Pip: U-Property PH has been following two buyers through the Philippine property dispute system, and this episode we finally get inside the room — the mediation conference Jerome spent three months waiting for.
Mara: That's the territory today: how HSAC mediation actually runs, what a prepared buyer brings to the table, how the force majeure argument works and why it tends to fail, and what happens when the developer's opening offer is less than half of what the buyer is owed.
Pip: Let's start with the envelope.
The Three-Month Wait and What Jerome Built During It
Mara: Jerome filed his HSAC complaint and then waited — and the question this episode opens with is what a buyer actually does with that waiting time, because the answer turns out to matter enormously.
Pip: The HSAC case tracker showed "pending scheduling of mediation conference" for seventy-seven days. Then an envelope arrived — thicker than the rest, return address from a post office box Jerome recognized from the HSAC procedural rules he had read eight months earlier.
Mara: He had been checking the mailbox every weekday for eleven weeks. The notice gave him four weeks from its date to prepare for the conference.
Pip: Four weeks sounds tight. It was actually enough — because Jerome had not been idle. He kept paying amortization every month, same amount, same account, same day, because stopping unilaterally would give the developer grounds to invoke the forfeiture clause and complicate the rescission claim.
Mara: And there is a specific irony built into that discipline. Every payment Jerome makes is another month of evidence in his favor and another month of amortization he is owed back.
Pip: He also visited the construction site twice — once in August, once in October. Floor eight in August. Floor nine in October. One floor in eight weeks. The developer's quarterly bulletin, arriving between those two visits, described construction as "progressing on schedule toward revised delivery targets."
Mara: Jerome printed that bulletin and filed it as Exhibit R, sitting right next to a dated photograph of floor nine of a planned twenty-two-floor tower.
Pip: A bulletin that says on schedule, filed next to a photograph that says otherwise — that comparison does not need a legal argument. It needs a consistent filing habit, which Jerome had been practicing since June.
Mara: By the time the notice arrived, he had nineteen items in an accordion folder with labeled tabs, lettered A through S. A one-line index on the inside cover: exhibit letter, three-word description, date.
Pip: Maria, meanwhile, filed her eFOI request the week she received her case number. Her response came back ten working days later. License to Sell active. No compliance flags. Three active HSAC proceedings at the same regional office involving the same developer.
Mara: Three. Not two. The third filing was submitted five weeks before hers. She does not know who filed it — the name is never in the response — but she knows the developer has been at this table with multiple buyers and none of those cases have resolved.
Pip: Her mediation notice has not arrived yet. Her mother checks the mailbox every two weeks. The tracker still shows pending scheduling.
What a Prepared Buyer Actually Brings
Mara: Knowing what to bring to a mediation conference is its own preparation problem — most buyers bring either too much or too little, and both are mistakes with real consequences.
Pip: Too much looks like spreading every exhibit on the table within the first five minutes. What that communicates to the other side is that you do not know what your three strongest points are — and if you do not know, you cannot tell them whether settling is cheaper than fighting.
Mara: Jerome brought four things. First, a one-page evidence summary — not the exhibits themselves, just a chronological reference list. Each fact was one sentence ending with a parenthetical: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C.
Pip: He was not there to hand anyone documents. He was there to confirm he knew where every document lived and could name it on demand.
Mara: Second: a number, written on a card in his jacket pocket. His floor — the minimum he would accept before walking out to adjudication. Eight hundred forty-two thousand pesos in total amortization payments, plus legal interest at six percent per annum from the date of filing, plus his filing fee. He knew the total to the peso.
Pip: He did not share this number with his own relative who was representing him, because the moment your floor travels beyond you, it can travel in directions you did not intend.
Mara: Third: the eFOI response. Not to hand across the table — the developer already knows those proceedings exist. Jerome brought it to remind himself, before walking into a room with professional negotiators, that he was not the first buyer in this position with this developer.
Pip: And fourth — maybe the most important — a clear prior decision about what he was there to accomplish. Not to be heard. Not to persuade. To find out whether there was a number that made more financial sense to accept now than to wait eighteen to twenty-four months for an arbiter to order it.
Mara: "The difference between knowing your floor and guessing your floor is the difference between walking out of a negotiation and being walked out of one."
Pip: He made that decision in his kitchen seven days before the conference. By the time the offer was on the table, the answer was already settled.
The Force Majeure Argument and Why It Tends to Fail
Mara: When the developer's lawyer spoke for twelve minutes, the core of the argument was force majeure — supply chain conditions, permitting delays, a revised construction milestone schedule showing completion sixteen months out.
Pip: The force majeure argument sounds, in a conference room, like a reasonable explanation for why a building is not finished on time. It is designed to sound that way.
Mara: Presidential Decree 957 establishes the developer's obligation to deliver within the timeline committed to in the License to Sell and in the buyer's contract. The statute does not include a force majeure exception to the buyer's right of rescission. Contract language cannot override a statutory right — PD 957 sets a floor below what the contract can lawfully take away from the buyer.
Pip: Jerome had read enough published HSAC case summaries to understand the pattern: developers citing supply chain conditions in general terms tended to lose that argument. Developers who could point to a single, dated, traceable event — a documented typhoon that closed a specific port for a specific number of weeks — had more success.
Mara: A generalized reference to the supply chain environment, without tying it to a specific dated disruption affecting this specific project's specific materials, is the weaker version of the argument. That was the version the developer's lawyer was making.
Pip: Jerome did not debate the force majeure point in the room. He waited for the lawyer to finish. Then he said three things: the contract commits to a delivery date that has passed, the project is not complete, and he does not accept the force majeure characterization as a defense under PD 957. He said all of this in four minutes. He stopped.
Mara: He was not there to give a speech. He was there to establish three facts that were not in dispute and one legal position that was.
Reading the Developer's Opening Offer
Mara: After a brief caucus, the developer's lawyer presented a number: three hundred eighty thousand pesos, framed as a settlement based on the Maceda Law.
Pip: Republic Act 6552 gives buyers who have paid at least two years of amortization the right to a fifty-percent refund of total payments if they cancel. The lawyer presented the statutory minimum as though it were a fair negotiated midpoint.
Mara: But the Maceda Law sets a floor, not a ceiling. Jerome is claiming full rescission under PD 957, which entitles him to a complete refund of all payments made plus legal interest. The Maceda floor is a backstop if the PD 957 argument fails at adjudication — it is not the ceiling of the claim.
Pip: Jerome put his hand on the card in his jacket pocket. The number on the card was not three hundred eighty thousand pesos. He asked one question: was this the developer's final offer. They said it was their opening offer. He said he was not interested in discussing a number that did not include the full return of his amortization payments plus legal interest from the date of filing.
Mara: One hour and forty-seven minutes from the mediation officer's opening statement to Jerome standing up. He asked for a copy of the certificate of failed mediation before he left the building. It went into the folder under a tab he had labeled Adjudication before he arrived.
Pip: A developer who offers forty-five percent of a buyer's claim at mediation is betting the buyer has not done the math. Jerome was not that buyer.
Mara: Next: the position paper, what an arbiter actually reads when they open one, and where a strong case can become a difficult one to enforce.
Pip: Jerome did not walk into mediation hoping to win. He walked in to find out if there was a number. There wasn't. Now the arbiter finds out if there is an obligation.
Mara: Maria's mediation conference is still ahead of her. When it comes, she will have a folder with sections, an eFOI response, and a floor she needs to calculate before she walks in — and she will know it is possible to say no and have the case continue.
Leave a Reply