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SUMMARY
Yes. Property prices in Colombia are likely to keep rising in nominal pesos over the next one to three years, although the strongest recent increases probably overstate what buyers should expect going forward.
The market is already appreciating at a high-single-digit annual pace. New-home prices gained about 5.3% in the first half of 2026, while Bogotá’s broader residential index also kept moving higher.
The unusual part is that prices are rising while sales have weakened. The explanation is mostly on the supply side: developers have cut launches and construction starts even faster than buyers have pulled back.
Colombia is not facing an immediate shortage of homes for sale. Roughly 160,000 new homes remain available, but the pipeline behind that inventory is getting thinner, which could become more important if demand recovers.
High mortgage rates are still the biggest brake on the market. Expensive financing has clearly damaged affordability and transactions, but it has not yet produced broad price cuts.
Construction costs add another floor under new-home prices. When projects become harder to build profitably, developers can delay or cancel them instead of simply accepting much lower selling prices.
Inflation changes the interpretation of the headline gains. An 8% nominal increase with inflation near 6% is still positive, but the real increase in purchasing power is far less dramatic.
The national average hides very different local markets. Some smaller cities have recently posted double-digit gains, Bogotá and Medellín are closer to the middle, and at least one market has shown a slight annual decline.
The macro backdrop is supportive rather than spectacular. Economic growth and employment are holding up, so the housing slowdown looks more like an affordability and financing problem than a recession-driven collapse in demand.
The clearest upside scenario is lower mortgage rates arriving before construction activity recovers. That could bring postponed buyers back into a market where the future supply pipeline is already unusually weak.
The biggest risk is not necessarily a nationwide nominal price fall. It is buying the wrong local market: an overpriced tourist unit, an oversupplied neighborhood or a project where rents and local incomes no longer justify the asking price.
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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.
Using DANE’s four most recent quarterly movements, we calculate that national new-home prices were running roughly 8.8% above their level a year earlier by the second quarter.
There has been some cooling from the fastest part of the cycle, 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 |
Why are Colombia property prices rising if home sales are falling?
Colombia property prices can keep rising with weaker home sales because developers are pulling back even faster than buyers are.
Camacol’s latest figures make that unusually clear. From January through July 2026, developers sold 90,973 new homes, 11.3% fewer than during the same period of 2025.
That sounds bearish. Then we look at what builders did: they launched only 70,873 homes, down 15.7%, and started construction on just 58,462, down 17.9%.
Sales fell by about one tenth, while construction starts fell by almost one fifth.
Over the latest twelve months, the gap becomes even larger. Colombia recorded 168,478 new-home sales, compared with 135,762 launches and 108,850 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 helps explain one of the stranger features of Colombia’s housing market today. Transactions can be weak without sellers having to cut prices aggressively.
| New-housing activity | Jan–Jul 2026 | Change vs. previous year | Difference vs. sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 90,973 | -11.3% | — |
| Launches | 70,873 | -15.7% | -20,100 |
| Construction starts | 58,462 | -17.9% | -32,511 |
| Homes available for sale | 160,295 | -0.5% | — |
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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 July, year-to-date sales were down 11.3%, while the latest twelve-month total had slipped to 168,478 homes, 0.6% below the previous comparable period.
So booming demand probably will not carry house prices higher by itself. Buyers are clearly more hesitant these days.
But the slowdown has happened at the same time as an even larger retreat in launches and construction. Demand is disappointing, yet supply is still failing to catch up.
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 recent work on the sector, including sales, launches, starts, permits, mortgages, inventory and construction employment. Its assessment found supply lagging demand and construction starts sitting around their lowest levels in fourteen years.
Camacol’s newer numbers show that the problem has continued.
During the latest twelve months, Colombia started construction on 108,850 homes. Over the same period, buyers purchased 168,478 new homes.
That works out to only about 65 construction starts for every 100 homes sold. Launches came to roughly 81 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.
| Latest 12 months | Homes | Annual change | Per 100 homes sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| New-home sales | 168,478 | -0.6% | 100 |
| New launches | 135,762 | -4.2% | 81 |
| Construction starts | 108,850 | -11.6% | 65 |
| Sales minus launches | 32,716 | — | 19 |
| Sales minus starts | 59,628 | — | 35 |
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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 160,295 new homes available for sale in its latest report. That total was only 0.5% lower than a year earlier, and around 59% of the inventory was social housing.
So buyers are not currently facing empty shelves.
What has changed is the pipeline behind that inventory. The stock available today has barely moved, while new launches and especially construction starts have dropped sharply.
If sales stay weak, existing inventory can absorb demand and keep price growth from running away. If buyers return while builders are still starting very few projects, the market can tighten much faster.
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’s policy rate currently stands at 12%. With borrowing costs that high, Colombian mortgages remain expensive even for households with solid incomes.
That can completely change what a buyer can afford. A household that qualifies comfortably when mortgage rates are in single digits can suddenly find the same apartment out of reach when financing moves into the low or mid-teens.
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% | Financing remains restrictive |
| Home-purchase disbursements | 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 |
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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.
Residential construction costs have been rising materially faster than they were at the end of 2025. DANE’s construction-cost data showed annual increases around the mid-single digits during 2026 after much softer growth previously.
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 are currently 6.03% higher than a year earlier according to DANE.
Compare that with new-home appreciation running around the high single digits. The exact periods do not line up perfectly, but the gap gives us the right order of magnitude.
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.
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.
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Are Bogotá property prices still rising?
Yes. Bogotá property prices are still climbing today, even though the capital does not have particularly strong housing sales.
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 in the same direction. Earlier in 2026, DANE was showing annual new-housing appreciation around 7% to 8% for Bogotá and Soacha.
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.
At the same time, transaction activity has been much less impressive.
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 | Around 7–8% | Same general direction |
| Sales activity | Softer | Demand is less impressive than prices |
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.
Pasto was recently running near 20% annual price growth. Cali was around 12.5%, Pereira around 12%, while Barranquilla and Armenia were close to 11%.
Bogotá and Medellín were much closer to the 7% to 8% range.
Popayán even recorded a small annual decline.
We would not assume that Pasto will keep appreciating at almost 20%, because smaller markets and the mix of projects being sold can make these figures jump around. But the dispersion 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 | Recent annual new-home price growth | Current picture |
|---|---|---|
| Pasto | ≈19.6% | Exceptionally fast |
| Cali | ≈12.5% | Strong |
| Pereira | ≈12.1% | Strong |
| Barranquilla | ≈11.1% | Above national pace |
| Armenia | ≈11.0% | Above national pace |
| Medellín metro | ≈7.6% | More moderate |
| Bogotá + Soacha | ≈7.4% | More moderate |
| Popayán | ≈-0.9% | Slight decline |
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Could Colombia’s economy push property prices higher?
Yes. Colombia’s economy is currently strong enough to support housing demand, and an eventual improvement in borrowing conditions could release some demand that expensive mortgages are holding back.
DANE reported 3.5% year-over-year GDP growth in the second quarter of 2026. That is faster than the 2.6% growth recorded across 2025.
Employment has also held up. The national unemployment rate was 8.0% in the latest available mid-year reading, half a percentage point below the level a year earlier.
Colombia’s housing slowdown has developed while the broader economy continues growing and unemployment remains relatively contained.
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. As seen above, they would be returning while the construction pipeline is unusually thin.
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.
Housing costs remain one of the important contributors to Colombian inflation, and rents have continued increasing nationally.
That fits what Banco de la República had already 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. Property prices can outrun rents far enough that rental yields become unattractive. That has already happened in parts of popular neighborhoods where investor demand has pushed purchase prices much faster than ordinary local incomes.
So rising rents help explain why owners are not rushing to sell cheaply. They do not make every Colombian apartment a good investment.
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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.
A large inventory buildup could also change the balance. Yet Camacol currently reports about 160,000 new homes available for sale, slightly fewer than a year earlier, while construction starts are shrinking.
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 oversupplied Medellín micro-market, an overpriced tourist apartment 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 | No broad shock visible | Low for now |
| Mortgage-credit collapse | Real financing roughly flat | Limited |
| Large inventory buildup | Available supply slightly lower YoY | Limited |
| Construction boom | Starts are falling | 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 |
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 already increasing around the high single digits. Bogotá’s broader residential index is doing roughly the same. The economy is still growing, employment has held up reasonably well and mortgage lending continues even with very expensive financing.
At the same time, builders have become extremely cautious. During the latest twelve months, Colombia sold about 168,500 new homes but started construction on fewer than 109,000. That weak pipeline makes a large nationwide supply glut difficult to see from here.
High borrowing costs should keep a lid on how quickly prices can rise. Inflation also means an 8% nominal increase can translate into only a modest real gain.
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 conditions is currently visible.
What we would not do is turn that national view into a blanket recommendation to buy anywhere. Recent price growth ranges from around 20% in some smaller markets to an outright decline in at least one city, while Bogotá and Medellín sit much closer to the middle.
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.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether property prices in Colombia are likely to rise over the next one to three years. Rather than extrapolating one price index, we compare current price momentum with home sales, launches, construction starts, available inventory, housing finance, mortgage conditions, construction costs, inflation, rents, economic growth and city-level differences.
We give more weight to recent official data and to indicators that say something about the future housing balance. Current inventory tells us how much stock buyers can access now, while launches and construction starts help us judge whether that stock is likely to be replenished quickly enough if demand improves.
Where published figures do not directly provide the comparison needed, we calculate it from the underlying data. That includes compounding sequential quarterly price changes rather than simply adding them, and comparing sales with launches and starts as directional pipeline indicators rather than treating those categories as if they occurred at the same stage of a project.
We also separate nominal appreciation from real purchasing-power gains. High-single-digit property growth looks much less dramatic when consumer inflation is above 6%, so the forecast distinguishes between prices rising in pesos and owners becoming materially wealthier after inflation.
National averages are checked against local evidence because Colombian housing markets are moving at very different speeds. Bogotá’s broader residential index, regional new-home data and the dispersion between cities are used to test whether the national trend is broad or being driven by only a few markets.
Key sources include DANE’s New Housing Price Index, DANE’s Residential Property Price Index, Camacol’s July 2026 housing-market tables, Banco de la República’s April 2026 real-estate and mortgage-market analysis, Banco de la República’s housing-cycle research, DANE’s housing-finance data, Banco de la República’s monetary-policy data, DANE’s construction-cost index, DANE’s consumer-price data, DANE’s quarterly GDP data, DANE’s labor-market data, and Banco de la República’s research on regional rental-price disparities.
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