Jerry Beverly grew up in Englewood, California.

Raised in Pittsburgh, California — 45 minutes east of Oakland. Went to college on a basketball scholarship. Built a career in real estate. Spent the last decade quietly buying multifamily properties across the Bay Area, stacking rental income, building something real.

By any measure he made it.

And then he got to BGC for the first time and looked around and said it feels exactly like San Francisco.

A safer San Francisco. With no Tenderloin.

Jerry is not a man who gets impressed easily. He is a real estate agent. He looks at properties for a living. He knows what a neighborhood is worth and what it is not worth and what it costs to live well in one of the most expensive cities in America.

When he walked down High Street for the first time he said online did not do it justice.

BGC has everything. Landers — the Filipino equivalent of Costco — right below the building. Starbucks. Western restaurants. A club that stays open past 2am. People walking the streets at midnight without anyone looking over their shoulder.

He works out. He trains jiu-jitsu. He eats well. He said plainly — I am not missing anything being here in BGC.

For someone from the Bay Area, where the same walkability, the same restaurants, the same sense of safety costs three to four times more just in rent alone — the math does not require much explanation.

Jerry did not just decide to move to the Philippines and figure it out when he got there.

He spent ten years building toward it before he ever booked a flight.

He owns eight doors in California. Multifamily properties that generate rental income whether he is in Oakland or BGC or anywhere else in the world. The plan is to use that passive income to fund his life in the Philippines while he continues flipping properties and scaling the portfolio back home.

His advice for anyone thinking about doing the same thing: reverse engineer the plan, figure out the numbers, and take action.

He is not waiting until retirement. He is splitting his time now — half in the States, half in the Philippines — and every trip makes the answer clearer.

Floyd asked Jerry directly about something a lot of people want to know but rarely see discussed honestly on camera.

What is it like being a Black man in the Philippines?

Jerry did not hesitate.

In America, he said, there is real racism. Unconscious bias that follows you everywhere. He has had the police called on him in his own neighborhood. He has lived with the weight of being looked at a certain way walking down the street, wearing the wrong thing, existing in the wrong zip code.

Here nobody looks at him like that.

He walks past police and it is just a different energy. He wears what he wants. He moves through BGC without the low-grade tension that became so normal in the US he stopped noticing it until it was gone.

That alone, he said, changes everything about how you feel day to day.

There is a common argument that BGC is not the real Philippines.

Jerry and Floyd both pushed back on this and they are right to.

BGC is in the Philippines. The vast majority of people walking its streets are Filipino. The food is Filipino. The culture is Filipino. What BGC represents is what the Philippines is becoming — a world-class city that happens to sit in one of the most affordable countries in Southeast Asia.

Jerry compared it to Chongqing in China. Futuristic, modern, nothing like the Western imagination of what China looks like. Still China.

BGC is still the Philippines. It is just the version of the Philippines that rewards you for showing up prepared.

Jerry built his financial foundation for a decade before making the move. That is the right instinct.

What most people do not build before they arrive is the local infrastructure — the lease, the bank account, the visa, the connections that make the difference between landing in BGC and feeling at home versus landing in BGC and spending your first three months figuring out what should have been sorted before you got on the plane.

The rental market here does not work the way it does in California. There is no MLS. There is no standardized pricing. Landlords quote foreigners one rate and locals another. Deposits are paid in cash before you have a local bank account. The visa process has a sequence that most people get wrong the first time and it costs them months.

Our team has done this with over 170 Americans. We know the buildings. We know the landlords. We know how to get you from the airport to a signed lease in a unit you actually want without the friction that derails people who try to navigate it alone.

Jerry figured out the financial side on his own over ten years. The relocation side is what we handle so you do not spend another year waiting.

Click here to start your move to the Philippines the right way.

Travel Well,
Pinoy Floyd
Evan Lorezca
The Savvy Expat