david,
you got PM!
what i've learned over the past 6 months is that when you cross C5 (heading towards Cainta/etc) the price drops dramatically. as in really dramatically.
what a lot of developers are doing now is, they hook up with Pag-ibig. what happens is that you pay your downpayment (which can be as low as 10%), stay on the developer in-house plan for a couple months, then apply for pag-ibig. the developers have pre-assessed the value of their property already with pag-ibig.
the pag-ibig rates are a bit higher than BPI published rates, but they offer lower equity (as low as 10%) and longer terms than the banks.
if you have 500k to sink into a downpayment marami ka nang choices nun. see my PM for the bloody details.
p.s. i'm not a real-estate agent. i just went through this process recently..
OTOH according to another friend of mine, it's better to rent than finance. you see, financing a house will eat almost all your disposable income (unless you are really rich). so no disposable income = degraded quality of life. plus, less money goes into the economy because you're spending less on "luho." e.g. if you rent, you can prolly buy that shiny new mazda3 or something. if you finance a house.. goodbye mazda3.
something like that..