for the capital as a whole.

Colliers previously measured Bay Area residential vacancy above 50% and now expects it to approach 60% as more projects are completed. The district is also on track to become Metro Manila's largest condominium submarket, overtaking Fort Bonifacio in total stock.

That is brutal for landlords. If vacancy gets close to 60%, a tenant can often compare several units in the same tower, then repeat the exercise in neighboring buildings. Owners have little reason to reject a reasonable offer when another almost identical apartment is available one floor away.

The Bay Area also lost an important source of rental demand after the offshore gaming industry contracted. Many condominium projects had been built or bought during a period when POGO-related tenants were absorbing large blocks of units. Replacing that demand takes time.

This is one reason a Manila-wide rent number can look disappointing even while individual neighborhoods are improving.

Metro Manila area or segment	Current position	What is driving it	Rent pressure
BGC / Fort Bonifacio	Relatively tight prime demand	Offices, expatriates, high-income workers	Upward
Makati CBD	Strong prime segment	Corporate demand, limited quality stock	Upward
Bay Area	Extremely high vacancy	Heavy condo supply, weaker former POGO demand	Downward
C5 corridor	Large incoming supply	New completions	Mixed
Older generic condo stock	Plenty of alternatives	Competition between landlords	Weak

Is Metro Manila's condo glut finally getting smaller?

Yes, Metro Manila's condo glut is finally being worked down, although the market still has years of excess stock to absorb.

The improvement is much bigger than a small quarterly fluctuation. Colliers calculated that Metro Manila's remaining condominium inventory life peaked at 13.4 years in mid-2025. By Q1 2026, it had fallen to 6.8 years.

In other words, the theoretical time needed to sell the remaining inventory was cut almost in half.

Sales were improving as well. About 10,100 preselling and ready-for-occupancy units sold during 2025, 8% more than a year earlier. Preselling take-up then jumped sharply in early 2026, helped by affordable projects, discounts and flexible payment structures.

The newest development is on the supply side. Colliers' Q2 residential report says condominium launches have fallen sharply because developers are prioritizing unsold ready-for-occupancy units instead of filling the market with another wave of projects.

That change is more useful for future rents than another temporary jump in sales. Fewer launches today eventually mean fewer competing units reaching landlords a few years from now.

The catch is the starting point. Cutting inventory life from 13.4 years to 6.8 years is a huge improvement, but 6.8 years is still a lot of unsold housing.

Can Manila landlords raise rents now, or do tenants still have the upper hand?

Most Metro Manila landlords still cannot raise rents aggressively, although owners of the best units have more leverage than they did before.

The easiest way to see this is through developer behavior. Companies are still using discounts, longer payment schedules and rent-to-own offers to move ready-for-occupancy condominiums. Colliers says these incentives have played an important role in improving absorption.

An investor trying to lease a standard studio is competing indirectly with that stock. A tenant who has ten comparable units available can negotiate the monthly price, association dues, parking, furniture, deposits or contract length.

This also makes online rental listings easy to misread. A ₱40,000 advertisement does not prove somebody has agreed to pay ₱40,000. Asking rents can stay stubbornly high while the actual deal is signed at a discount or includes several concessions.

That gap becomes much smaller in sought-after buildings where good units disappear quickly.

For now, Manila is still a tenant-friendly market, with a growing number of landlord-friendly exceptions.

Are ordinary Philippine rents rising too, or is this mostly a luxury-condo story?

Ordinary housing rents are rising in parts of the Philippines as well, although the evidence is much more regional than the recovery we can see in prime Manila condos.

Philippine Statistics Authority data helps here because its consumer-price surveys cover actual household housing costs rather than only investment-grade condominiums.

One recent example came from the Cordillera Administrative Region. PSA said rentals were among the five largest contributors to the region's inflation acceleration in July 2026, alongside LPG, rice, diesel and gasoline.

Earlier regional releases tell a similar story elsewhere. Northern Mindanao recorded annual growth of a little above 6% in actual rentals for housing during parts of 2026. Those figures show that rental inflation has reached ordinary households in some cities and provinces.

We still need to be careful with the comparison. CPI rental data, condominium leasing reports and online asking rents measure different groups of homes. Combining them into one national rent-growth percentage would create false precision.

What we can say confidently is that today's rent increases are broader than luxury BGC apartments, but they are still far from uniform.

Are Philippine rents actually keeping up with inflation?

Many Philippine landlords are currently seeing weaker rent growth than the rise in their own cost of living.

The latest Philippine Statistics Authority release puts headline inflation at 6.1% year on year, only slightly below the previous 6.2%. Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels rose 7.9%.

That creates an important distinction between a rent increase and a real increase in rental income.

Take a landlord who raises a unit from ₱30,000 to ₱31,000 a month. That sounds like growth, but the increase is only 3.3%. With consumer prices rising around 6%, the purchasing power of that rental income has fallen.

A landlord would currently need roughly a 6% nominal rent increase just to keep pace with headline inflation. Many Metro Manila condos are nowhere near that.

That is another reason the present market does not look like a rental boom. Some rents are rising, but the gains often look much smaller once we compare them with prices elsewhere in the economy.

Annual rent change	With inflation around 6.1%	Rough real change	What the landlord feels
0%	6.1% inflation	About -6%	Clear loss of purchasing power
+2%	6.1% inflation	About -4%	Rent rises, real income falls
+4%	6.1% inflation	About -2%	Still losing ground
+6%	6.1% inflation	Around flat	Roughly keeps pace
+8%	6.1% inflation	About +2%	Real rental growth

Is Cebu's rental market stronger than Manila now?

Cebu currently has healthier residential fundamentals than Metro Manila, although its next wave of construction could make some neighborhoods much more competitive.

The difference in inventory is striking. Recent Colliers figures put Cebu condominium inventory life at roughly three years, versus 6.8 years in Metro Manila. Around 86% of Cebu condominium inventory was reported sold or reserved.

Cebu also has several different sources of tenant demand. Cebu IT Park and Cebu Business Park employ thousands of office and outsourcing workers. Mactan adds tourism, aviation and resort-related demand. Universities, local migration and overseas Filipino households broaden the tenant base further.

But Cebu is building heavily. The province had about 92,270 condominium units at the end of 2025. Colliers expects roughly 108,900 by the end of 2029, which means around 17,000 more units in four years.

That works out to an increase of roughly 18% from the end-2025 stock.

The wider Visayas and Mindanao pipeline is even larger. Colliers expects about 45,000 new condominium units between 2026 and 2029, with Cebu and Davao accounting for more than 60%.

Cebu therefore looks healthier than Manila today, but a landlord still needs to check what is being built within a few blocks of the property.

Measure	Cebu	Metro Manila	What it suggests
Condo inventory life	Around 3 years	6.8 years	Cebu clears stock faster
Current oversupply problem	More manageable	Still severe	Cebu has better balance
New supply	~17,000 units by end-2029	Developers now slowing launches	Both need monitoring
Main demand engines	BPO, tourism, local buyers, OFWs	Corporate jobs, BPO, expatriates, huge population	Both diversified
Rental outlook	Firm but building-specific	Very uneven	Cebu currently looks healthier

Are Davao rents rising right now?

Davao rents look mostly stable for now, which is useful evidence against the idea that every major Philippine city is experiencing the same rental inflation.

A 2026 LiveDavao study collected 281 rental advertisements and found 236 with usable prices. The median asking rent was ₱25,000 a month for a one-bedroom condominium and ₱28,000 for a two-bedroom.

More interestingly, the study classified both categories as stable.

For one-bedroom condos, the middle 50% of listings ran from about ₱23,000 to ₱35,000. Two-bedroom units had a middle range of roughly ₱24,000 to ₱40,000. The spread tells us there is still a large premium for particular buildings and locations, but the overall market was not moving sharply upward.

There is one limitation worth keeping: these are advertised prices rather than completed leases, and the study itself says negotiated rents usually come in below the listed figure.

Davao may tighten later as the city's economy grows, but the evidence we have today describes a fairly stable rental market rather than a boom.

Are jobs still pushing rents higher in Philippine business districts?

Yes, office employment is still supporting rents around the strongest Philippine business districts, but the effect depends heavily on where those jobs are being created.

Outsourcing firms, global capability centres and conventional companies continue to account for a large share of office demand. Colliers' Q1 2026 data showed traditional companies representing 67% of Metro Manila office transactions, while IT-BPM and managed-office operators remained important occupiers.

We can see the same decentralization outside Manila. In the latest Colliers VisMin research, Iloilo overtook Cebu for office transactions in Q1 2026. The firm links demand there to outsourcing companies looking for skilled workers and lower operating costs.

This creates very local housing effects. More employees around Cebu IT Park support nearby rentals. New outsourcing seats in Iloilo help Iloilo landlords. A growing corporate cluster in Pampanga can lift rents around Clark without doing anything for an oversupplied condo tower beside Manila Bay.

Office demand therefore remains one of the better reasons to expect rental growth these days, especially where new jobs meet limited nearby housing.

Will fewer new condos eventually push Manila rents higher?

Yes, slower condominium construction should eventually make it easier for Metro Manila landlords to raise rents, provided tenant demand keeps growing.

The development cycle is already changing. Colliers says Metro Manila developers have sharply reduced new condo launches and are concentrating on clearing completed inventory. Its latest residential report expects vacancy to peak before beginning to decline as completions taper from 2027.

This is how an oversupplied rental market starts repairing itself. Existing units continue to find tenants while fewer replacements enter the market.

We can already see the first half of that process. JLL is recording positive residential absorption and modest rent growth. Colliers, meanwhile, sees stronger demand in economic and affordable housing and much faster inventory clearance than during the worst of 2025.

As seen above, the remaining problem is the sheer size of the existing vacancy. Even if developers became extremely cautious tomorrow, Metro Manila would still have a large stock of empty or unsold apartments to work through.

So slower construction makes higher rents more likely later. It does not give most Manila landlords much power to force through large increases today.

Where could Philippine rents rise fastest from here?

The best chance of stronger Philippine rent growth is currently in neighborhoods where employment or tourism demand is improving faster than the supply of genuinely comparable homes.

BGC and prime Makati fit that description most clearly in Metro Manila. They combine large employment centres with higher-income tenants and a limited pool of apartments that match what corporate renters actually want.

Parts of Cebu can also qualify, particularly around established office, mixed-use and tourism districts. Cebu's inventory is moving faster than Manila's, although the roughly 17,000 units expected through 2029 mean we would check the immediate development pipeline carefully.

Iloilo is worth watching for a different reason. Colliers' latest VisMin work found that the city had moved ahead of Cebu in office transactions during Q1 2026. If that employment growth persists while residential construction stays controlled, nearby rents have room to follow.

The weaker candidates are places where developers can deliver large numbers of almost interchangeable condominiums. Manila Bay shows how quickly rental power disappears when tenants have too many alternatives.

The next leg of Philippine rent growth will probably come from individual employment and lifestyle hubs long before it becomes visible across the whole country.

Are Philippine rents about to surge?

No, a broad Philippine rental surge still looks unlikely in the near term.

The market has improved enough that we should no longer describe it as uniformly weak. JLL is now recording modest Manila rental growth. Prime Makati and BGC are performing better. Cebu has considerably shorter inventory life than the capital. Developers are also cutting back Metro Manila launches, which should help tighten supply later.

Yet the constraints are still too large for a genuine boom. Metro Manila vacancy is expected to peak around 25.6%. The Bay Area could approach 60%. Davao's recent asking-rent sample remains stable. And in much of Manila, tenants can still negotiate among several comparable units.

There is also a difference between nominal and real growth. With national inflation recently at 6.1%, a landlord raising rent by 2% or 3% is still losing purchasing power.

We expect more rent increases from here, but they should appear first in the places where demand is already outrunning local supply. A nationwide jump would require a much tighter housing market than the Philippines currently has.

So, are rents in the Philippines still rising?

Yes, but “rents are rising in the Philippines” is only a good description if we immediately add that the increases are highly selective.

The newest evidence is stronger than it was a year ago. JLL now sees modest rental growth and positive absorption in Manila. Prime Makati and BGC have better leasing conditions. Cebu is clearing condominium inventory much faster than Metro Manila. Some PSA regional data also shows meaningful inflation in ordinary housing rents.

At the same time, Metro Manila is still heading toward roughly 25.6% residential vacancy, the Bay Area remains heavily oversupplied, Davao asking rents look stable, and Colliers sees little room for broad condominium rent growth while so much stock remains available.

That leaves us with a fairly clear answer. Philippine rents are currently moving higher where jobs, location and limited quality supply give landlords some leverage. Plenty of renters elsewhere still have choices and bargaining power.

For someone renting in BGC or prime Makati, the rental recovery is already quite real. For an owner of a generic condo in an oversupplied Manila district, it may barely be visible. And for the Philippines as a whole, we are still looking at a patchwork of local rent increases rather than one national rental boom.

Final question	What the current evidence says	Verdict
Are some Philippine rents rising?	Clearly	Yes
Are prime Manila districts getting stronger?	BGC and Makati are leading	Yes
Is Metro Manila broadly tight?	Vacancy remains extremely high	No
Has the condo glut started improving?	Inventory is clearing faster and launches are falling	Yes
Are provincial cities all seeing rent inflation?	Cebu, Davao and other cities differ sharply	No
Do landlords generally have pricing power?	Only in stronger buildings and locations	Limited
Are rents beating inflation everywhere?	Far from it	No
Are Philippine rents still rising overall?	Selectively rather than broadly	Partly true

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 Kyoto. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.