Condo shopping? Expect better payment terms in best buyer’s market in decades

BUSINESS DISTRICT. The skyline of Bonifacio Global City. Patrick Roque/Wikimedia Commons Two of the country's biggest condo developers, Ayala Land and SM Prime, are holding back launches and working down inventories as they compete harder for cautious homebuyers MANILA, Philippines – If you’ve been waiting for a better time to buy a condominium, the balance of power may be shifting in your favor. Two of the country’s biggest property developers – Ayala Land and SM Prime – are sitting on sizable residential inventories, holding back new projects, and concentrating instead on selling units they already have. For Ayala Land, that has meant stretching payment periods to as long as five years for some properties and offering selective discounts to buyers willing to pay faster. Ayala Land chief operating officer Mikhail Cruz said the terms depend on the location, age of the project, and how quickly units are selling. For projects with older inventory and slower sales, “we’re more aggressive and we give longer payment terms around five years,” Cruz said during the company’s first-half earnings briefing on Monday, August 10. For other projects, Ayala may instead encourage buyers to pay over a shorter two- or three-year period through selective discounts. The incentives come as Metro Manila’s condo market continues to carry the burden of excess supply. Leechiu Property Consultants said in its latest first half 2026 report that unsold condominium inventory reached an all-time high 82,900 units in the second quarter. But demand has not disappeared. Buyers took up 7,255 units during the quarter, while residential demand grew 6% in the first half compared with the previous six months. Leechiu described the current environment as the “best buyer’s market in decades,” with ready for occupancy discounts being record-deep. Developers are clearing stock For Ayala, its aggressive strategy appears to be working well. The developer has cut the value of its residential inventory from P214 billion in 2024 to just P110 billion by June, excluding its paused projects such as The Laurean. In other words, it has cleared nearly half the value of the unsold units it was carrying two years ago. Ayala has also deliberately stopped the launch of new residential projects during the first half so its sales force could concentrate on existing units. Despite that, it recorded P22.3 billion in residential reservation sales in the second quarter alone. Ayala Land president and CEO Anna Margarita Dy said that made the performance particularly encouraging because the sales team was selling entirely from existing inventory in what management described as a highly competitive market. “We actually feel that to have achieved this kind of sales levels with no additional, no new launches in the market is quite a good performance for our sales organization,” Dy said. Inventory has now fallen to around 15 months of sales, better than Ayala’s roughly 18-month level before the pandemic. SM Prime is taking a similarly cautious approach to new residential supply, although its strategy is less about loosening payment terms and more about improving the quality of its sales while working through existing inventory. The Sy-led developer had around 29,000 unsold units as of June, with 13% ready for occupancy. SM Prime said it would launch no new Metro Manila residential projects for the rest of 2026, with management instead taking a “wait and see” approach for boh their core and premium developments. “We still have quite a bit of inventory to work through. So, we’re focusing on selling those inventories for the time being,” SM Prime executive vice president Cris Noel Torres said during a briefing on Monday. Sales have nevertheless held up, with first-half reservation sales at around P25 billion, roughly level with the previous year. Torres also said high-downpayment and spot-cash sales had increased “meaningfully” year on year, which SM Prime sees as a sign of a stronger buyer profile that could help reduce cancellations. – Rappler.com How does this make you feel? Loading