The first thing most Americans say when they land in BGC is some version of the same thing.

This is not what I expected.

They expected Southeast Asia. Chaotic streets. Tropical heat and open drainage. The kind of environment you visit on vacation but would never consider as a base for a serious life.

What they find instead is a skyline of glass towers, immaculate streets, armed security at every entrance, and a city so clean and organized that Zane — a world traveler who had been to nine countries across Asia — said BGC was the closest thing to Singapore he had ever seen.

Without the price tag.

That one sentence is worth understanding fully before you dismiss it.

Singapore is the global benchmark for a modern Asian city. It is what every other Asian city gets compared to when someone wants to describe excellence. Clean. Safe. Efficient. World-class infrastructure. English everywhere. A financial and professional hub that attracts the best of the best from every corner of the world.

It is also one of the most expensive cities on earth. More expensive than Tokyo. More expensive than Seoul. Comparable to Manhattan in cost of living at the high end. A one-bedroom apartment in a quality building in Singapore's central district runs $4,000 to $6,000 per month minimum. A penthouse runs multiples of that.

BGC is what happens when you take Singapore's standard of living and remove the price.

BGC — Bonifacio Global City — sits in the heart of Metro Manila. It was master-planned from scratch which is why it does not look like anything else in the Philippines and does not look like anything else in Southeast Asia.

The streets are wide and walkable. There is almost no trash. The buildings are modern glass towers with underground parking, rooftop amenities, and lobby security that rivals any luxury building in Manhattan. Every major international brand, restaurant chain, and luxury retailer has a presence here. The food options span Japanese, Korean, Italian, American, Mexican, and every other cuisine a discerning palate could want.

BGC has its own business district, its own arts district, its own park system, its own hospital — St. Luke's Medical Center Global City, just ranked among the Top 250 World's Best Hospitals by Newsweek — and its own private membership clubs including Manila House, which is where our team takes VIP clients for introductory meetings.

Walter — a former government lawyer from Hawaii who has lived in Colombia, Panama, Honduras, and Mexico City — said he had never found it this easy to acclimate to a new environment. BGC removed the friction of international living and replaced it with the energy of a city that is genuinely alive.

This is where BGC surprises people most.

American cities — even premium ones — have infrastructure problems that most residents have simply accepted as normal. Homeless encampments in San Diego and Los Angeles. Crime in Miami and Atlanta. Potholes and deteriorating public spaces in New York and Chicago. The kind of slow urban decay that nobody talks about because it has become the baseline.

BGC has none of that.

BGC has security guards posted every 50 feet. Every building has armed guards at the entrance. The streets are swept regularly. The parks are maintained. The sidewalks are even and well-lit. Walking around BGC at 2am feels safer than walking through most American city centers at 7pm — Todd from Washington said exactly that and he was not exaggerating.

The internet infrastructure in BGC is fast and reliable. The hospitals are world-class. The malls — SM Aura, Uptown Mall, High Street — are cleaner and better maintained than most American shopping centers. The traffic inside BGC itself is manageable because the city was designed with roads wide enough to handle volume.

The one area where BGC genuinely trails Singapore is the metro rail connection — there is no MRT stop in BGC yet, though one is coming. For most of our clients this is a non-issue since they are not commuting daily and use Grab for transportation. But it is worth knowing.

This is the part that stops people cold.

A one-bedroom in a quality BGC building runs $1,100 to $1,400 per month. A premium two-bedroom with skyline views runs $1,500 to $2,000. A penthouse in Makati's central business district — the kind of unit that would cost $80,000 to $100,000 per month in Manhattan — runs $5,500 to $6,000.

In Singapore those same units cost three to five times more.

And everything that surrounds the apartment — the food, the transportation, the personal staff, the private club memberships, the healthcare — costs a fraction of what it costs in Singapore and a fraction of what it costs in America.

Joe — our client who’s a Wall Street lawyer with a $10,000 monthly budget — is hiring four Filipino executive assistants for less than the cost of one in Texas. Craig paid off a country club golf membership for $22,000 that would have cost him $450,000 back in North Carolina. Walter said his social life in one year in Manila surpassed seven years in Hawaii.

BGC is not Singapore. It is its own city with its own character. But if Singapore is the benchmark for what a world-class Asian city looks like and feels like — BGC is the closest thing to that benchmark that most wealthy Americans will ever find at a price point that makes genuine sense.

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

Travel Well,
Evan Lorezca
The Savvy Expat