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SUMMARY
Mostly no. Cabo San Lucas rents remain extremely expensive, but the broad rent surge has cooled into a much more uneven market where some neighborhoods are rising, others are flat, and others are already falling.
The clearest reversal appears in long-term apartments. Across Los Cabos, apartment rents are currently 8.4% below their February 2025 baseline, while Cabo San Lucas Centro is essentially flat.
El Tezal is the major exception. Apartment rents there are up 13.2%, which means the slowdown is not simply a citywide demand collapse: renters are still paying more for certain newer, amenity-heavy condo products.
The split inside El Tezal is especially revealing. Apartment rents are rising sharply while house rents are down 5.3%, so even one neighborhood can contain two very different rental markets at the same time.
A furnished long-term two-bedroom around MXN 20,000 to MXN 30,000 per month is still normal in the parts of Cabo most foreign renters are likely to consider. Better developments and premium locations can move well above MXN 40,000.
Central Cabo shows how a market can remain expensive without continuing to inflate. Apartment rents there have barely moved since early 2025, yet the existing rent level is still high relative to many local incomes.
The affordability problem therefore has more to do with the rent floor Cabo already reached than with another round of rapid increases. Slower rent growth does not undo the previous post-pandemic jump.
Vacation rentals are not showing much fresh pricing power either. AirDNA's broad Cabo dataset has ADR down 15.5% year over year, while higher occupancy has left RevPAR almost unchanged.
Tourism remains structurally huge for Los Cabos, but recent airport and hotel indicators have softened. That weakens the case for another immediate, tourism-driven rental spike even though millions of visitors and tourism workers still support underlying housing demand.
The next broad rent upswing would probably require several things to strengthen together again: tourism, employment-driven migration, central apartment rents, house rents and short-term rental pricing. For now, that convergence is missing.
The practical conclusion is that Cabo's rental boom has fragmented rather than continued. El Tezal apartments can still move sharply higher, but there is currently no convincing evidence that rents are rising broadly across Cabo San Lucas.
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Did Cabo San Lucas rents keep climbing after the big post-pandemic jump?
Cabo San Lucas rents are still extremely high today, but the broad surge has clearly lost momentum.
Cabo went through a genuine rental shock before the current slowdown. Baja California Sur reporting found residential rents rising by roughly 20% between 2023 and 2024 in some of the state's most pressured markets, with Los Cabos repeatedly singled out as one of Mexico's expensive rental areas.
The forces behind that jump were unusually strong. Los Cabos had already reached 351,111 residents in the 2020 INEGI census, and migration was heavily tied to employment. Tourism recovered rapidly after the pandemic, property values climbed, construction costs increased and thousands of workers continued moving into a municipality where affordable housing supply was already tight.
Those forces left Cabo with a much higher rent floor. What changed afterward was the speed. Current Propiedades.com data show apartment rents across Los Cabos below their early-2025 level, while individual Cabo neighborhoods now range from clear increases to outright declines.
So when someone says Cabo rents “keep going up,” the first half of the story is right: Cabo became far more expensive. The second half is increasingly outdated.
Why do Cabo San Lucas rent numbers look so contradictory?
Cabo San Lucas rental data look contradictory because different sources are often measuring different properties, neighborhoods and rental businesses.
A Cabo San Lucas apartment rented to a local household for twelve months has very little in common with a four-bedroom villa rented by the night. Even within long-term housing, an apartment in central Cabo and a newer condo in El Tezal can sit in completely different price brackets.
Geography adds another problem. Some datasets refer to Cabo San Lucas proper, others to the full municipality of Los Cabos, which also includes San José del Cabo and the tourist corridor. AirDNA even publishes Cabo datasets using different geographic definitions, producing very different listing counts.
Property type matters just as much. The latest Propiedades.com numbers provide a good example. El Tezal apartment rents have risen 13.2% since the site's February 2025 baseline. El Tezal house rents, meanwhile, are down 5.3% over the same period.
One average simply isn't enough here. Apartments, houses, neighborhoods and short-term rentals need to be separated before the direction becomes clear.
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Are apartment rents still rising across Los Cabos?
No. Apartment rents across Los Cabos are currently below where they were in early 2025.
Propiedades.com's latest market data put the municipality-wide change at -8.4% from February 2025. That is a meaningful reversal after several years in which the dominant story was higher prices.
Cabo San Lucas Centro was flat over the same period. San José del Cabo Centro declined 3.5%. Lienzo Charro Centro was also weaker. El Tezal went the other way with a 13.2% increase, showing how easily a Cabo-wide average can hide what renters are seeing neighborhood by neighborhood.
The inventory also tells us which numbers deserve more attention. Propiedades.com currently tracks 89 apartments in El Tezal, 49 in Lienzo Charro Centro and 24 in Cabo San Lucas Centro. Those are more useful observations than a tiny neighborhood sample containing only a handful of units.
The broad apartment market looks softer now. A few important pockets are still pushing higher, but they are the exception.
| Apartment market | Current typical price | Change since Feb. 2025 | Active units | What we see now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Cabos overall | — | -8.4% | — | Broad decline |
| Cabo San Lucas Centro | MXN 15,740 | 0.0% | 24 | Flat |
| El Tezal | MXN 30,685 | +13.2% | 89 | Still rising strongly |
| San José del Cabo Centro | MXN 26,561 | -3.5% | 20 | Moderately lower |
| Lienzo Charro Centro | About MXN 26,500 | Negative | 49 | Softer than 2025 |
Is El Tezal still pushing Cabo rents higher?
El Tezal apartment rents are still climbing fast, but the increase does not extend to every type of property in the neighborhood.
The latest Propiedades.com apartment index puts El Tezal at MXN 30,685 per month, up 13.2% from its February 2025 baseline. It is also the largest apartment submarket in the site's Los Cabos inventory, with 89 active units. That makes the increase hard to dismiss as noise from two or three luxury listings.
Current listings explain what roughly MXN 30,000 buys. Inmuebles24 shows furnished two-bedroom apartments around MXN 22,000 and MXN 25,000, while Propiedades.com currently has examples at MXN 26,000, MXN 28,000, MXN 32,500 and MXN 40,000. Most come with features such as pools, controlled access, air conditioning and proximity to Costco, Walmart and the Transpeninsular corridor.
But El Tezal houses are behaving differently. Propiedades.com currently estimates a typical house rent around MXN 34,431, down 5.3% from the same 2025 baseline.
That divergence is useful. Demand for modern condominium living in El Tezal still looks strong, while landlords clearly cannot raise every residential property at the same pace.
| El Tezal rental type | Current typical rent | Change since Feb. 2025 | Current inventory | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apartments | MXN 30,685 | +13.2% | 89 | Strong increase |
| Houses | MXN 34,431 | -5.3% | 40 | Decline |
| 2BR apartment examples | MXN 22,000-32,500 | — | Many listings | Broad price range |
| Higher-end 2BR examples | Around MXN 40,000 | — | Smaller segment | Premium tier |
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What does a normal long-term rental in Cabo San Lucas cost now?
A normal furnished long-term apartment in Cabo San Lucas currently tends to fall somewhere around MXN 20,000 to MXN 30,000 per month, although central basic units can cost less and premium condos can cost far more.
The latest live listings make that range easier to understand than a citywide average. In El Tezal, we found a furnished two-bedroom at MXN 22,000 in Amalfi, several around MXN 25,000 and others at MXN 26,000-28,000. Propiedades.com currently shows additional two-bedroom examples around MXN 32,500.
Cabo San Lucas Centro is much cheaper on the aggregate measure. Propiedades.com currently puts its apartment price at MXN 15,740, although its typical unit is also much smaller, around 43 square metres. That explains part of the enormous gap with El Tezal, where the typical apartment in the dataset is around 100 square metres.
Anyone shopping for a reasonably modern two-bedroom with furniture, air conditioning, parking and a pool should budget closer to the MXN 20,000-30,000 band than to the central-city headline number.
Luxury changes the calculation completely. Medano, marina-facing buildings, resort communities and larger sea-view units can jump well past MXN 40,000 and are sometimes marketed directly in US dollars.
| Current Cabo example | Bedrooms | Approx. monthly rent | Area / type | Position in market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cabo San Lucas Centro typical apartment | — | MXN 15,740 | Smaller central unit | Lower end |
| Amalfi, El Tezal | 2 | MXN 22,000 | Furnished | Lower-mid El Tezal |
| El Tezal current listings | 2 | MXN 25,000-28,000 | Furnished / amenities | Main cluster |
| El Tezal | 2 | MXN 32,500 | Furnished | Upper-middle |
| El Tezal premium examples | 2 | Around MXN 40,000 | Pool / better development | Higher end |
Are Cabo San Lucas houses rising as fast as apartments?
No. Houses in Cabo San Lucas currently look much calmer than the hottest apartment segments.
Propiedades.com's latest numbers put house rents in Cabo San Lucas Centro at about MXN 30,000, up 4.2% from the site's February 2025 baseline. Across Los Cabos, house rents rose 3.4% over that period.
A low-single-digit increase over roughly a year and a half is very different from the jumps people became used to during the earlier rental boom. It also contrasts sharply with El Tezal apartments at +13.2%.
El Tezal makes the difference especially clear because house rents there fell 5.3% while apartment rents rose sharply. The neighborhood cannot simply be described as a market where “rents are up 13%.”
Some of the gap probably comes from what is being built and rented. Propiedades.com says 87% of the El Tezal rental inventory it tracks is only zero to four years old, and apartments make up 68% of the available stock. Newer condo developments have become a major part of what renters see when they search the area.
For now, the strongest upward pressure is concentrated in a particular product: newer apartments in sought-after neighborhoods.
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Have rents in central Cabo San Lucas basically stopped moving?
Yes. Apartment rents in Cabo San Lucas Centro are essentially flat right now.
Propiedades.com calculates 0.0% growth from February 2025 to its latest reading, with a current typical rent of MXN 15,740 across 24 active apartments.
That flat result is more interesting than it looks because Cabo San Lucas Centro sits close to the marina, Medano and the city's main employment and nightlife zones. If the old rent boom were still spreading through the entire city, central apartments should be participating more clearly.
Houses have done somewhat better, rising 4.2% to around MXN 30,000. Even there, though, the pace is modest compared with the jumps seen earlier in the decade.
Central Cabo is now one of the clearest examples of how the city can remain expensive without rents continuing to accelerate.
Is Cabo San Lucas still unaffordable even after rent growth slowed?
Yes. Cabo San Lucas housing can remain painfully unaffordable even when rent growth reaches zero.
That is one reason the public perception of an ongoing rent crisis has not disappeared. A renter does not experience “0% annual growth” as relief if the previous increases already pushed housing far above what a normal local salary can comfortably cover.
Numbeo's current Cabo San Lucas sample estimates a one-bedroom apartment outside the centre at roughly MXN 13,500 per month and a central one-bedroom above MXN 21,000. Its reported average monthly net salary sits around MXN 13,700. Numbeo is crowdsourced and its Cabo sample is small, so we would not use those numbers as an official income-to-rent ratio. The gap is still large enough to show the basic affordability problem.
Other evidence points in the same direction. Local reporting citing Infonavit has estimated that tens of thousands of Los Cabos tourism workers lack their own housing. INEGI's census also showed Los Cabos as Baja California Sur's largest municipality, with 351,111 residents and unusually strong work-related migration.
Slower rent inflation therefore helps new tenants only at the margin. Cabo's bigger housing problem today is the level rents already reached.
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Are Airbnb prices still rising in Cabo San Lucas?
No. Cabo San Lucas vacation-rental nightly prices are currently falling in AirDNA's broad market dataset.
AirDNA's latest Baja California Sur definition of Cabo San Lucas tracks 3,396 active short-term rentals. Average daily rate is $561, down 15.5% year over year. Occupancy, meanwhile, increased 12.4% to 48%.
Those two moves almost cancel each other out. Revenue per available rental night, or RevPAR, increased just 0.5% to $270. Hosts are filling more nights, but they are doing it at lower average prices.
The dataset also shows active listings down 61.5% year over year. That huge change means we should be careful with its reported 89% jump in average annual listing revenue because the pool of active properties has changed dramatically. RevPAR is cleaner here, and it is basically flat.
AirDNA also publishes a much smaller Cabo geographic sample with only 211 listings. That subset shows ADR rising 5.3% to $982, yet occupancy is down 8.3%, RevPAR is down 7.5% and annual revenue is down 8.7%. Even the dataset showing higher nightly prices does not show stronger rental economics.
The vacation-rental side of Cabo currently gives us little evidence of broad pricing power.
| AirDNA Cabo measure | Broad Cabo dataset | YoY change | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active listings | 3,396 | -61.5% | Major sample / supply change |
| Occupancy | 48% | +12.4% | More available nights booked |
| Average daily rate | $561 | -15.5% | Lower nightly pricing |
| RevPAR | $270 | +0.5% | Almost no effective growth |
| Smaller Cabo sample ADR | $982 | +5.3% | Higher rate in narrow subset |
| Smaller sample RevPAR | $355 | -7.5% | Weaker actual performance |
Is tourism still strong enough to push Cabo rents much higher?
Tourism is still huge in Los Cabos, but recent visitor data do not look strong enough to drive another broad rental surge by themselves.
Los Cabos remains one of Mexico's largest international resort markets, with millions of annual visitors, more than 20,000 hotel rooms and a tourism economy that keeps attracting workers. That gives the region a structural source of rental demand that many Mexican cities simply do not have.
The latest direction is softer, though. Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico reported Los Cabos passenger traffic down during the first half of 2026, including weaker international traffic. FITURCA's tourism observatory also showed softer airport arrivals in its mid-year reporting.
Hotel performance has cooled as well. FITURCA's latest detailed figures showed Los Cabos hotel occupancy below the previous year's level. Average room prices were only modestly higher year to date, while revenue per available room had weakened. Cabo San Lucas hotel occupancy was also lower in the latest monthly comparison.
None of that amounts to a tourism collapse. Cabo is still crowded, internationally connected and expensive. But one of the easiest arguments for rapidly rising rents has weakened: visitor demand is no longer accelerating the way it did during the strongest recovery years.
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What could make Cabo San Lucas rents start climbing fast again?
Cabo San Lucas could easily enter another rent upswing if tourism growth, population growth and constrained housing supply begin reinforcing each other again.
The structural setup is still there. Los Cabos continues to attract workers. Affordable housing remains scarce. Property development often targets higher-income buyers, foreigners and amenity-heavy condominium projects rather than low-cost local rentals. Land, construction and ownership costs also remain high.
Tourism could strengthen again too. FITURCA's forward airline schedule has recently shown better capacity from some domestic and Canadian markets, even while US capacity has looked weaker. A renewed international travel cycle would feed directly into tourism employment and indirectly into housing demand.
El Tezal already shows what renewed pressure can look like. Apartment rents there are rising while the broader municipality is falling, which suggests demand can reappear quickly in neighborhoods that offer new buildings, security, pools and convenient access to Cabo.
We would become much more confident that a new broad rental cycle had started if central apartment rents turned positive again, house rents accelerated beyond low single digits and short-term rental RevPAR began rising alongside nightly rates. Those conditions are not in place yet.
So, are rents still rising in Cabo San Lucas?
Mostly no. Cabo San Lucas rents remain very expensive, but today the market looks more like a patchwork of flat, falling and still-rising pockets than a continuing citywide rent boom.
The strongest evidence comes from long-term apartments. Los Cabos is down 8.4% from the early-2025 baseline, Cabo San Lucas Centro is flat and San José del Cabo Centro is lower. El Tezal apartments are the big exception at +13.2%.
Houses are calmer. Cabo San Lucas Centro is up only 4.2%, Los Cabos overall is up 3.4%, and El Tezal houses are actually down 5.3%. The apartment-house split inside El Tezal makes it especially hard to defend a simple claim that “Cabo rents are still rising.”
Short-term rentals also fail to show a fresh pricing boom. As seen above, AirDNA's broad Cabo dataset has average nightly rates down 15.5%, with stronger occupancy leaving RevPAR almost unchanged.
The important nuance for renters is that slower growth has not made Cabo cheap. Years of rent increases, rapid population growth and limited affordable supply left the city with a very high housing-cost base. A furnished two-bedroom around MXN 20,000-30,000 is entirely normal these days, and sought-after newer neighborhoods can cost more.
Our judgment is clear: the big Cabo rent surge has cooled. Some desirable apartment pockets are still getting more expensive, especially El Tezal, but there is currently no convincing evidence that rents are still rising broadly across Cabo San Lucas.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether rents are still rising broadly across Cabo San Lucas rather than assuming that Cabo's high rental prices automatically mean rents are still accelerating. We separate long-term apartments, houses, individual neighborhoods, short-term rentals and the wider tourism and housing environment before combining the evidence.
For long-term rentals, we prioritize changes over time rather than isolated asking prices. Propiedades.com's Los Cabos and neighborhood-level series are used to compare Cabo San Lucas Centro, El Tezal, San José del Cabo Centro and Lienzo Charro Centro, while current listing ranges help show what those market-level numbers mean for an actual renter.
We keep apartments and houses separate when they move differently. El Tezal is the clearest example: apartment rents are up sharply from the site's February 2025 baseline while house rents are lower, so combining the two would hide an important part of the market.
For short-term rentals, we look at ADR, occupancy and RevPAR together. We give particular weight to RevPAR when listing counts or the composition of the active inventory changes sharply, because a higher or lower nightly rate alone does not tell us whether hosts are actually generating stronger rental economics.
Tourism, population and housing-supply evidence are treated as supporting demand indicators rather than substitutes for rent data. INEGI helps establish the scale and migration profile of Los Cabos, while FITURCA, DataTur and Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico are used to test whether tourism and visitor demand are currently strengthening enough to create renewed pressure.
Housing-program information from SEDATU and the Municipality of Los Cabos is used as additional context for the area's affordability and supply constraints. These programs show how substantial the housing deficit has become, but we do not treat announced construction targets as proof that rents have already fallen or will fall.
The final judgment comes from looking for convergence across these measures. A genuine new Cabo-wide rent cycle would be more convincing if central apartment rents, house rents, short-term rental pricing and tourism demand were all strengthening together. At the moment, they are not.
Key sources used for this analysis include Propiedades.com on El Tezal apartment rents and inventory, Propiedades.com on Cabo San Lucas Centro apartments, Propiedades.com on San José del Cabo Centro apartments, Propiedades.com on El Tezal houses, AirDNA's Cabo San Lucas short-term rental market data, INEGI's 2020 sociodemographic profile of Baja California Sur, FITURCA's June 2026 Los Cabos Tourism Observatory report, DataTur's official hotel occupancy reporting, Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico's passenger-traffic releases, SEDATU's Baja California Sur housing program, and the Municipality of Los Cabos on planned housing supply.
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