Perspective on a move to Manila
[B]Visa[/B]
I got a 1 year in and out Visa from the Philippine embassy. It was $100 and allows for a 2 month stay without an extension. It will probably be useful for me as I might take a few trips outside PI.
(I have no intention of getting anything but a tourist visa.).
[B]Money, banks etc [/B]
I believe there have been several posts about this, but I setup both a Schwab account and an HSBC Premier account before I arrived to the Philippines.
Schwab: Free ATM withdraws – I don't have a huge amount with Schwab, so I'm being judicious using this account. I've read that Schwab sometimes kills small accounts without notice.
HSBC Premier: Unless you have a stash of cash laying around, you'll probably need to put some of your investments with them as the minimum is $100 K. Their process is pretty cumbersome as well.
Banking in Philippines: No need to wait until you have your lease or residency. They will use your main Premier address instead of a local address. (This might be handy for someone who does a lot of traveling back and forth.) 2 accounts are opened: (1) USD (2) PHP. It's a one way transfer system, so you have to be careful not to send too much USD to PHP. You can't transfer the money in reverse (PHP back to USD). It takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks and then you pick the paperwork / card up at the branch.
(I brought cash as well.).
[B]Temporary Housing while finding a long-term lease[/B]
I booked a 1 bedroom suite at a long-term discounted rate with a hotel that specializes in corporate housing. This was definitely an expensive way to go. The benefits were that it gave me flexibility to extend my dates rather easily, but paid a premium. I was a little worried about some of my things and I wanted to have a hotel safe: expensive camera, many bank / credit cards, cash etc.
A cheaper avenue would have been AirBNB or another equivalent site. I was worried about having a safe though. It seems some of the nice AirBNB building may have a front desk safe available. This is what the flight attendant told me about the Rockwell.
Unfortunately, having too much flexibility made me procrastinate the apartment search some. Perhaps, I would have been more aggressive with my timeline.
[B]Permanent Housing search (this took 1+ months, but should have been much faster)[/B]
This was pretty daunting and I wasn't really sure where to start. I probably should have taken a less extensive method as I probably missed out on a pretty nice apartment.
I surfed the internet and found a couple different corporate real estate sites. It seemed like they have a pretty extensive listing of all the condo buildings in Makati / BGC / Ortigas (I decided ahead of time that I wanted to be in the nicer part of Manila). I proceeded to make a list of all the buildings and 1 by 1 run a google search on each building to find (1) available rentals (2) more details about the actual condo building. Any ads and information, I then cut and pasted into excel with the hyperlinks to the ads.
This was very tedious and took me much longer than expected. When I was doing this, I dreaded it and procrastinated it for days at a time.
I finally started to email / text responses to the ads and looking at different apartments. I probably looked at 15+ different apartments with 4 different agents. It's a less structured real estate market with respect to agents. Anyone can list / show the apartments and work with the owner. There isn't an exclusive listing agent. Additionally, they didn't seem to keep the ads up to date (some places were not available although the website said they were).
I did find an apartment that I really liked and did get a price lower than the listing. I made a reasonable offer and added a couple things at the owner to make the offer attractive. Obviously, it's a case of interest in the condo in my favor. If there were tons of other offers pouring in, I don't think I would have received a lower price and then would have gone with backup condo options.
I think this is pretty obvious, but every person is going to make an apartment decision based off their individualized preferences and budget. I won't go into too many other details since my preferences were pretty unique / customized.
Thanks to all who gave me pointers and feedback earlier.
[B]Postscript[/B]
While things can be backwards and not efficient here, I've not let it bother me and just accepted that's how things are. I guess just go with the flow instead of getting all worked up.
Additionally, I think I'm done with the bar girl scene. For me, there are enough other things to keep me busy / entertained and I'll use the dating sites, but be very selective on whom I meet. The thought of being here an extended period of time puts things in a different perspective.
