Residential property prices in the Philippines continued to increase in the first quarter of the year but at a slower pace than the recorded expansion in the fourth quarter of 2024, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.
In a report released Friday, the BSP said the nationwide Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) moderated from 9.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 7.6 percent in the first quarter of 2025.
The National Capital Region (NCR) recorded the highest increase during the period, with the region’s index posting a 13.9-percent increase.
For areas outside the NCR, real property prices rose by 3 percent.
In terms of categories, both condominium units and houses contributed to the rise in property prices.
Specifically, the prices of condominium units rose by 10.6 percent, while house prices increased by 4.5 percent.
The RPPI is a measure of the average change in the prices of various types of housing units over time, based on banks’ data on actual loans granted to acquire residential properties.
It is among the key indicators that the BSP monitors in assessing the country’s real estate and credit market conditions.
In a separate statement, the BSP said the newly launched RPPI adheres to global best practices and serves as a more reliable gauge of housing price trends compared with the earlier index.
The BSP has begun processing real estate information using first-quarter 2025 data for RPPI, which replaced the Residential Real Estate Price Index.
"RPPI improves on the previous index by adopting hedonic regression. The method offers a more accurate measure of market trends by incorporating property-specific characteristics, such as location, size, and type," the BSP said.
"This shift addresses the limitations of the previous methodology, which relied on simple averages and assumed that all properties within a group were similar."
The BSP said the RPPI broadens coverage to include new, pre-owned, and foreclosed houses and uses actual acquisition costs rather than appraised values.
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