Why do people in the Philippines not put prices in real estate and house posts?

It's so annoying. Same thing when selling cars or other stuff. I heard everyone tells you to PM them because if your profile makes it look like you can afford it, they raise the price... I don't know if it's true, but it makes sense.

When I'm looking to buy something and there's no price, I just skip it and ignore the listing. I don't have the patience to put up with this practice, and it feels a bit like a scam.

In the Philippines, don't ask why. Any attempt to find logic in why things work the way they do is futile.

Dude, you've just touched on a really big issue: price transparency. It's a feature of highly efficient markets, and it's usually absent in weak or inefficient ones. In the Philippines, a handful of wealthy families hold the wealth in each region, and there's a strong middleman culture. Both are major obstacles to price transparency.

I'm a local and this annoys me too. I was looking for a spot to start a business (just thinking about it, not sure yet), and there's hardly any source of information besides Facebook, so "PM" was practically the only way. Then you end up wanting to quote inflated prices, or drag out the conversation and ask "Are you actually willing to rent or sell this?" My tip is that once you get familiar with the local market, learn to tell who's serious about a deal and who isn't. Don't spend too much time on the latter. What they consider a deal usually falls short of what you'd expect in a more formal business setting. It may sound old-fashioned, but connections and word of mouth will probably still work best for finding a decent listing here.