Is it a good time to buy property in Cartagena now?

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Are Cartagena property prices still rising now?

Cartagena property prices are still rising today, and the latest official data do not show a citywide correction.

DANE’s new-housing index put annual price growth in Cartagena’s urban area at 10.56% in the first quarter of 2026. Colombia as a whole was up 8.47%, so Cartagena was still running ahead of the national market.

That puts Cartagena among the stronger large housing markets tracked by DANE. The city ranked behind places such as Pasto, Cali, Pereira and Armenia, but the useful point for a buyer is simpler: sellers have not yet been forced into broad price cuts.

The pace also needs some context. Colombia’s new-home prices were rising 9.17% annually at the end of 2025, compared with 8.47% in the first quarter of 2026. Growth has cooled slightly nationally, while Cartagena has stayed comparatively strong.

We should be careful about applying that 10.56% figure to every apartment. DANE mainly tells us what is happening in new housing. A 25-year-old apartment in Bocagrande, a colonial house in Centro and a new unit near Serena del Mar can behave very differently.

Still, anyone waiting for evidence that Cartagena property prices have already started falling broadly will not find it in the latest official numbers.

Property-price measure	Latest change	Comparison	What we see
Cartagena new housing	+10.56% YoY	Above national average	Prices still rising quickly
Colombia new housing	+8.47% YoY	Lower than Cartagena	National market still positive
Colombia previous annual pace	+9.17%	Slightly faster	Growth has cooled somewhat
Colombia Q2 new housing	+2.41% QoQ	Still positive	No national reversal yet

Is Cartagena property already too expensive?

Prime Cartagena property is expensive now, although prices change so much from one neighborhood to another that a citywide average tells us very little.

Recent monitored asking-price data from TuLugar put Centro at roughly US$5,577 per square meter and San Diego around US$5,472. Bocagrande was closer to US$3,479, Castillogrande around US$3,380 and El Laguito about US$2,650.

Move slightly away from Cartagena’s most internationally recognizable neighborhoods and the gap gets large. Manga was around US$1,718 per square meter in the same dataset, while Pie de la Popa was closer to US$1,369.

So a buyer looking at Centro can easily pay more than three times the price per square meter found in parts of Manga. That difference is too large to treat Cartagena as one investment market.

The premium in Centro and San Diego is partly understandable. Historic architecture is genuinely scarce, land is constrained and the area has international tourist appeal that ordinary residential neighborhoods cannot reproduce. But at more than US$5,000 per square meter, a lot of that appeal is already in the price.

Bocagrande creates a different issue. Colombia Bound recently found a median asking price closer to US$2,788 per square meter across hundreds of listings there, considerably below some other monitored datasets. The disagreement is useful: neighborhood averages are only the first filter. Building age, floor, sea view, renovation quality, administration fees and short-term-rental rules can move the real value substantially.

Cartagena area	Indicative monitored asking price	Price level	What buyers are paying for
Centro	~US$5,577/m²	Very high	Historic scarcity and tourism
San Diego	~US$5,472/m²	Very high	Colonial stock and scarcity
Bocagrande	~US$2,800–3,500/m²	High	Beachfront location and liquidity
Castillogrande	~US$3,380/m²	High	Premium residential market
El Laguito	~US$2,650/m²	Mid-high	Tourism and waterfront exposure
Manga	~US$1,718/m²	Mid	Residential value
Pie de la Popa	~US$1,369/m²	Lower	Less tourist-driven pricing

Are people still buying property in Cartagena?

People are still buying Cartagena property, but middle- and high-end housing demand has weakened sharply lately.

Bolívar recorded 8,025 new-home sales during 2025, almost identical to the 7,998 units sold the year before. More than 4,000 of those sales were in the non-VIS segment, which covers the middle- and higher-priced homes most relevant to many investors.

The first half of 2026 changed the picture. According to Camacol Bolívar data reported by El Universal, total sales reached 3,965 homes. VIS sales increased 26.6% to 2,452 units, while middle- and upper-market sales dropped from 2,126 to 1,513 units.

That is a 28.8% decline in the part of the market where foreign investors and second-home buyers are more likely to shop.

This is one of the more useful things to know before buying now. Cartagena prices are still rising while higher-end transaction volumes have weakened. Sellers can keep ambitious asking prices for a while, but buyers have fewer competitors than they would in a booming transaction market.

We would pay close attention to properties that have been listed for months, developer inventory nearing completion and owners who bought several years ago and still have a large embedded gain. That is where softer demand can turn into an actual negotiated discount.

Bolívar housing sales	Previous period	Latest period	Change
Full-year new-home sales	7,998	8,025	Essentially flat
H1 VIS sales	~1,937	2,452	+26.6%
H1 middle/high-end sales	2,126	1,513	-28.8%
H1 total sales	—	3,965	Market still active

Could too much new construction hurt Cartagena property prices?

Cartagena has plenty of new housing coming onto the market, especially in the north, but current construction data do not point to an obvious oversupply crisis.

Bolívar finished 2025 with 8,634 new homes available for sale. Of those, 5,142 were non-VIS properties, meaning there is already substantial inventory competing for the same middle- and higher-income buyers who have recently become less active.

Developers have kept building. During 2025, 5,484 units were launched and 4,831 began construction. In the first half of 2026, another 3,557 units were launched and 3,012 started construction.

The concentration is more interesting than the total. Camacol Bolívar says close to 70% of Cartagena’s recent non-VIS sales have been concentrated in the northern zone.

That includes the broad corridor around La Boquilla, Cielo Mar, Serena del Mar and newer coastal developments. Buyers there get modern apartments, newer infrastructure and more amenities, but developers also have more room to add future supply than they do inside Cartagena’s historic core.

We would be skeptical of any developer selling a northern Cartagena project mainly on the idea that “there is no more land.” There is still room to build, and buyers need a better reason than generic scarcity to pay a large premium.

Centro and San Diego have much tighter physical supply. Northern Cartagena has stronger expansion potential. Both can perform well, but for different reasons.

Is Cartagena tourism still growing enough to support property prices?

Cartagena tourism remains very strong currently, and recent visitor numbers give the property market a meaningful demand floor.

The city received more than 3.3 million visitors during the first half of 2026, according to figures released by Cartagena’s government and Corpoturismo.

Around 1.90 million visitors arrived by air, up 3.8%, while road arrivals reached roughly 1.02 million, a jump of 25.1%. More than 457,000 international visitors stayed in the city during the same period.

The longer trend also remains positive. Rafael Núñez International Airport handled 7.76 million passengers in 2025, an annual record and 3.27% more than in 2024. International passenger traffic grew 4.9%, faster than the 2.8% increase in domestic traffic.

Those numbers make Cartagena less dependent on Colombian residents alone. A meaningful share of housing demand comes from people who first encounter the city as tourists, return repeatedly and eventually consider buying a second home or investment property.

The visitor base is also broader than one market. Travelers from the United States remain important, while Peru, Mexico, Chile and Brazil have become meaningful international sources too. Domestic tourism remains much larger in absolute numbers.

Tourism cannot justify every property valuation, especially when Airbnb competition is intense. But there is currently little evidence that Cartagena’s underlying appeal as a destination is fading.

Cartagena tourism measure	Latest level	Recent change	What it means for property
H1 total visitors	>3.3 million	Strong volume	Large tourism base
Air arrivals	1.90 million	+3.8%	Air demand still growing
Road arrivals	1.02 million	+25.1%	Domestic access growing quickly
International visitors	>457,000	Strong foreign demand	Supports premium housing
2025 airport passengers	7.76 million	+3.27%	Record annual traffic
International airport traffic	—	+4.9%	Faster than domestic growth

Is Airbnb still a good reason to buy property in Cartagena?

Airbnb can still work in Cartagena today, but current rental data are much less attractive than the simple “tourism is booming” story suggests.

AirDNA currently tracks 9,777 active short-term-rental listings in Cartagena. Average occupancy is around 53%, the average daily rate is roughly US$119 and RevPAR is about US$63.

The direction of those numbers tells us more than the headline averages. Occupancy is up 16.9% year over year, while the average daily rate has dropped 19.9%. RevPAR is down about 1.9%.

Hosts are filling more nights but charging considerably less for each one.

A spreadsheet based on constantly rising nightly rates would already be out of touch with the market. Cartagena has enough tourism to fill apartments, but nearly 10,000 active rentals create serious competition.

AirDNA also reports average trailing annual revenue of about US$21,500 per active listing. We would be cautious about applying that figure directly to a property because the number mixes different apartment sizes, locations and availability patterns. A two-bedroom unit legally allowed to rent by the night in a strong Bocagrande building can perform very differently from a residential apartment several streets inland.

Airbnb is still useful upside. It should no longer be the only reason a Cartagena purchase makes financial sense.

Cartagena short-term rentals	Current figure	YoY change	What we see
Active listings	9,777	-38.3%	Still a very large market
Occupancy	53%	+16.9%	More available nights are selling
Average daily rate	US$119	-19.9%	Hosts have lost pricing power
RevPAR	US$63	-1.9%	Revenue per available night is slightly weaker
Average annual revenue	US$21,500	+59.5%	Useful only with caution due to mix effects

Can Cartagena ban you from running an Airbnb after you buy?

Yes. A Cartagena apartment can be unsuitable for short-term rentals even when the neighborhood is full of tourists.

The risk comes from several layers of rules. Colombian tourism accommodation requires the relevant tourism registration, while the property itself also has to comply with local land-use rules and the building’s horizontal-property regulations.

Cartagena has already enforced those restrictions.

The city government previously intervened at the Santo Domingo II building in the Historic Center after apartments were being offered for tourist stays even though the building’s authorized use was residential. Cartagena ordered the unauthorized short-term activity to stop.

That case is worth taking seriously because it shows that a listing appearing on Airbnb does not prove the activity is legally secure.

Before assigning any Airbnb income to a Cartagena apartment, we would check the building regulations, assembly decisions, land-use permissions and tourism-registration requirements.

The order matters. Buyers sometimes calculate a 7% or 8% projected short-term-rental yield first and investigate the rules afterward. By then, the investment thesis may already be built around income the property cannot legally generate.

A legally clear tourist-rental unit can therefore deserve a higher price than a superficially similar apartment next door.

Can a normal long-term rental make Cartagena property worthwhile?

Long-term rental income can make a Cartagena property reasonable, although current yields rarely compensate for paying too much upfront.

Bocagrande gives us a useful example because there are enough listings to make comparison possible. Colombia Bound recently estimated a gross long-term rental yield around 5.7%, based on monitored asking rents and asking sale prices.

Its dataset showed a median sale listing of roughly US$308,000 and median monthly rent around US$1,360.

A 5.7% gross yield sounds respectable until we subtract the costs of owning the property. Cartagena apartment owners can face administration fees, property tax, insurance, repairs, vacancy periods and management expenses. Buildings with pools, security, elevators and large common areas can have particularly high monthly charges.

The net yield can therefore end up several points below the advertised gross number.

That makes the purchase price unusually important. If two similar apartments can rent for around the same amount and one seller accepts 15% less, almost the entire discount improves the buyer’s future return.

For investors today, finding an owner who genuinely wants to sell may produce more value than obsessing over whether Cartagena rents will rise another few percentage points next year.

Are high Colombian interest rates making this a better time to negotiate?

High interest rates are hurting financed Cartagena buyers right now, which gives cash buyers a much stronger negotiating position.

Banco de la República currently has its policy rate at 12%. The bank raised the rate by 75 basis points earlier in the summer and then kept it unchanged at its latest policy meeting.

That reversal matters. Buyers who expected Colombian borrowing costs to keep falling have instead faced tighter financing again.

Mortgage rates remain painful as a result. Recent comparisons based on Colombian financial-system data showed peso-denominated housing loans frequently in the low-to-high teens, depending on the borrower, bank and housing category.

At those rates, leverage changes the economics dramatically. A property producing a gross rental yield around 5% or 6% cannot comfortably support debt costing well above 10% without a large equity contribution.

Cash buyers face a different market. They can negotiate with sellers whose natural domestic buyer pool has become smaller because many households simply cannot justify the monthly mortgage payment.

We would currently see high Colombian rates as one of the best arguments for buying with cash and one of the worst arguments for buying with heavy leverage.

Is the Colombian peso making Cartagena property more expensive for foreigners?

The Colombian peso has recently made Cartagena noticeably more expensive for dollar buyers, so foreigners should stop assuming Colombian property is automatically cheap.

The peso has strengthened substantially from periods when one US dollar bought more than COP4,000. At a rate around COP3,200 per dollar, the same peso-denominated property requires far more dollars to purchase.

Take a COP1.2 billion apartment. At COP4,500 per dollar, the apartment costs roughly US$267,000. At COP3,200, it costs about US$375,000.

That is around US$108,000 of extra acquisition cost without the seller changing the Colombian price at all.

Currency can therefore have a bigger effect on a foreign buyer than a normal year of Cartagena property appreciation.

The risk continues after purchase. Rent received in pesos can rise while the return measured in dollars or euros falls if the peso weakens again.

Foreign investors are effectively making two decisions when they buy Cartagena property: what they think about the asset and what they are willing to tolerate from the currency.

That does not make Cartagena unattractive. It just means the old “everything is cheap in Colombia in dollar terms” thesis is much weaker these days.

Is northern Cartagena now the best place to buy?

Northern Cartagena has the strongest large-scale growth story today, although buyers there should expect continued construction around them.

Camacol Bolívar says close to 70% of Cartagena’s recent non-VIS housing sales have been concentrated in the northern part of the city.

The attraction is easy to understand. Areas around La Boquilla, Cielo Mar, Serena del Mar and the coastal corridor offer newer apartment stock, modern pools and common areas, easier parking and large master-planned developments.

That product works well for buyers who want something easier to maintain than a colonial home and newer than much of Bocagrande.

The trade-off is future supply.

Northern Cartagena still has land and active development projects. More apartments can be built there, so buyers cannot rely on physical scarcity alone to drive appreciation.

The better projects need something harder to replicate: direct beach access, excellent views, strong construction quality, good infrastructure, low enough administration costs or a particularly strong location inside a master plan.

For a five- or ten-year buyer, northern Cartagena can make sense because the area is where much of the city’s modern growth is happening. For someone hoping that any new apartment will become scarce within two years, the thesis is much weaker.

Is Bocagrande still worth buying now?

Bocagrande is still worth buying today when the individual apartment is good enough, but average units have too much competition to justify premium prices.

Hundreds of Bocagrande properties are currently being marketed for sale. TuLugar has recently monitored more than 500 listings, while Colombia Bound has tracked more than 400.

That gives buyers plenty of alternatives.

Colombia Bound’s monitored data also put median listing time around 202 days. Listing duration is imperfect because portals contain stale properties and relisted units, but six months of exposure still suggests buyers do not need to panic and accept the first asking price.

The apartments that stand out tend to have clear advantages: unobstructed views, legal short-term-rental rights, renovated interiors, efficient layouts, parking and administration fees that do not consume too much rental income.

Older generic apartments can struggle because buyers can often find another one in the same neighborhood, sometimes in the same tower.

Bocagrande’s main strength is its depth. People know the area, tourists stay there, tenants search there and resale activity is much easier to observe than in smaller Cartagena neighborhoods.

That makes it a sensible place to buy well. It gives little reason to buy carelessly.

Is Cartagena’s Historic Center worth paying more for?

Cartagena’s Historic Center can justify a large premium for the right property, but buyers should expect more legal and physical complexity than in a modern apartment tower.

Centro and San Diego are among Cartagena’s most expensive submarkets, with monitored asking prices recently above US$5,400 per square meter.

There is real scarcity behind those prices. Cartagena cannot simply build another colonial Historic Center along the coast. Restored houses with strong architecture, courtyards and good locations have a limited competitive set.

Some properties therefore behave differently from normal apartment inventory. A distinctive colonial house can compete with only a small number of genuinely comparable assets.

The risks are equally distinctive.

Historic properties can require expensive roof work, humidity treatment, structural repairs and specialized renovation. Heritage restrictions can limit what owners are allowed to change. Short-term-rental use also needs to be legally clear, as Cartagena’s previous enforcement actions have shown.

We would pay the Historic Center premium for something genuinely difficult to reproduce. Paying US$5,000-plus per square meter merely because an ordinary apartment sits inside the walls is much harder to defend.

Could Cartagena property prices fall from here?

Cartagena property prices could fall, but the evidence currently points more toward weaker negotiations and slower appreciation than a broad crash.

The bearish argument begins with the 28.8% decline in middle- and high-end housing sales in Bolívar during the first half of 2026.

That is large enough to take seriously.

Yet prices have continued rising, tourism remains very strong and developers are still launching and starting thousands of units. We have softness in one important part of demand without the wider deterioration normally associated with a major housing downturn.

If the market were moving toward a real correction, we would expect several things to start happening together: higher unsold inventory, repeated weakness in premium transactions, flat or declining official prices, softer rents and weaker visitor demand.

We are not seeing that full combination today.

The more likely near-term risk is that owners who need to sell accept discounts while broader price indices stay positive. Buyers may therefore find individual bargains without ever seeing headlines announcing that “Cartagena property prices are falling.”

Waiting for a visible citywide decline could mean waiting for something that never arrives.

What kind of Cartagena property would we avoid right now?

We would avoid Cartagena properties that need both aggressive appreciation and aggressive Airbnb assumptions to produce a decent return.

The most fragile setup is easy to recognize: a standardized apartment bought at the full asking price, financed with expensive debt, carrying high monthly administration fees and relying on short-term rentals that have not been legally verified.

Current Airbnb data make that strategy harder to defend. As seen above, occupancy has improved while average nightly rates have fallen almost 20% year over year.

High borrowing costs then add another layer of pressure.

Older buildings can create a different version of the same problem. A cheap purchase can become expensive if the condominium needs major elevator, facade, pool or structural work shortly after closing.

We would also be careful with new developments marketed almost entirely around projected capital gains. The northern corridor remains attractive, but developers can continue adding supply there.

The strongest properties today have at least one feature that holds up without optimistic assumptions: a very good purchase price, proven long-term rental demand, hard-to-copy location, legally secure tourist use or genuine physical scarcity.

Is it a good time to buy property in Cartagena now?

Yes, it is a reasonably good time to buy property in Cartagena now if we can pay mostly in cash, negotiate hard and hold the property for several years.

The current setup is unusually interesting because Cartagena’s underlying demand still looks healthy while part of the buyer market has weakened.

Official new-housing prices have continued rising at a double-digit annual pace. Cartagena has also received more than 3.3 million visitors in the first half of 2026, while its airport recently completed a record year.

At the same time, middle- and upper-market home sales in Bolívar have fallen 28.8%. Financing is expensive with Colombia’s policy rate currently at 12%, and short-term-rental operators have recently been accepting lower nightly prices even as occupancy improved.

That mix gives buyers something useful: less competition without clear evidence of a collapsing underlying market.

We would be much less enthusiastic for someone borrowing heavily. A mortgage in the low-to-high teens can overwhelm the yield of an ordinary Cartagena rental property.

We would also reject the idea that any Cartagena apartment is a good purchase simply because tourism keeps growing. Nearly 10,000 active short-term rentals, substantial new construction and large differences between neighborhoods make property selection crucial.

For a long-term buyer, the better opportunities currently include discounted Bocagrande resales, legally secure Historic Center properties with genuine scarcity, strong residential assets in areas such as Manga, and carefully chosen northern projects where location and quality justify the future supply risk.

So our answer is yes, with an important condition: this is a buyer-selection opportunity rather than a market-wide bargain.

We do not see enough evidence to wait confidently for a Cartagena property crash. We do see enough weakness in premium transactions, financing and parts of the rental market to refuse ambitious asking prices and negotiate much harder than the rising headline price data might suggest.

Who is the author of this content?

THE LATINVESTOR

A team specialized in real estate investing in LATAM countries

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Cartagena. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.