All Forum Posts by: Travis Elliott

How do you go to the Philippines for a business deal and leave with a $million dollars in your pocket?

You bring 2 $million with you when you go there.

My wife is from Cebu and I am from California. We purchased several homes already built, 3 homes we had custom-built and 3 condos and a bungalo in a huge resort that were already under construction. 

The homes that were already built never gave us a lot of problems with the exception that it is very difficult to find an honest property management company and all our money was stolen a few times. One major problem we have is transferring money from accounts to California because the bankers are anal about verifying everything to the point every request for a money transfer is annoying.

The contractor who build the 3 homes did the worse construction cheated us horribly. He failed to obtain any permits, failed to install plumbing, did not get electrical wiring from power likes to the homes, the roofs leaked and there was about 50 other problems. It took us a few years and had to pay off government agents to get electricity on the property.

We lost our entire $50,000 down payment we paid for the 3-condos and the bungalo project. This was a fairly large construction site that was going to be a resort since our condos were on something like the 17th floor. We received a letter stating the owner of the project decided he was going to change the condos and bungalos to hotel rooms. Prior to investing in the project we figured we was going to make a few million in profit based on the future value of the condos. We sued the owner of the project, Filinvest, a very well-established company and the judge promised us a little better chance of prevailing if we gave him a pig for his birthday. Needless to say, Filinvest, the company we sued never made a court appearance and the case dissipated. Maybe, Filinvest gave the judge 2 cows.

I love the people in the Philippines, but when you want something that is type country where you literally have to pay someone off to get things done. Every time we purchased a property we could not get the transfers processed until we paid someone in the government agency. When we want water or electricity turned on we have to pay someone inside the utility companies.