If you've been following the headlines about Metro Manila's condo glut, you've probably formed a single, uniform picture: an oversupplied market across the board, developers under pressure in every CBD, and discounts wherever you look. The 1Q 2026 data tells a more textured story, one where the distribution of that inventory matters just as much.

Metro Manila is currently carrying roughly 81,000 unsold condominium units across 621 actively selling buildings, equivalent to about 31 months of supply at recent take-up rates. That overhang remains elevated, and it remains a structural headwind on the market. But the units are not spread evenly, and understanding where they sit helps explain where conditions are softer and where they are tighter.

A word of context before the numbers: 1Q 2026 showed an early uptick in demand, not necessarily a sustained recovery. Affordability constraints, compressed yields, and external risks continue to weigh on the outlook, and the sustainability of the recent improvement will depend heavily on global stability, financing conditions, and buyer confidence. The detail below is meant to inform decisions, not to suggest the market has turned a corner.

The Headline Number, Unpacked

The 81,000-unit figure is the most-quoted statistic in Philippine residential property today. What it tends to obscure is the split between what is already finished and what is still being built.

About 32,400 units (40%) are now Ready for Occupancy: buildings completed from the 1970s through 1Q 2026 that are still carrying unsold inventory.
About 48,600 units (60%) are pre-selling, with turnover dates extending from 2Q 2026 through 2032.

That 40% RFO share is worth watching. RFO units are finished and sitting on developer balance sheets, which is generally where payment terms and price incentives tend to be more flexible. Pre-selling inventory, by contrast, is being absorbed against developer timelines that stretch several years out, which suggests the overhang is unlikely to clear quickly even if demand continues to firm.

Demand Is Showing Early Signs of Life, Led by End-Users

In 1Q 2026, demand reached 7,732 units, up 19% year-on-year from 1Q 2025. We read this as an early uptick and a normalization of first-quarter patterns rather than a broad-based shift in momentum.

The buyers behind this movement are primarily end-users, not investors. Speculative investor interest has stayed muted, and the reason is largely yield-related: rental yields have eased to an average of roughly 3.8% in the primary market and 4.6% in the secondary market, with rents continuing to soften and normalize. At those levels, yields remain insufficient to offset the elevated capital values of primary units, which has limited renewed investor appetite. Until rental rates and capital values move closer into balance, investor demand is likely to remain subdued, with end-users continuing to set the pace.

The practical implication is that the math looks different depending on why someone is in the market. For end-users buying a home to live in, developer promotions and extended interest-free payment terms are currently doing much of the work. For those buying for yield, the picture is more constrained, and the secondary market, where pricing has adjusted further, tends to reflect yield realities more closely than primary pricing.

A Counterintuitive Detail: BGC and Makati Are Among the Tighter Submarkets

Here is where neighborhood-level inventory data adds something the headline number cannot. The 81,000 units are not evenly distributed, and several of the prime CBDs that many observers assume sit at the center of the oversupply are actually among the tighter submarkets in the metro.

Here is the unsold supply by district in 1Q 2026:

The contrast is notable. BGC and Taguig combined hold around 2,100 unsold units, and Makati around 3,800, while Quezon City alone carries roughly 19,300. That is several times the inventory of the prime CBDs.

This complicates the standard "Metro Manila oversupply" narrative. The bulk of the unsold inventory tends to be concentrated in a handful of districts, with Quezon City carrying the largest share, both in finished RFO stock and in the pre-selling pipeline. The prime CBDs, by comparison, are carrying comparatively thin unsold inventory on the new-supply side. None of this changes the elevated metro-wide overhang; it simply locates it more precisely.

The Lower-Middle Segment: An Emerging Affordability Gap

One pocket of the residential dashboard points to a widening affordability gap rather than a clear-cut opportunity.

In the Lower-Middle bracket (PHP 1.8M to PHP 2.3M), 1Q 2026 demand rose sharply, up 1,022% quarter-on-quarter to roughly 100 units off a very low base, while new launches in the same bracket registered none in 1Q 2026, consistent with effectively zero annual launches in both 2024 and 2025.

Unsold supply in this segment sits at around 3,800 units, concentrated in Quezon City, Manila, and Pasay. Taken together, these data points suggest an affordability gap: interest appears to be building at this price point, while developers have largely stepped away from launching new product to serve it. As construction and land costs have risen, much of the new supply has shifted toward higher price brackets, leaving a thinner pipeline at the more accessible end of the market. It is a dynamic worth monitoring rather than a settled conclusion.

Growth Corridors Outside Metro Manila Continue to Outperform

For positive price movement in the residential market, the more resilient activity in 1Q 2026 was outside Metro Manila, in the infrastructure-anchored growth corridors where extended interest-free payment terms in select developments have continued to support price growth.

The South, namely Cavite and Laguna, continues to anchor much of this activity, supported by township development and the CALABA infrastructure push. The North, anchored by the New Manila International Airport (NMIA) and the Clark–Subic corridor, is drawing growing interest from mixed-use townships and industrial estates in Bulacan and Pampanga.

The double-digit quarterly price growth in three of these four provinces stands in contrast to the more subdued conditions in Metro Manila's condo market, a reminder that residential momentum in 1Q 2026 was more visible in these corridors than in the metro itself.

What This Means If You're Looking at the Market

A few measured takeaways from the 1Q 2026 data, offered as context rather than a prompt to act:

For end-users considering Metro Manila, the broadest selection and the more flexible terms currently sit in districts carrying heavier unsold inventory, namely Quezon City, followed by the Ortigas cluster and the Bay Area corridor. As always, individual building, location, and developer terms vary widely, and affordability remains a real constraint.

For investors focused on prime CBDs, BGC, Makati, and the tighter parts of Taguig are not where the bulk of the oversupply sits. The secondary market in these districts continues to price at discounts to primary, which value-oriented investors may find worth examining, though yields remain compressed and selectivity matters.

For OFWs and others underwriting for yield, the arithmetic is challenging at current primary yields relative to borrowing costs. The secondary market has adjusted further and may merit closer study, but the case for caution is real, and there is no urgency implied here.

For those watching growth markets, the South and North corridors outside Metro Manila have shown more positive price momentum, supported by infrastructure delivery such as NMIA, NLEX 8.2, NSCR, and the SLEX extensions.

Across all of these, our view echoes the broader market guidance for the period: given heightened global and geopolitical risks, a cautious stance is warranted, one that preserves liquidity, assesses conditions carefully, and avoids aggressive moves until the picture stabilizes.

The Bottom Line

Metro Manila's residential market in 1Q 2026 is best understood as a cautious, early-stage recovery operating against a still-elevated supply overhang. The 81,000 unsold units and 31 months of supply remain genuine headwinds. What the granular data adds is location: that inventory tends to be concentrated in specific districts, that several prime CBDs are carrying comparatively little of it, that an affordability gap may be emerging at the lower-middle price point, and that the clearer price momentum has been outside the metro.

That level of detail is meant to support better-informed decisions in an uncertain environment, which is precisely why neighborhood-level inventory data matters more in 2026 than it has in some time.

Ready to look at the numbers behind your next move? Whether you're an end-user evaluating an RFO opportunity, an investor underwriting a secondary-market entry, or an OFW exploring the growth corridors outside Metro Manila, LPC's Residential Sales and Leasing team can help. Email inquire@leechiu.com to start the conversation.

Source: Leechiu Property Consultants 1Q 2026 Philippine Property Market Report. All figures reflect 1Q 2026 data unless otherwise stated.