Real Estate Shenanigans: Volume 2

realestate 11-02-2026

Table of Contents

Introduction

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Check out the first blog post in this series.

This blog post chronicles the multi-year effort to obtain clean titles for the four lots of land we bought that make up our small farm (or slightly-larger than average lot). The total size of the land is 1020 sq meters.

The rough timeline of buying these lots of land:

So, a total of 1.325M PHP ($22,640USD) was spent on buying the land. That’s an average price of 1300PHP/SQM.

Some disclaimers:

High-Level Process

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1) Confirm You’re Legally Allowed to Buy

Foreigners cannot own land in the Philippines (with very narrow exceptions). Your options are:

If you’re foreign, this step happens before you even look at property.

2) Get a Copy of the Title (Not a Photo — a Certified Copy)

Ask for:

Do not rely on what the seller shows you. You pull this yourself or through a representative. I strongly recommend any foreigner involved in a real estate transaction in the Philippines to hire an experienced lawyer.

3) Verify the Title at the Registry of Deeds

You are checking:

This step prevents 80% of disasters.

4) Visual Inspection of the Property

Physically visit the land and confirm:

What’s on paper and what’s on the ground are often different.

5) Draft the Deed of Absolute Sale (DOAS)

This is the core document of the transaction.

It includes:

This must be notarized.

6) Pay the Seller (Usually Manager’s Check)

Avoid cash. Use:

Payment usually happens at the same time the DOAS is signed and notarized.

We made all land payments in cash directly to the seller and we got a receipt for each payment. This is extremely common in the rural provinces.

7) Pay the Taxes (Critical Step People Miss)

Before the title can transfer, the government must be paid:

These are paid to:

You cannot skip the order.

8) Get the BIR Certificate Authorizing Registration (CAR)

This is the golden ticket.

Without the CAR, the Registry of Deeds will not transfer the title.

This step can take weeks if paperwork is incomplete.

9) Transfer the Title at the Registry of Deeds

Submit:

The Registry cancels the old title and issues a new one in your name.

This is when you actually own it. Or, your Filipina girlfriend, or the holding company, as the case may be.

10) Update the Tax Declaration at the Assessor’s Office

Final step people forget.

The title may be in your name, but the tax declaration is still in the seller’s name until you update it. That causes problems later. This one got us on the first lot of land.

The Reality

From signing to having the new title in hand: 1 to 3 months is normal…or multiple years…

Rushing any step is how people get burned.

The Golden Rule

In the Philippines, you do not own land when:

You own land when:

The new title is issued in your name by the Registry of Deeds.

Government Offices

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Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR): The Philippine government agency responsible for collecting national taxes and enforcing tax laws.

Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR): The Philippine government agency responsible for land reform—specifically, redistributing agricultural land to farmers and regulating how farmland can be owned, used, and transferred.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources: Philippine government agency in charge of public land, natural resources, and environmental regulation. If the DAR cares about who can own agricultural land, the DENR cares about what the land actually is and what you’re allowed to do on it.

Security and Exchange Commission (SEC): The PH SEC does pretty much the same thing as the US SEC. Possibly with a bit more paperwork. It concerns itself with privately held stock corporations as well as publicly-traded entities.

Municipal Registry of Deeds: The local government office where land titles and real property documents are officially recorded. It operates under the Land Registration Authority (LRA) and is the Philippine equivalent of a county recorder’s office in the U.S.

Municipal Accessors Office: The Municipal/City Assessor’s Office is the local government office responsible for valuing real property for taxation and keeping the official tax map and property records for the municipality. If the Registry of Deeds proves who owns the land, the Assessor’s Office tracks what the property is, where it is, how it’s classified, and how much tax you owe on it.

High-Level Timeline — Our Transactions

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In January, 2022, the seller’s lawyer handled the title transfer. I wasn’t in the Philippines at this time. In retrospect, I wish I had been because multiple problems emerged from the first title that was produced.

From June, 2024 - December, 2024, tried to get a law firm in Manila to engage. Never really got them to hit the go button. Big lesson #1: Always have a local lawyer deal with the real estate transaction.

From Jan, 2025 - Apr, 2025, I learned how complicated actually using a filipino domestic stock corporation actually is.

April 10th, 2025:

Initally, reached out to a local lawyer in our province that I had previously used for notarizing documents. As we’ve discussed before, the Philippines likes its notarized documents; so, you always need to have a notary nearby. In the Philippines, only lawyers can notarize documents.

At this point, for two of the lots, we hadn’t started the title transfer process because the plan was still to have a real estate holding company own the land. The girlfriend and I would own the company stock. Unfortunately, getting the company organized and fully setup was just dragging on. That was a learning process that will be another blog post.

Although, I didn’t know it at the time, there were multiple issues with the first lot’s title. We figured that out a few weeks from now.

The other goals were:

To make things more intersting, the original owner of the land died since we had bought the first plot of land. The family hadn’t completed the transfer of land to the heirs’ name(s). So, we had to get that straightened out as well. The original seller’s family claimed their lawyer said the titles of the remaining unsold lots didn’t need to be transferred to them. As I understand it, if they did this, they’d have to pay capital gains on it; so, I can understand the desire to not have to do this.

Up to this point, we’d paid taxes the last couple of years on the house and the first two plots of land, but there was a convoluted process where the tax bill came through the original owner’s family. I was highly motivated to distance myself from that situation.

Given all these details, on an upnote, we paid cash, upfront, quickly, for each plot of land; so, the seller should be reasonably cooperative. Still she worked six days a week and could be difficult to contact during the day except on Sundays.

The seller had a Geodetic Survey done of the entire original lot that had been subdivided. Apparently, this survey was accepted by the local officials (with the Land Registration Authority as I understand it).

At this point, the largest obstacle to using the new real estate holding company the way I intended was that we had to get a local business license for the corporation. That requires a bunch of auxiliary permits and steps. Starting with a board resolution and secretary’s certificate. In order to produce those required the law firm that provided corporation governance services to do things. Getting them to deliver the required paperwork always involving multiple times, waiting a month or more, and getting multiple version of every document where each is wrong in some critical way.

I, also, asked that all invoices be sent to me directly. I’ve generally paid every invoice within 24 hours via bank transfers. I admit, I made a mistake one time and missed it until a couple of weeks later. I apologized for that and prompty got the invoice paid—the lawyer could have followed up stating payment had not yet been received, but didn’t.

April 14th, 2025

The lawyer responded. She agreed to assist with this complex real estate transaction. She was going to start by contacting the seller to confirm who in their family needed to sign and the LRA to confirm the process for titling for a corporation.

She advised starting with the deed of conveyance for lots #2 & #3. However, it would require a board resolution from the holding company authorizing me to act on behalf of the corporation to buy the property. Note, the commentary in the last section about troubles with obtaining my board resolutions..

She further confirmed payment information via bank transfer or GCash. That is one thing that is convinient here in the Philippines. Most businesses accept GCash or bank transfer.

After talking to the LRA, it was confirmed that a board resolution authorizing the purchase of the specific parcels of land and a secretary’s certificate indicating the resolution and the officers authorized to sign the deed of sale and other documents was needed. Furthermore, the board resolution must authorize the purchase of a techcnical descriptio of the property. There was a hope that the original seller could provide documentation that would satisfy this requirement. I asked if the board resolution could be somewhat generic and just refer to “various properties in the local area.”

For the first lot, we had technical description in the title paperwork from the first attempt to do the title transfer. For the second and third lots, we’d have to pay to have a proper technical description created or get it from the seller.

The first step to start the proces with the LRA for lots #2 and #3 would be to execute a Deed of Conveyance for each property. This documents (for each lot) is then submitted to the LRA to start the process. However, before we could do that the board resolution and secretary’s certificate was needed.

We also needed to sign a special Power of Attorney allowing the lawyer to act on behalf of the holding company.

At this point, the lawyer told me that the fees for her services would be:

April 16th, 2025

At this point, I informed the laywer that I wanted to move forward and the prices she quoted were acceptable.

Also, at this point, I decided that the real estate holding company idea was more-or-less Dead-On-Arrival and a new approach was needed. So, at this point, I decided to put the land in the girlfriend’s name and have her lease it to me. There are many details on this approach that will be the subject of a future blog post in this series. In the meantime, we still have a long jorney just to complete the sales process.

Removing the holding company from this equation removed several obstacles that just weren’t going anywhere quickly.

The lawyer agreed that this approach would be much simpler and stated that the fees would be the same as quoted earlier.

Very well. Let’s get it done. At this point, I reiterated that I wanted clean titles.

At this point, the lawyer said she was still attempting to get a hold of the seller. And, she happened to get a hold of her later that day.

It was confirmed that there were only two living heirs to the original owner. The person we were dealing with and another family member willing to sign paperwork stating they had no claim to the property. Therefore, there was no need to transfer the title to the living family member’s names.

We, also, learned that we needed to execute an Extrajudicial Settlement of Estate with Absolute Dead of Sale with the two surviving heirs as sellers. The seller’s family member was cooperating with the process. There would be a separate dead of sale for lot #2 and #3.

At this point, it was identified that Plot #1 was actually 225 sqm per the Geodetic Survey, but the original deed of sale from 2022 stated it was 150 sqm. The original deed of sale was never completed, probably, because of this descrepency. My girlfriend went back to the LRA office several times to try to get the final Deed of Sale for lot #1, but it was never available three+ years later.

The lawyer also needed receipts for payments made for lots #2 and #3. It took a couple of days to find all of those. At this point, I had bought a filing cabinet and organized everything. During my process of moving out of my apartment in the US, I digitized a lot of records, through away a bunch of stuff that was never going to be needed again, and the rest I brought with me. That was a heavy suitcase.

April 19th, 2025

To remedy the issues with the lot #1 Deed of Sale, the LRA stated that my girlfriend and the notary public should execute an Affidavit of Confirmation of Sale and state the correct land area size. The original deed, land title, tax declaration, payment receipts, and Geodetic Survey has to be attached to this.

The Geodetic Survey would come from the seller. The lawyer was trying to get this from her.

About this time, I also noticed that the sale price we paid on the deed of sale for lot #1 didn’t match what we paid. As far as I could tell, this doesn’t impact us, so I let that one go. I don’t think this was ever corrected. I suspect the original seller reported this number the way they did to reduce the capital gains taxes that would be due. The seller generally pays the taxes associated with a real estate transaction in the Philippines.

April 29th, 2025

The Affidavit of Confirmation of Sale for lot #1 was signed by my girlfriend and the notary.

The seller still had to give the Geodetic Survey, a copy of original seller’s death certificate, and a copy of other surviving heir’s ID to the lawyer.

May 2nd, 2025

The seller met with our lawyer. Some documetns were delivered, but not all.

Right around this time, fiestas were kicking off, this contributed to slowing things down.

May 8th, 2025

The lawyer reported she is still waiting for documents from the seller. In particular, the death certificates of various family members to confirm that there are no other living heirs and birth certificates of the seller and the other surviving heir. The birth certificates were needed to prove the family lineage—this was being done in lieu of the titles being transferred to the original owner’s heirs.

May 10th, 2025

The Extrajudicial Settlement of Estate with Absolute Sale for Plots #2 and #3 were ready. However, we had to obtain proof of the original seller’s exact address. Once that proof was provided from the seller, my girlfriend and the seller could sign to kick off the title transfer process.

May 13th, 2025

The Extraajudicial Settlement of Estate with Absolute Sale for Plots #2 an #3 were signed and copies were sent to me.

I reviewed the documents and confirmed they looked correct as far as I could tell. Still some parts of the technical information I didn’t understand in the documents. It’s rather different from how all this works in the USA.

The lawyer also stated she was also waiting on a Special Power of Attorney to be signed by the seller. This is another LRA requirement.

June 3rd, 2025

I followed up with the lawyer to get the current status of all the various real estate transactions.

The lawyer had been busy and hadn’t submitteed the Lot #1 paperwork to start the process of correcting the title. On an upnote, all paperwork had been received from the seller for Lot #1.

At this point, I was begining to come to terms with how long this insane process was going to take.

June 4th, 2025

The lawyer sent an updated stating the Special Power of Attorney from the seller’s family member had been received.

Furthermore, she’d start the processing of the transfer of title for all three plots the next week and that a 50% downpayment was needed at this point.

June 14th, 2025

I received an update from the lawyer stating that the processing of the transfer of land title to my girlfriend’s name had started for all three lots.

At this point, the LRA stated that the seller has to submit the blueprint of the approved subdivison plan of the original lot. The seller was now in Manila and wouldn’t be back until the end of the month. At this moment, I was in Manila. I asked if I could meet the seller to get the document back to the province more quickly. Apparently, some of the documents were back at her home, but there was no one there to retrieve it, and some of the documents were with her in Manila. I decided to just leave it. The situation would eventually resolve itself.

The seller stated she did NOT want to send original documents back to the province via any courier service. I can appreciate being hesitant to do this given how difficult and expensive it can be to replace some of these documents. I’ve personally sent my passport through LBC Express multiple times without any significant incident.

June 30th, 2025

I checked in with the lawyer on this day.

Nothing changed. The seller hadn’t returned from Manila yet.

July 13, 2025

I checked inw ith the laywer on this day.

July 14th, 2025

The lawyer responded stating that she now waiting on the original marriage certificate for the deceased original seller and the technical description of Lot #3.

The lawyer also shared with me the complete list of requirements she’s attempting to assemble from various government agencies.

This day was also the first time the lawyer mentioned the the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). The lawyer had gone to the DAR office a few days prior to the the Municpal Assessor’s Certificate of Aggregate Landholding (CAL) and the Munnicpal Agrarian Reform Program Officer (MARPO) certificate however, the Assessor and the DAR official were on official travel and will be back on July 17 as posted outside their office. One can only get the Provincial Assessor’s CAL if one already has the Municpal Assessor’s CAL.

For the BIR requirements, for the Capital Gains Tax (CGT), the lawyer needs the original Marriage Certificate of the original seller. At this point, there was a screw up and the lawyer sent me a bill for the capital gains tax and an estate tax. I pointed out that was supposed to go to the seller. We got that straightend out twenty minutes later. Lesson #2: Review every bill / invoice and make sure you understan what you are being charged for. Plenty of other mistakes will be far smaller than capital gains tax on land.

At this point, I also learned that for the original sale of the property, the seller convinced my girlfriend who is far too kind and trusting to pay the CGT and Estate Tax. The title transfer registration applications for Lots #2 & #3 were updated to specifically state the seller is responsible for paying all related taxes.

July 22nd, 2025

I received an update from the lawyer stating:

My response to the lawyer:

and-on-and-on it goes.

The lawyer also shared that each time she went back to the BIR, LRA, and other offices, there seemed to be a new requirement(s) that needed to be satisfied.

Aug 8th, 2025

I received the following updates from the lawyer:

BIR Tax Clearance: finally able to submit all the requirements for the tax clearance at the BIR earlier today. I will go back there next Monday upon the approval of the application. In order to receive tax clearance from the BIR for this transaction, the seller has to pay the related taxes—yet another step that I have absolutely no control over. Next lesson learned: if you really want to screw someone over in PH, sell them the land, take the money, don’t bother paying the taxes. The real estate transaction will be stuck in limbo forever or you’ll have to just pay it yourself I suppose.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Clearance: still waiting for the technical description of Plot #2 from the seller. The engineer hasn’t updated her yet as to when he will be able to give it to her. The lawyer was apparently contacting the seller every couple of days for this detail.

DAR Clearance: The local DAR officer has not yet inspected the three lots. This person always seemed to be out of town for official functions. The lawyer was told to go back to the DAR office on August 18th.

August 22nd, 2025

Received the following updates from the lawyer:

BIR: The seller has paid taxes for lots #2 & #3. All of the receipts for the paid taxes (CGT, DST and estate tax). The BIR officer will send a message when the tax clearance is ready for pickup. However, they did not give a timeline when it will be available.

DAR: All requirements submitted last Tuesday. According to the DAR officer, the approval for the DAR clearance will take a week.

The engineer still hasn’t given the seller the technical description of Lot #2.

To summarize, the documents needed to move forward with the title transfers are:

Once those are available, all the documents will be submitted to the LRA for the transfer of title.

A couple of days before this, the lawyer contacted my girlfriend directly and asked for 6K PHP. Usually, all requests for payment went directly to me. At this point, I learned this was for payment of the DAR clearance certificate (2K PHP per lot). Why that required getting cash from the girlfriend was never entirely clear.

Oct 3rd, 2025

Received the following update from the lawyer:

Finally able to submit the application for Lot #3 at the Registry of Deeds (RD) today. The new title will be released after 20 days to a month. Upon claiming the new title, I will subsequently submit the application for Lot #1.

The application for Lot #2 cannot be submitted yet because we are still missing the technical description. There is still some type of issue with getting this from the engineer.

Oct 16th, 2025

I pinged the lawyer asking for additional information about the delay with the technical description of Lot #2.

At this point, I was seeking options for how to inspire (read, threaten, through legal means) the seller to get the flippin document.

When the lawyer insisted on further information from the seller, we were informed that technical description is with the DENR Regional Office. Unfortunately, it is only the engineer who is allowed to claim it. So, at this point, we started bothering the engineer directly.

Nov 12th, 2025

I once again pinged the lawyer asking for an update.

The lawyer informed me that she talked to the seller’s engineer recently and he said that he already requested for the release of the technical description of Lot #2 from the DENR Regional Office. He said that it would be released during the current month.

As for the titling of Lot #3, it is taking longer as expected because, as per the LRA personnel I talked to last week, there was a problem in their national system that needed to be resolved first. Currently, it is in the Approval stage as reflected in the LRA tracking website. I have been calling their hotline but no one is answering. I’ll follow-up on this.

It should be noted that during November, 2025, there were national holidays, local holidays, and typhoons. It wasn’t a productive month for anyone.

Nov 22, 2025

I received the following updates from the lawyer:

The lawyer and the engineer are going to go to the RD to explain the second point.

This part where the RD office is asking for things that the lawyer, engineer, and DENR regional office all agree do not exist and never have is an example of where I have to ask if anyone in this province has ever done a real estate transaction before? What is the problem?

I don’t know, but the end is in sight.

Dec 1st, 2025

Got the following update from the lawyer.

So, at this point, I needed to find a Geodetic Engineer or find one that charges less than the seller’s engineer.

Everything slowed down at this point due to the holidays and continued bad weather—typhoon season.

January 3rd, 2026

The girlfriend and her family went to a resort a few hours drive from here. I stay at the house because I was heading to Manila on my way back to the US. While at the resort, they ran into the lawyer while attending church there. This part isn’t particularly important.

I sent the lawyer a quick note saying Happy New Year.

Jan 9th, 2026

The girlfriend received a form from the local government for an agricultural land inspection that is to be conducted on January 16th. I sent that information to the lawyer.

The lawyer confirmed that is part of the DAR process. Lot #1 were the house is located is still listed (zoned) as agricultural use. So, we will need to file paperwork with the DAR to have that lot converted to residential use. An open question at this point is how that status is impacted by combining the titles into one.

The lawyer further instructed us to tell this inspector that the house was built after the land was bought.

January 15th, 2026

Since early December, we’d been trying to find a local Geodetic Engineer that might give us a better price than the one the seller used. They kept not responding to her. I never really understood what the problem was other than every Geodetic Engineer in the province is an asshole. So, I went ahead and asked the lawyer to have the seller’s engineer to go ahead and do the survey for our lots.

The lawyer told me that the title for Lot #3 was finally completed. She picked it up from the Registry of Deeds and gave it to the girlfriend. I hadn’t talked to my girlfriend yet that day; I was in the US at this point.

The lawyer stated that she would submit the next application for Lot #2 on the following Monday.

So, on to the next problem.

The girlfriend received the tax bill for the house right around this time. Since, we paid the house tax bill (around 18K PHP) before January 31st, we got a 10% discount. But, when she tried to get the tax bill for the three lots of land, she was not able to get a tax bill. The municipal assessors office told the girlfriend that they need to talk to the lawyer about the tax bill for the three lots of land.

The lawyer said she would talk to the official in the assessors office as soon as possible.

Jan 16th, 2026

The lawyer sent an update to the seller’s engineer asking for a quote for doing the three lots.

He responded with a quote of 35K PHP + 8K PHP = 43K PHP for the three lots.

Jan 17th, 2026

I pinged a friend of mine who recently bought land in another province to ask if this is a normal price for a Geodetic Survey. He said his was 33K PHP for 4484 (one lot). That’s quite a difference, at least, measured by total square meters.

The engineer responded (through the laywer) that my local region has a price schedule on surveys with tariffs that my friend’s area does differently. I received a link to the published fee schedule. They are not making it up.

In the grand scheme of things, the price isn’t that high, the price different isn’t that great, and I don’t have any other engineers who actually responded. So, I guess we’re going to use that guy.

January 19th, 2026

The lawyer sent an update stating that the application for the second title was submitted the day before.

Jan 23rd, 2026

The lawyer sent an update saying that she had talked to the girlfriend earlier that day and she mentioned that we were planning to buy a fourth lot of land that touches our existing property. I’ve been holding off on this because I wanted to complete all the transfer paperwork on the first three before biting off more insanity. Maybe waiting wasn’t the correct call.

The lawyer recommended we pause the Geodetic Survey and combining the lots until we purchase the fourth lot of land and complete the title transfer for it. That makes sense. So, new plan, went ahead and contacted the seller to initiate that process.

Jan 24th, 2026

I responded to the lawyer to confirm that yes we were planning to buy the forth lot of land.

The seller confirmed it was still available.

The engineer stated it is better to transfer all the titles first to my girlfriend before surveying the lots for the consolidation process because the DENR is strict with this.

Jan 25th, 2026

The lawyer and I agreed on the fees for doing a title transfer of the fourth lot of land. Naturally, the prices lawyers charge for this went up in 2026 from 2025. I did get a 5K discount. The seller agreed to a payment plan over the course of several months to provide the full amount.

The lawyer is standingby until the full payment is made.

Jan 29th, 2026

Received the following update from the lawyer.

About five minutes after receiving that, I finished jumping up and down cussing. I then responded back stating let’s get it done and fixed.

At this point, I was starting to think it may very well be easier to put humans in space then to complete a real estate transaction in the rural Philippines.

Also, I’m not entirely sure I understand how we got the original building permit if the Lot #1 DAR classification was incorrect. Apparently, the DAR “zoning” requirements are not aprt of the municipality building permit application process checks / requirements. That seems like a huge gap that negates the entire point of the DAR. Or, maybe it just reveals that the whole classification concept is another government money grab. Or, attempt at one since most of the locals will just leave the DAR status in limbo.

At this point, the lawyer set off to get the tax and DAR issues straightened out.

My Filipino friend suggested we show there is a couple chickens walking around the house (outside) and some fruit plants and claim the lot the house is on is still used for agriculture.  I was tempted to try that just to see what would happen. Since the DAR officers had already been out to our land twice, it seemed unlikely they would come back again.

The same friend,also, said the tax declaration stuff was automatically transferred for his land in Palawan to his name. Apparently, my province is a bit less efficient in that regards. Your mileage may vary depending on where you are buying land.

Feb 3rd, 2026

I got the following update from the lawyer.

February 10th, 2026

Got the following update from the lawyer.

Summary — For Now

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We’ve made progress. This isn’t done yet. This blog post is no one of the longer posts that I have ever created. Plus, that’s as much of the story as there is to tell.

In a few months, I’ll write Part 3 of this series and cover the rest of this real estate transaction.

Thinking of Moving to the Philippines? Get Reliable Guidance

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If you want to move with confidence instead of relying on random comments online, we can guide you every step of the way.

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