Are property prices in Colombia likely to rise?

Are property prices in Colombia already going up?

Colombian property prices are currently rising quite fast in pesos, so any forecast has to start from an appreciating market rather than a stagnant one.

DANE’s latest New Housing Price Index rose 2.41% in the second quarter of 2026 after increasing 2.79% in the first quarter. Put those two quarters together and new-home prices gained about 5.3% in six months.

The longer trend is just as clear. New-home prices were up 9.07% year over year at the end of 2024 and 9.17% at the end of 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, they were still 8.47% higher than a year earlier.

By the second quarter of 2026, DANE puts national new-home prices 8.80% above a year earlier: new apartments +8.88%, new houses +6.67%.

There has been some cooling from the peak, but hardly enough to call the market flat. Colombia is still seeing high-single-digit nominal housing appreciation.

Period	New-home price change	Comparison	What happened
Q4 2024	+9.07%	Year over year	Strong appreciation
Q4 2025	+9.17%	Year over year	Almost no slowdown
Q1 2026	+8.47%	Year over year	Growth remained high
Q1 2026	+2.79%	Quarter over quarter	Strong start to 2026
Q2 2026	+2.41%	Quarter over quarter	Prices kept climbing
H1 2026	≈+5.3%	Our compounded calculation	Large six-month increase
Q2 2026	+8.80%	Year over year	Still high single digits

Why are Colombia property prices rising if home sales are falling?

Colombia property prices can keep rising with weaker home sales because developers are cutting new projects even faster than buyers are pulling back.

Camacol’s latest figures show it. From January through September 2026, developers sold 118,844 new homes, 11.9% fewer than during the same period of 2025.

That sounds bearish. Then we look at what builders did: they launched only 90,267 homes, down 18.1%, and started construction on 79,533, down 11.2%.

Starts fell about as fast as sales, but launches, which feed the next two to three years of supply, fell much faster. August was the worst month: sales −28% and launches −44.3% year on year.

The level matters more than the change. Over the twelve months to September 2026, Colombia recorded 164,256 new-home sales, against 129,128 launches and 112,958 construction starts.

These categories happen at different stages of a project, so we cannot treat the gaps as literal inventory depletion. They still tell us plenty about direction: developers are replacing the housing pipeline much more slowly than homes are being sold.

That explains the odd mix in Colombia’s housing market today: transactions are weak, yet sellers are not cutting prices across the board.

New-housing activity	Jan–Sep 2026	Change vs. previous year	Difference vs. sales
Sales	118,844	-11.9%	—
Launches	90,267	-18.1%	-28,577
Construction starts	79,533	-11.2%	-39,311
Homes available for sale (end Sept)	159,221	—	—

Has Colombia’s housing recovery already run out of steam?

Colombia’s housing recovery has clearly lost momentum lately, although sales remain far above the worst part of the previous downturn.

The timing tells the story better than one annual growth figure.

New-home sales recovered strongly during 2025. Camacol reported a 12.4% increase for the year, and by early 2026 the rolling twelve-month total had climbed above 173,000 units.

That rebound has since faded. Through September, year-to-date sales were down 11.9%, and the twelve-month total had slipped to 164,256 homes, 5.7% below the previous comparable period.

So booming demand will not carry house prices higher by itself. Buyers are clearly more hesitant, and the 30 September rate hike will not help.

But the slowdown has come with an even larger retreat in launches. Demand is disappointing, yet the supply coming behind it is shrinking too.

For prices, that is much less bearish than the sales decline looks at first glance.

Is Colombia building too few homes right now?

Yes. Colombia is currently building unusually few homes, and that is probably the strongest argument for further property-price increases over the next few years.

Banco de la República examined roughly 30 housing-market variables in its April 2026 analysis of the sector, including sales, launches, starts, permits, mortgages, inventory and construction employment. It found supply lagging demand and construction starts around their lowest levels in fourteen years.

Camacol’s September 2026 numbers show the problem has not gone away.

Over the twelve months to September 2026, Colombia started construction on 112,958 homes. Over the same period, buyers purchased 164,256 new homes.

That works out to only about 69 construction starts for every 100 homes sold. Launches came to roughly 79 for every 100 sales.

We should be careful with those ratios because a home sold today may have started construction long before. Still, such a large gap across a full year is hard to brush aside.

If mortgage conditions eventually improve, buyers can return relatively quickly. Building tens of thousands of additional homes takes much longer.

That mismatch gives Colombian property prices a fairly strong cushion.

12 months to Sept 2026	Homes	Annual change	Per 100 homes sold
New-home sales	164,256	-5.7%	100
New launches	129,128	-10.4%	79
Construction starts	112,958	-5.6%	69
Sales minus launches	35,128	—	21
Sales minus starts	51,298	—	31

Is Colombia actually running out of homes for sale?

No. Colombia still has plenty of new homes for sale today, so talk of an immediate nationwide housing shortage goes too far.

Camacol counted 159,221 new homes available for sale at the end of September 2026, and around 59% of that inventory was social housing (VIS).

So buyers are not currently facing empty shelves.

What has changed is the pipeline behind that inventory. The stock available today is still large, while launches are down 18.1% this year.

If sales stay weak, existing inventory can absorb demand and keep price growth from running away. If buyers return while builders are still launching few projects, the market can tighten much faster. For a buyer today, that stock gives you bargaining power: unsold units in finished or nearly finished projects are where developers negotiate.

We see more risk of a future supply squeeze than evidence of a severe shortage today.

Are Colombia’s high mortgage rates going to stop house prices rising?

Colombia’s mortgage rates are hurting buyers badly, but so far they have slowed home sales much more than house prices.

Banco de la República raised its policy rate to 12.25% on 30 September 2026, effective 1 October. It started the year at 9.25%, so that is 3 points of hikes in nine months. The average peso mortgage cost 15.02% a year in September 2026 (ZumoCash, Superfinanciera data).

That changes what a buyer can afford. A household that qualifies comfortably when mortgage rates are in single digits can find the same apartment out of reach at around 15%. Most foreign non-residents buy cash anyway, so for them the rate matters through local demand, not their own loan.

We can already see that pressure in weaker sales.

What we have not seen is widespread price cutting. National new-home prices continued rising through the latest quarter despite much tougher financing conditions.

Housing credit itself is still flowing. DANE recorded COP 6.95 trillion in home-purchase financing during the second quarter of 2026, including COP 5.57 trillion in conventional mortgages and COP 1.39 trillion in residential leasing.

After adjusting for residential construction prices, total financing was unchanged from a year earlier.

Flat real lending is hardly exciting, but the mortgage market is functioning. Colombia currently has expensive credit, rather than disappearing credit.

Housing-finance measure	Latest reading	What we see
Banco de la República policy rate	12.25%	Financing remains restrictive
Average peso mortgage rate (Sept 2026)	15.02% EA	Expensive for most households
Home-purchase disbursements (Q2 2026)	COP 6.95tn	Credit is still flowing
Conventional mortgages	COP 5.57tn	Main financing channel
Residential leasing	COP 1.39tn	Still meaningful
Real annual financing growth	0.0%	Stagnant rather than collapsing

Are construction costs pushing Colombian house prices higher?

Yes. Higher building costs are making cheaper new housing harder to deliver in Colombia, especially when developers are already reluctant to start projects.

DANE’s construction-cost index for housing rose 6.86% in the twelve months to August 2026 (6.93% for social housing, 6.83% for the rest). That is slightly above general inflation, which was 6.24% that month.

Developers have only a few ways to absorb that. They can accept lower margins, raise selling prices, shrink units, change specifications or delay projects that no longer make financial sense.

The last option is already visible in the construction data.

When buyers resist higher prices but building the same apartment has become more expensive, developers do not necessarily produce it cheaply anyway. Some projects simply stop getting launched.

That helps explain why weak sales have translated into fewer projects rather than widespread discounts.

Is inflation making Colombia’s property-price growth look better than it really is?

Yes. Inflation is eating up a meaningful part of Colombia’s house-price growth, so buyers should expect much smaller real gains than the headline property numbers suggest.

Consumer prices were 6.29% higher in September 2026 than a year earlier, according to DANE, and analysts expect about 6.8% by the end of the year.

Compare that with new-home prices up 8.80% over the year to Q2 2026. The periods do not line up perfectly, but 8.80% against 6.29% is a real gain of only about 2.4%.

If a Colombian property rises 8% while the general price level rises 6%, the owner has gained much less purchasing power than the headline 8% suggests. And building administration fees rose 17.14% in the year to September 2026, so holding costs are climbing faster than prices.

A buyer focused on preserving wealth in pesos can reasonably like a property that keeps pace with or beats inflation. An investor expecting 8% to 10% annual appreciation on top of inflation should be much more skeptical.

For now, the evidence supports modest real appreciation far more convincingly than spectacular real returns.

Are Bogotá property prices still rising?

Yes. Bogotá property prices are still climbing, even though sales of mid- and high-end new homes are falling there.

DANE’s residential-property price index for Bogotá rose 8.88% year over year in the second quarter of 2026. Prices increased 4.06% during that quarter alone and 5.65% over the first half of the year.

New-home data point the same way: DANE’s new-housing index for Bogotá and Soacha was up 8.62% over the year to Q2 2026.

Those numbers are useful because Bogotá is large enough that we cannot dismiss the movement as a handful of projects distorting a small local market.

Sales tell a split story. Bogotá sold 24,245 new homes in the first half of 2026, up 3.5%, but only thanks to social housing (+8.1%); non-VIS sales fell 9.1% and construction starts fell 22.3% (Observatorio Hábitat).

Bogotá looks fairly resilient rather than explosive. Buyers are not rushing into the capital, but weak demand has still failed to push property prices down.

For someone forecasting the next few years, Bogotá looks more like a steady-appreciation market than an obvious candidate for another huge price spike.

Bogotá property measure	Recent change	Reading
Residential prices	+8.88% YoY	Strong annual increase
Q2 movement	+4.06%	Prices accelerated during the quarter
First-half movement	+5.65%	Gains were sustained
New-home annual growth (Bogotá–Soacha)	+8.62% YoY	Same general direction
New-home sales, H1 2026	+3.5% (non-VIS −9.1%)	Growth comes from social housing only

Are Medellín, Cali and Bogotá property prices moving together?

No. Colombian property prices are moving at very different speeds across cities, and a national average hides some huge gaps.

DANE’s regional new-home data show why.

In the year to Q2 2026, new-home prices rose 13.56% in Pereira, the fastest of the cities DANE tracks, and 11.00% in Barranquilla. Medellín’s metro area was at 9.14%, just above the national 8.80%.

Bogotá–Soacha was at 8.62% and Cali at 7.82%. Cartagena slowed to 6.28%, down from 10.56% in Q1, below the national pace.

Popayán was the slowest at 4.19%, which is below inflation.

We would not assume Pereira keeps rising at 13% a year: in smaller markets the mix of projects being sold can make these figures jump around, as Cartagena’s swing from 10.56% to 6.28% in one quarter shows. But the gap between cities is real enough to change how a buyer should think about Colombia.

Buying “Colombian property” is too broad to mean very much. A Bogotá apartment, a Medellín tourist-area unit and a new development in Cali can be exposed to completely different supply, affordability and buyer pools.

City selection—and often neighborhood selection—is more important than squeezing another percentage point out of a national forecast.

Market	New-home prices, Q2 2026 YoY	Current picture
Pereira	+13.56%	Fastest in the country
Barranquilla	+11.00%	Well above national pace
Medellín metro	+9.14%	Slightly above national
National (53 municipalities)	+8.80%	Benchmark
Bogotá + Soacha	+8.62%	In line with national
Cali	+7.82%	Below national
Cartagena	+6.28%	Slowing fast (10.56% in Q1)
Popayán	+4.19%	Slowest, below inflation

Could Colombia’s economy push property prices higher?

It can support them, but it is losing some steam. Growth is still decent, and cheaper borrowing one day could release demand that expensive mortgages are holding back.

DANE reported about 3.5% year-over-year GDP growth in the second quarter of 2026, after 2.2% in the first. That is faster than the 2.6% recorded across 2025.

The newer signals are weaker: monthly economic activity grew only 1.1% in July and national unemployment rose to 9.4% in August 2026.

Still, Colombia’s housing slowdown has developed while the economy keeps growing. Rising unemployment is the figure to watch: job losses, not high prices, are what turn a slowdown into forced selling.

The biggest obstacle is financial rather than recessionary.

If inflation eventually comes down enough for borrowing costs to ease, households that postponed purchases could re-enter the market. They would be returning while the construction pipeline is unusually thin. After the September hike, that is a 2027 story at the earliest.

We would become much more bullish on Colombian property prices if lower mortgage rates arrived without a matching rebound in new construction.

Are rising rents helping Colombian property prices?

Yes. Colombia’s rental market still gives property owners some support, especially while expensive mortgages keep would-be buyers renting for longer.

DANE’s effective-rent index was up 5.12% in the year to September 2026, and the El Libertador-Davivienda index showed asking rents up 6.5% for apartments and 9.5% for houses nationally. Existing leases could rise by at most 5.10% in 2026 (the 2025 CPI); the 2027 cap will be December 2026 inflation, probably above 6%.

That fits what Banco de la República found in Bogotá, Medellín and Cali during the housing downturn: rental markets held up much better than home sales, with tighter availability in several segments.

A home that can generate more rent becomes easier for an investor to hold through a weak sales market.

There is a limit, though. Prices can outrun rents far enough that yields stop making sense. Global Property Guide puts gross long-term yields at 7.06% nationally but only 5.22% in Cartagena (Q3 2026), and a 7–8% gross yield nets roughly 2.9–3.6% for a non-resident after costs and the 35% income tax.

So rising rents help explain why owners are not rushing to sell cheaply. They do not make every Colombian apartment a good investment.

What could actually make property prices fall across Colombia?

A broad fall in Colombian property prices would probably need a much nastier economic shock than anything visible in the housing data today.

The obvious route would be a recession combined with job losses. If households suddenly lost income while mortgage payments remained expensive, forced selling could rise and buyers would pull back at the same time.

A genuine credit crunch would create similar pressure. So far, housing financing has stagnated in real terms rather than collapsed. Unemployment at 9.4% in August is the warning light to keep an eye on.

A large inventory buildup could also change the balance. Camacol counts about 159,000 new homes for sale, a large stock, but launches are down 18.1% this year, so it is not growing out of control.

Persistent inflation is the more realistic risk for buyers today. It can keep interest rates high, damage affordability and turn a decent nominal property gain into a weak real return.

Local declines are much easier to imagine than a national one. An overpriced tourist apartment, a building full of Airbnbs in a city tightening the rules (Medellín temporarily suspended 105 tourist homes after 408 inspections between 2024 and September 2026), or a weak secondary-city project can lose value while Colombia’s national index keeps rising.

That is where we would focus most of the downside research before buying.

Possible trigger	What we see currently	Threat to national prices
Deep recession	Economy still growing	Low for now
Sharp unemployment shock	Unemployment up to 9.4% (Aug)	Rising, watch it
Mortgage-credit collapse	Real financing roughly flat	Limited
Large inventory buildup	159,221 units, launches −18.1%	Limited
Construction boom	Starts −11.2%, launches −18.1%	Low
Persistently expensive credit	Already happening	Significant
High inflation	Already happening	Significant for real returns
Local oversupply	Exists in some pockets	Significant for individual properties

Does the strong peso change the forecast for foreign buyers?

Yes, more than any local price trend. The dollar closed 2025 at about COP 3,757 and was down to about COP 3,190 on 22 October 2026, so a dollar buys about 15% fewer pesos than at the start of the year.

For someone paying in dollars, a COP 500 million apartment cost about $133,000 at the end-2025 rate and about $157,000 today, with zero change in its peso price. Add a year of 8.8% local appreciation (COP 544 million) and the same home is about $170,000, roughly 28% more in dollars.

Forecasts do not agree on a rebound: BBVA expected about COP 3,640 per dollar at the end of 2026 (June 2026 forecast), Bancolombia about COP 3,420 on average for 2026. Don’t buy, or wait, on a currency bet. Negotiate the peso price hard instead, and if you are a dollar earner, compare listings in pesos, not in the dollar figure the agent quotes.

COP 500 million apartment	Pesos per dollar	Price in dollars
End of 2025	about 3,757	about $133,000
22 October 2026	about 3,190	about $157,000
22 October 2026, after +8.8% local rise	about 3,190	about $170,000

Did the August 2026 earthquake change the price outlook?

Not nationally, at least not yet. The magnitude 7.4 earthquake of 10 August 2026 hit western Colombia; Antioquia declared a public calamity with 4,090 affected homes, while Medellín’s metro area reported no major building damage.

Cali was hit hardest: 154 dead, 45,139 affected families and 765 buildings declared uninhabitable (El País Cali, 5 September 2026). There the effect showed up in rents first: the average apartment rent went from COP 2.32 million to 2.52 million between June and September 2026 (+8.6%), house rents rose 26.3%, and apartments listed for rent fell 39% (Ciencuadras via Portafolio).

No price index has measured the quake yet: DANE’s latest new-home figures stop in June. If you buy in a seismic area, ask for the building’s structural design under the NSR-10 code, the year of construction and any post-quake inspection report, and check that the condo’s insurance covers earthquakes.

Are property prices in Colombia likely to rise?

Yes. Colombian property prices are likely to keep rising in nominal pesos over the next one to three years, although we expect a much more ordinary rise than the strongest recent price figures might suggest.

The case rests on several pieces that now fit together.

New-home prices are up 8.80% in a year. Bogotá’s broader residential index is doing roughly the same (+8.88%). The economy is still growing and mortgage lending continues even with very expensive financing.

At the same time, builders have become very cautious. In the twelve months to September 2026, Colombia sold about 164,000 new homes but started construction on about 113,000. That weak pipeline makes a large nationwide supply glut hard to see from here.

High borrowing costs, now with a 12.25% policy rate, should keep a lid on how quickly prices can rise. Inflation at 6.29% also means an 8.8% nominal increase is only about 2.4% in real terms.

Our base case is fairly clear: Colombian residential property keeps getting more expensive in pesos, while real appreciation remains much less dramatic.

We would be surprised by a broad national nominal price decline without a recession, a serious employment shock or a sharp deterioration in housing credit. None of those is here yet, though unemployment rising to 9.4% is worth watching.

What we would not do is turn that national view into a blanket recommendation to buy anywhere. New-home price growth ranges from 13.56% in Pereira to 4.19% in Popayán, and Cartagena has slowed to 6.28%. For a dollar buyer, the strong peso has already added about 18% to the price this year.

So yes, property prices in Colombia are likely to rise. The harder—and more useful—decision is finding a city and neighborhood where future rent, local demand and limited supply still justify the price being asked today.