This was to deter of course money laundering - but this does not touch the issues that the majority of Chinese in the PH are on tourists visas illegally.
There is also massive speculation within business centers, e.g. Makati, Taguig - BGC, Pasay, Malate and it's going to province areas such as Cebu and Clark. Clark GLobal City is going to be rivaling BGC - Bonifacio GLobal city and the PH is really embracing the whole idea of BPO.
BPO in PH can be really good.
Real estate also is waaaay to overpriced, from 2016 to now, filipinos that acted first, like in every bubble are profiting and you can find many stories of people who put down the bare minimum and afe renting it out profitably.
The problem with that is - they used developer financing, which after 2-5 years there is a balloon payment. Typical terms are usually 50,000-75,000 peso "down" payment, 10-25,000 monthly payment for 2 years - which is just paying the "down" payment on the property - e.g. the developer gets income and the property appreciates in value.
Then at the end, or near, they need to grab a bank loan, and most banks in the PH are very VERY risk adverse and do not hand out mortgages easily, nor cheaply 8-15% normally.
So what you see often are opportunities to buy someone out and give them some money for their trouble. --- But this will soon cascade because:
1. There is no financial education in the PH on a standard level.
2. Developers of these condos push hard on sales and say it's "10k/month" pesos, which is ~$200 usd. The monthly income of a BPO "middle class" agent is 25,000 pesos. $500. Granted, in Business centers it's higher by 5-10,000 pesos for mid level workers and then specialized/niched/non-entry level it can be 50,000 pesos+ which just is $1000~ USD/month.
The average GDP per captia for a filipino is somewhere under $5600/yr.
The economy is also largely based on Remittances.
May be unreliable source, but it gives a good floor:
"These remittances from countries literally all over the world to where Filipinos fan out in search of work in services or industry were worth US$26.9 billion in 2016 - which was equal to almost one half (48 per cent) of the $56bn of total merchadise exports during the year."
https://www.thenational.ae/business/remittances-remain-cruci...
tl;dr bubble is going to come, Philippines is going to get owned by China.
And I didn't even talk about Duterte, Drugs or the ever right winged spectrum the Philippines is moving. More fun reading can be found by typing into google "Commission on Human Rights + Duterte + 1000 pesos" 1000 pesos is $20 USD.