House design and plan in Philippines - Charges

I sketched a 75 sq. meter bungalow and ran it by the foreman that built our 200 sq. meter two story house. The foreman made a few changes and drew up the bill of material for us to order. We tried to get away with no permit but we got busted and had to pay an engineer from the municipality P25,000 to draw up blue prints and make everything legal. The bungalow turned out better than expected and the in laws are very comfortable. We tallied up the material and labor and it came to P1.8 million.

Spent around 200,000 for all those items for 300 sqmt in an upscale development, gives you an idea for larger elegant design

Thank you both for the input

Allow us to congratulate you Roy on your thorough preparations you are obviously making with the planning stages for building your house in the Philippines.

With such careful attention to detail you are showing you will probably halve your problems.

But of course from building experiences anyway there will still be plenty of design, supply and construction issues to go around. But anyway, you certainly do seem to be off to a good start.

Our two story A frame is now about half-way built. Like you we chose our architects carefully.

In the end we found a neighbouring family. The father is a qualified and well experienced professional and his two children are both studying architecture in Manila. His work is well known in this area of Palawan, and his being retired, and living a 5 minute walk from our property, it was a no-brainer to choose him. Plus he guided us into employing the right teams, because they want to work with him.

And now, retired and living locally, he's on-site often. And things have gone very smoothly.

So my point is, don't disregard local professional-reputation and close supervision availability.

An ability to draw all of the numerous plans and drawings etc is really only a fraction of your requirements if you're seeking a smooth, speedy relatively problem-free building experience.

So far for this house we've found that it's our available local head-person / people and their reliable and proven talents first. Then comes everything else, eg good design work, costings, our actual tradesmen, material supply, legals and even the weather etc etc etc all come next.

Can't beat your boots on the ground early, checking out all your local construction resources.

Good luck with this project Roy. Maybe keep us informed of your progress?

Happy trails

Helloo There,

Thank you for a detailed reply

Vet well appreciated.

May I please ask if you are building the house in Puerto Princesa in Palawan?

If so will you be able to kindly send me a mail on ***

So i can share you my contact details and have a chat with you and get more insights on this

Will appreciate a kind reply

Kind Regards

Roy