Finding A Place For Your Second Home

A guide on where to look and what to look for.

- Lloyd Llaga

Living close to one’s workplace is a common marketing hook of developers these days. Between the ever-worsening metro traffic and commute headaches and horror stories, this new breed of living spaces is practical and tempers what real estate professionals call ‘friction of distance.’ However, saving valuable time, resources, and energy to getting where you need to be has a big trade-off: you mix work and play into one compact place.

For some families, one workaround to this is having a Sunday getaway home that promises stretches of quality time and respite from the metro’s mayhem. And developers have started to understand this, which is why more pockets and districts have mushroomed on the outskirts of Manila that offer an oasis a drive’s worth away from the city. If you have money to spare for a vacation home and are looking to invest in the best place possible, here’s a rough guide of where to look. Specifically, these are some of the up-and-coming locations that are the most ideal to build a second home for the family.

Tagaytay

Just 50km south of Manila and the closest one can have to a Baguio atmosphere, Tagaytay offers a quiet refuge with a magnificent view of the Taal Volcano and a smattering of restaurants offering the infamous bulalo. Heading to the center of the city takes about an hour and a half of steady cruising down the South Luzon Expressway and some uphill drive through Sta. Rosa City.