Most people planning a move to the Philippines have heard the warnings.

Watch out for fake landlords. Don't trust listings that seem too cheap. Be careful with strangers at the airport.

Good advice. But none of that is the scam that actually costs expats the most money.

The scam that drains thousands from otherwise smart, well-researched Americans is completely legal. Nobody goes to jail for it. The person doing it will smile at you the entire time. And by the time you realize what happened, you have already signed the lease.

It's called the foreigner markup. And it is so normalized here that most locals don't even think of it as dishonest.

You find a condo listing online. The photos look great. The price seems reasonable. You view the unit, it checks out, and you sign the lease.

What you don't know is that the Filipino couple who moved out six months ago was paying 45,000 pesos per month.

You just signed for 75,000.

That is $550 per month more than market rate. Over a one-year lease that is $6,600 quietly extracted from your retirement savings — not through fraud, not through force, but simply because you had no idea what the unit was actually worth.

Rental prices in BGC and Makati are not publicly standardized. There is no Zillow equivalent showing you what comparable units actually rented for last month. The only way to know the real market rate is to have someone on the ground who has seen hundreds of units and knows exactly what leverage looks like in a Philippine lease negotiation.

Without that person, you are negotiating blind against someone who does this every single day.

We helped a client named Michael negotiate his BGC unit from 85,000 pesos per month down to 65,000. That one conversation saved him $4,800 over his lease. He said it best — you are basically paying for yourself.

Across rent alone, the average first-time expat without local guidance overpays between $5,000 and $8,000 in their first year.

You don't need to spend years learning the market. You just need someone in your corner who already knows it. Someone who has walked hundreds of units, knows the landlords, and will negotiate in your favor instead of theirs.

That is exactly what our team does. And it is why the expats who come to us first don't end up paying the foreigner tax on the biggest expense of their new life.

Click here to start your move to the Philippines the right way

Travel Well,

Evan Lorezca

The Savvy Expat