A Retirement Haven in the Philippines MANOLO FORTICH, PHILIPPINES - Manila's wealthy have long favored the nearby "summer cities" of Baguio and Tagaytay, their altitude providing some relief from the heat of the Philippine capital. But in recent years, Bukidnon, a province in the center of the southern island of Mindanao, has gained a reputation for new vacation and retirement homes in a comfortable climate that is also south of the country's treacherous typhoon belt. This shift began in 2008, when Elpidio Paras, one of the country's cable TV pioneers, opened a zip-line resort in Manolo Fortich, a town in the foothills of Mount Kitanglad just outside the Bukidnon capital, Malaybalay. Around 100,000 tourists have visited the spot, 1,432 meters, or 4,700 feet, above sea level, to ride the 2,460-meter zip lines, advertised as the longest in Asia. Since then, the real estate developer A. Brown Co. has turned 275 hectares, or 680 acres, of pine-covered land on Kitanglad into an upscale subdivision of custom-built chalet-style homes. Lots starting at 700 square meters, or 7,535 square feet, are being sold at 1,200 Philippine pesos per square meter, or about $2.80 per square foot. It is one of two developments by the company in Bukidnon, the other being a 12.39-hectare subdivision in Valencia, the province's largest city. G&P Builders is also developing a 29-hectare community in Manolo Fortich on behalf of the crop trader M&M Consolidated. The project, introduced in 2008, offers lots ranging from 250 to 952 square meters for 2,600 to 3,500 pesos per square meter. Of the project's 509 parcels, 264 have been sold and a second phase is being prepared, said Arceli Acosta, the marketing officer. Several owners, she said, are expatriates or overseas Filipino workers. About a million of the country's 93.3 million people are estimated to be working abroad and, traditionally, many choose to come home to retire. The Asian Development Bank also reported that 300,000 Filipinos, mostly female, are married to foreigners, mainly from the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan and South Korea; some of those couples choose to live in the Philippines. In response, many of the newer residential developments are being positioned as a kind of "America in the tropics." G&P Builders is advertising its subdivision as a microcosm of "American country living," while A. Brown Co. is promoting its project as "a semblance of spring in New York." The weather description is not far off, at least during parts of the year. Some places in Bukidnon, which is largely a plateau with an average elevation of 915 meters, can be as cool as 18 degrees Celsius (64 Fahrenheit). We don't know what snow looks like here. It's O.K. I don't miss it," said Ken Guehrer, a Wisconsin native who lives with his Bukidnon-born wife in Manolo Fortich. I like the people, the cost of living here. It is much less expensive than America. When I made my decision to come here, I made it to be here forever. While Philippine law allows foreigners to rent properties and to buy condominium apartments, with some restrictions, they are barred from purchasing land. So many couples like the Guehrers put the land title in the wife's name. "My wife decided she wanted something in the Philippines," said Mr. Guehrer. "I gave her the money and said, "Build what you want to build."" The couple combined four 250-square-meter lots, which sold at 3,000 pesos per square meter, for their building site. They then had a 15-room, two-level house constructed for about 52,000 pesos per square meter. It's not a big house here in the Philippines. And that's good because we don't want a real big house," Mr. Guehrer said, adding that the local laborers were much less expensive than he had expected. My wife's mother, father still live here. We know that she's happy here," Mr. Guehrer said. There actually is a heritage of U.S.-style developments in the region. The Philippines was still a U.S. territory in 1926 when California Packing Corp., now Del Monte, built a neighborhood called Camp Phillips in Manolo Fortich. The project was constructed near the company's pineapple plantation, which has grown into one of the world's largest, at 23,000 hectares. It added a golf club in 1928, frequented in later years by President Ferdinand Marcos and Manila socialites. Many Del Monte managers still live in the settlement's colonial bungalows, while others live in a newer company compound adjacent to the golf club.