The REAL Reason We Bought a Condo at McKinley Hill! (Italy at our doorstep)

There it is. That one? That's us. And. Hey. Nice. UK flag. There's our condo. So today we are in McKinley Hill and we've been at the office with Megaworld going through some paperwork and stuff. Very noisy here. Why are we starting a vlog in such a noisy place? And as we're in the area, we thought we would actually check out the Venice Grand Canal Mall a little bit. Have a little tour with you guys around the area of where the condo is we've just bought. Tell you guys more details as to why we chose to buy a condo here. So welcome to the vlog. I hope you can hear us with the face shields. But we are, we're going to go into the mall, sit down, have a bit of a better chat with you guys in a minute when we can take more of this off. I don't remember it being so noisy here. I know, it is noisy. But it's nice. There's a good atmosphere around here. It's one of our favorite areas, actually. Yeah. You can see, we're going to head into the Grand, Grand Canal Mall, which we haven't been in, I want to say for over a year. Yeah, I agree. And also, oh, it was Valentine's Day last year. So almost one year. Yeah, we did a, oh my God, we did a special Valentine's Day thing here. That was so nice. Almost one year ago. Definitely. I don't actually know what the guards are like here with filming. In BGC, they're very open to it. We haven't actually filmed that much here yet. Tested the waters. We should do some testing as well. Let's see. Okay. Where is everyone? Yeah, I know. I'm freaking out. Look at this. So quiet. There's people normally everywhere taking pictures. Where has everyone gone? What day is it? It's midday on a Thursday, is it Thursday? Where is everyone? I'm so freaked out by this. I actually think. It's like a zombie apocalypse and everyone's gone. I actually think that this area is closed off. I don't think you can walk along here right now. Okay. And the gondolas aren't running. Oh, it's very, very different. There's the drive-in movie. Oh yeah, there's the movie screen. Was it Floating? Floating, Floating Movie. It's always so strange when you're in a mall and there's not many people around and you're kind of the only people in here. There's a few people eating in restaurants, but it looks like the canal is definitely closed for now. But actually it gives us a unique opportunity to see this mall properly. Because when we've come in the past, it has been heaving with people. Awesome. So we do actually have a little favourite spot that we always come to here, which we're going to try and go to today just to get a little snack and a drink. Do you want to go to that Chinese place? I do definitely want to go to the Chinese place for actual lunch. But I think here, let's grab a drink, maybe a black coffee, Americano. Sit on the water, have a little bit of a chat as to why we chose to kind of invest in this area, I suppose. And why we chose the condo that we did choose in this area and not maybe some other areas. For this one? A couple of reasons, yeah. All right. Oh yeah, you get the planes as well, remember? I don't think they feed you. What? Oh, my rings. No? Yeah. Oh, my watch. No. Oh. Hi. Do you want an Americano? No, can I please have, we're just going to have coffee. So can I please have an espresso macchiato? Okay. And for her, an Americano. All right. Anything else? That's all. Thank you. Thank you so much. Did you really order that with them sunglasses on your face? Oh, was she laughing at me? I don't know what they look like, let me see. They look fine. But they're a bit lower down, you're meant to wear them a bit lower, these ones. But they don't even cover your eyes. So bright. Yeah, but it's fashion. True. Fashion. Okay, so. This is basically our condo up here somewhere. And this is what the amenities are there. Amenities. A what? Amenities. Apparently I always say it wrong. There's no D in the word. Well, we'll figure it out. You can add a D if you want. There's, they're basically up here. Do you remember when we saw it before and we could smell the McDonald's? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so when we put that video out when we bought the condo, we, shall I take these off? No, no, it's great. You look great. Thanks. We had a lot of questions, like why McKinley? Why McKinley Hill? Why this area? Why not Passic? Why not McAtee? Why not some of these other areas where they have really good condo buildings, condo units? And really it's for several reasons, but mainly it was the opportunity that came up at the right time. It was a right time, right place situation for us. We had to kind of looked at some other areas. We did see what was around. Yeah, and this is, obviously it looked very quick on the vlog. And to be honest with you, the decision was very quick with this specific one, but it is something that we've had in mind for a long time. So it wasn't like we just woke up one day, wanted to do it, and we did it. It's been in the back of our minds for a while. Although the decision was quick on this specific unit, the decision to actually have a property here has been something we've wanted for a very long time now. Yeah, so over the past year, I would say, we have been speaking to different developers, different real estate agents. We've had email quotations coming through all the time. We get sent them when we don't even ask for them, actually. Some people just contact us saying, hey, are you interested in buying anything? So we have been able to see the market. We've been able to see prices. We were able to see payment plans, examples of those. This one came up. This was a special promo for December 2020. We had to get special permission, we had to put in a special request to actually get it. Yeah, and I think the current times meant that the discounts actually very good. Exactly, so it was a current time situation. So we had an opportunity and we went for it. So, but why this area? So the reason this area took our fancy was, one, the deal. The deal itself was really good. We put more details of the cost and the payments and stuff in the previous vlog, so go check that one out if you're interested in the finer details and stuff. So it was the deal. Secondly, the building itself. The building itself is brand new and it was originally intended to be a hotel. So it's super modern, super clean. The appliances are all very high-end and European. The quality of the unit itself, being brand new, was very, very high. We found out that the work tops in the kitchen, the material for that is imported from Italy. And they're incredibly expensive, yeah. They're high-end. And if they're putting the money into things like that, it makes us feel quite good about the actual building itself. Exactly, the quality was there. The, yes, the aircon is a box type, but it's a new modern box type. It's got like a digital display on the front. It's not like an old aircon unit. So adding onto the unit itself and the building, the facilities within the building, it's got everything. It's got a swimming pool. It's got a sauna. It's got a massage room, which is awesome. It's got a movie theater that you can rent out. It's got badminton court. It's got a tennis court. It's got everything that you would need, especially if we're going to do this as an Airbnb rental in the future. And also obviously where we are right now, Venice, the Grand Canal Mall is so unusual. And when we first learned about it, the fact that it's here in Manila as tourists, when we first came to Manila, people commenting, saying, and we looked up these pictures of this like crazy canal with turquoise water. I personally have never been to Venice. George has, but it's just so unusual. And it's so cool that that's here. I remember we saw a Venice mall in Macau when we were in Hong Kong. We took the boat over and it blew our minds there as well. And I think it's such a cool idea and it's a really nice mall. There's a load of facilities. The actual McKinley Hill area's got a ton of restaurants and coffee shops. It's very close. It's a six minute drive to the main BGC high street. It's got connections to other places. And also with the new road that's being built that connects up to Antipolo, it's actually a really good access point for us here as well. So in terms of accessibility for Airbnbs or rental guests, or even for ourselves, it's literally ideal. This could be a great attraction for potential Airbnb guests, because, I don't know, if I saw that on Airbnb that your condo literally is next door to, it has an entrance into the mall, that's just really unusual, really unique. It's a great selling point as well. So if in the future we come to sell this place, I think it can be a desirable area to buy a condo in as well. Especially McKinley, because the whole McKinley area looks really nice. It's clean, it's modern. The palm trees. It's fresh. Yeah, it's really, really nice. It's not overcrowded. Yeah, true. And they're always doing events and things in this mall as well. Like you saw the cinema and stuff. There's always new and unique ideas. So it feels creative. It feels like our kind of place. It just felt like a good decision for us. So, I mean, we said everything we needed to say before the coffee even arrived, I think. I think we've gone through our whole checklist of reasons. But if anyone's got any more questions or they're interested in any more of our reasoning or behind any of our decisions, or, I don't know, we're very open to telling you guys everything with this. And we're not going to hide anything from you because I think there's people in here that might find it quite helpful and just interested in what we're doing. So comment below if you've got any more questions. And we're just excited to share this journey with you guys because it's something that was kind of surreal still. And it's kind of like a pinch me moment. So yeah, good day all round. That's so cool. Whoa, that was like a military plane or something. We forget that planes go so low here. It's so cool. Like, imagine if you're set on your balcony and you see a huge plane go by. I love stuff like that. Thank you. One of them. Thank you. Okay, guys, we are trying a brand new restaurant for lunch today. Modern Shanghai. We love this kind of food. So we're going to give it a little go. Never been here before. Haven't read any reviews. Coming in fresh to this one. It's right in the Venice Mall. Lucy's ordering now. We'll show you the food in a second. Guys, these pork buns are incredible. Wow. I would come here just for these again. They got like sesames like cooked into them. Sesame seeds cooked into them. Plenty of pork. Delicious, fresh buns. Okay, if you know our vlogs, if you've seen our vlogs before, you'll know we love Din Tai Fung. Yes. This particular dish. So how does it taste here? Ah, all the soup's gone. Damn it. Sorry, that was probably gross to watch me putting it back out. Take two. Different, but really good. That's good. Chili. Out of 10? Eight. Okay, very full now. That was a good meal. We've got some takeout to have later. And it was nice to explore this area a little bit more and spend some more time with them all here, which we haven't for a little while. We got a little box of macaroons to give to Cyril, who's tirelessly working away right now, signing lots of things on our behalf. Well, not on our, she's not signing for us, but she's doing paperwork to help things move along. So a little thank you gift for her. So we're going to drop that back and then we're going to head back to BGC, back to our condo. We'll catch you guys very soon in another video. So if you enjoyed this one, please hit the subscribe button, like the video, and we'll see you next time. Bye.