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

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Are Medellín property prices still rising right now?

Medellín property prices are still going up, although the latest numbers no longer look like an easy-money boom.

DANE’s latest detailed figure for Medellín showed new-home prices 6.51% higher than a year earlier. The increase was heavily concentrated at the top end: prices in estratos 5 and 6 were up 8.82%, while the increase was only 1.59% in estrato 4 and 1.67% across estratos 1 to 3.

There is one important wrinkle. Medellín prices actually fell 0.76% during that quarter. That short-term dip initially looked like a possible slowdown, but Colombia’s next new-housing release was much stronger. DANE reported another 2.41% national increase during the second quarter, including a 2.37% rise for apartments.

We cannot simply apply that national increase to Medellín, but it does weaken the argument that Colombia has entered a broad housing correction.

Inflation also changes how we should read the 6.51% increase. Colombia’s annual CPI is currently just above 6%. In real purchasing-power terms, Medellín’s latest annual appreciation was therefore close to flat. Owners are still seeing higher peso prices, but those gains have recently done little more than keep up with inflation.

Today’s market therefore looks quite different from a genuine property boom. Prices remain firm and expensive properties are still appreciating quickly, yet the evidence does not show buyers getting rich simply by owning the average Medellín apartment.

Latest price measure	Change	What we learn
Medellín new housing, annual	+6.51%	Prices remain clearly above last year
Medellín high-income segments	+8.82%	Premium housing is rising much faster
Medellín middle-income segment	+1.59%	Much weaker appreciation
Medellín new housing, quarterly	-0.76%	Momentum briefly softened
Colombia new housing, latest quarter	+2.41%	National prices accelerated again
Colombia annual inflation	~6%	Medellín’s latest real annual gain was small

Has Medellín housing demand actually come back?

Yes. Medellín and Antioquia have moved well beyond the worst part of the housing slump, and buyers have returned in meaningful numbers.

Camacol Antioquia recorded 23,762 new-home sales during 2025, 31.7% more than the previous year. That rebound came after three weak years, so the comparison deserves some caution, but adding almost one-third to annual sales is still a major change.

The more interesting part appears when we compare sales with what developers were putting back into the pipeline. Antioquia recorded 22,641 new launches and only 17,187 housing starts over the same period.

Buyers therefore purchased about 1,100 more homes than developers launched and roughly 6,600 more than actually started construction.

That relationship is worth watching. If sales continue running above construction starts for several years, available inventory eventually gets tighter. We are not there yet, but this is clearly different from a market where developers keep building far faster than people buy.

The recovery has also been uneven. Camacol warned in 2026 that housing sales had softened again amid political uncertainty, financing pressure and changes around housing subsidies. We therefore would not extrapolate the 31.7% rebound indefinitely.

Still, the important question is whether Medellín has enough real demand to support current prices. Right now, the answer is yes.

Antioquia new housing	Latest full-year total	Compared with sales
Homes sold	23,762	100%
New projects launched	22,641	95%
Homes starting construction	17,187	72%
Annual sales growth	+31.7%	Strong recovery

Is Medellín already too expensive to buy?

Parts of Medellín are expensive now, especially the neighborhoods foreign buyers hear about first.

Current listing data from ElBroker, based on more than 300 apartments, put El Poblado at roughly COP 9.6 million per square meter. Envigado is around COP 8.4 million and Laureles around COP 7.1 million.

That already creates a big gap inside the same metropolitan area. An 80-square-meter apartment valued at those averages would come to roughly COP 769 million in El Poblado, COP 672 million in Envigado and COP 566 million in Laureles.

And those are broad resale-style market averages. Some new developments are much more expensive.

Zonario currently tracks nine active new-build projects specifically in Laureles. Their average asking price is around COP 15.7 million per square meter. The average apartment is only 27 square meters, which partly explains the extreme price per square meter, but the comparison is still revealing: some investors are paying more than twice the broader Laureles average because they are buying compact new units packaged for investors.

A small luxury studio and an older 100-square-meter family apartment are obviously different products. Still, the numbers show why the statement “Medellín property is cheap” has become much harder to defend.

Medellín can still look inexpensive compared with Miami, Madrid or major North American cities. That comparison does not automatically make a COP 15 million-per-square-meter studio good value inside Colombia.

Area / property type	Approx. asking price per m²
Laureles broader market	COP 7.1M
Envigado	COP 8.4M
El Poblado	COP 9.6M
Laureles active new builds	COP 15.7M
Laureles-Estadio active new builds	COP 13.6M

Are Medellín rents high enough to make buying worthwhile?

Yes, and long-term rents are one of the strongest arguments for buying Medellín property today.

FincaRaíz’s large Medellín dataset gives us an unusually useful comparison because it provides advertised sale prices and advertised monthly rents per square meter for the same broad housing segments.

For estrato-4 apartments, the average advertised sale price was COP 5.408 million per square meter and monthly rent was COP 39,060. Annualizing the rent gives an implied gross yield of about 8.7%.

Estrato 5 works out at roughly 9.3%, while estrato 6 reaches around 9.7%.

Those figures are gross yields, so nobody should treat a 9.7% number as money going straight into the owner’s pocket. Administración fees, property tax, maintenance, repairs, vacancy, insurance and management can take several percentage points away.

There is another limitation: we are dividing broad asking-rent averages by broad asking-sale averages rather than following the exact same apartments from purchase to rental.

Even with those caveats, yields around 9% give Medellín a lot more breathing room than expensive cities where gross residential yields start at 3% or 4%.

The rental market also looks deep. FincaRaíz found that apartments represented 57% of Medellín’s residential property supply, while rental demand was especially dominant for smaller units: 79% of demand for apartaestudios on the portal was rental-related.

For a correctly priced apartment, rental income can therefore do a meaningful share of the investment work while the owner waits for appreciation.

Medellín apartment segment	Asking sale price/m²	Monthly asking rent/m²	Implied gross yield
Estrato 4	COP 5.408M	COP 39,060	~8.7%
Estrato 5	COP 5.933M	COP 45,990	~9.3%
Estrato 6	COP 7.035M	COP 56,805	~9.7%

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

Airbnb still makes money in Medellín, but buying a property that only works as a short-term rental has become a much riskier bet.

AirDNA’s freshly updated Medellín dataset tracks 14,021 active short-term-rental listings. Average occupancy is currently 63%, the average booked-night rate is $71 and RevPAR is around $45.

Demand is clearly alive. Occupancy is up 25.9% year over year and RevPAR is up 8.3%.

Nightly pricing tells a less exciting story. The average daily rate has fallen 16.9% over the same period. Hosts are filling more nights, but they are doing so at lower prices.

AirDNA also reports active listings down 41.6% year over year and average annual revenue per active listing up 92.4%. We would be careful with that last figure. A huge reduction in the number of listings used in the market pool can mechanically make average revenue among the remaining active properties look much stronger. The cleaner comparable-property metric is RevPAR, which is up a far more believable 8.3%.

The regulation side has become more important lately too.

Medellín’s city government recently published another reminder that rentals of 30 days or less are treated as tourist accommodation and need to comply with the relevant tourism, building and registration rules. Officials specifically highlighted El Poblado, Laureles-Estadio and La Candelaria as areas where short-term rentals have grown strongly.

Earlier enforcement operations in El Poblado dealt with 71 complaints linked to short-term-rental disturbances and another 18 requests to investigate possible irregularities. Authorities have also been cross-checking information with Migración Colombia.

Short-term rentals can still lift the return on the right property. We simply would not pay a large Airbnb premium unless the building clearly permits the activity and the deal still looks acceptable under a conventional rental scenario.

Medellín short-term rentals	Current level	YoY change
Active listings	14,021	-41.6%
Occupancy	63%	+25.9%
Average daily rate	$71	-16.9%
RevPAR	$45	+8.3%
Average annual revenue	$15.5K	+92.4%

Are mortgage rates too high to buy Medellín property now?

Yes. Anyone relying heavily on Colombian financing is buying into a difficult interest-rate environment right now.

Superintendencia Financiera data reported in July put the weighted average housing-loan rate at 14.58% effective annually across 2,678 recent disbursements worth more than COP 443 billion.

Rates vary considerably between banks and borrowers. Some lenders were around 12% to 14%, while others were above 15%. But an average close to 14.6% gives us a good picture of the market.

Banco de la República has also kept its policy rate at 12% after raising it again earlier this year.

For a rental investor, that creates an obvious problem. If the property produces around 9% gross before costs while the mortgage costs around 14% or 15%, borrowing does not automatically improve the investment. Heavy leverage can make the return worse.

Consider a COP 600 million apartment financed with a COP 360 million mortgage. At roughly 14.5% over 20 years, the monthly debt payment is around COP 4.6 million before insurance and other charges. A property producing COP 4 million of gross monthly rent would therefore fail to cover the loan payment even before administración, taxes, repairs or vacancy.

There is another reason we would not confidently assume mortgages are about to become cheap. Banco de la República studied mortgage pricing recently and found that long-term Colombian government bond yields had become a stronger driver of housing-credit rates than the central bank’s short-term policy rate.

So even future rate cuts would not guarantee an immediate collapse in mortgage costs.

Financing measure	Current picture
Banco de la República policy rate	12%
Recent weighted average housing-loan rate	14.58% EA
Lower end among several lenders	~12–13%
Several large-bank rates	~14–15%+
Medellín implied gross rental yields	~9% before expenses

Has the strong Colombian peso made Medellín property worse for foreigners?

Yes. Dollar buyers have lost one of the biggest advantages they had in Colombia.

The peso is currently trading around COP 3,200 per US dollar. The average exchange rate during 2025 was roughly COP 4,053 per dollar.

That means a dollar now buys about 21% fewer pesos than it did at last year’s average rate.

Take a COP 800 million apartment. At COP 4,053 per dollar, the purchase price was about $197,000. At COP 3,200, the same COP 800 million property costs roughly $250,000.

Nothing has changed about the apartment. The foreign buyer simply needs more than $50,000 extra because the currency moved.

This can matter more than months of property-price negotiation. Securing a 5% discount on the apartment saves COP 40 million. A currency move from 4,050 to 3,200 changes the dollar cost by considerably more.

Foreign buyers who were hoping for the combination of cheap Colombian property and an exceptionally weak peso have therefore missed part of that window.

Currency can move quickly in both directions, so we would not make a property decision purely around FX. But for someone arriving with dollars today, the exchange rate clearly makes Medellín less attractive than it looked when the peso was above 4,000.

Is new construction in Medellín overpriced right now?

Some new construction is priced aggressively enough that we would need a very good reason to choose it over resale.

Laureles gives us a clean example. Current Zonario data show nine active new-build projects in Laureles at an average of roughly COP 15.7 million per square meter. Across the wider Laureles-Estadio district, 17 active projects average around COP 13.6 million.

Meanwhile, ElBroker’s current broader Laureles inventory averages about COP 7.1 million per square meter.

We should not pretend those figures describe identical homes. The new Laureles units average only 27 square meters, and smaller apartments nearly always have higher per-square-meter prices. New buildings can also offer better amenities, lower near-term maintenance and layouts designed for furnished rentals.

Even after allowing for all of that, paying COP 13–16 million per square meter changes what must go right.

A buyer paying COP 15 million instead of COP 8 million needs much higher rent, stronger future appreciation or some other clear advantage. Otherwise, the premium lowers the yield from day one.

The city can still offer decent value while a particular new project offers terrible value. Those two things can easily be true at once.

For buyers today, we would compare every new-build unit with at least three resale alternatives nearby and calculate the premium per square meter before looking at projected Airbnb revenue.

Is El Poblado still the best area to buy property in Medellín?

El Poblado is still one of the easiest Medellín property markets to rent and resell, but paying its premium only makes sense when the property is genuinely better.

Current inventory puts El Poblado around COP 9.6 million per square meter, roughly 36% above Laureles at COP 7.1 million.

That premium buys something real. El Poblado remains Medellín’s best-known neighborhood internationally, has dense restaurant and nightlife clusters, major shopping centers, offices, established luxury housing and a large pool of foreign tenants.

Liquidity also matters. When foreigners begin searching for Medellín property, many start with El Poblado. That creates a deeper resale audience for good apartments.

The weakness is precisely that everybody knows it.

Buyers compete heavily for the same Provenza, Manila, El Tesoro and surrounding locations. Properties can therefore price in years of expected foreign demand before the investor has collected a single rent payment.

Short-term-rental enforcement adds another layer. The city’s recent operations have focused heavily on El Poblado because tourist accommodation is so concentrated there.

We would still choose El Poblado when the goal is maximum international tenant appeal, personal use or easier resale. For pure investment return, we would compare the actual yield with Laureles, Envigado and selected residential parts of Medellín before accepting a 30% to 40% location premium.

Is Laureles better value than El Poblado now?

Often yes, especially for buyers who want strong rental demand without paying El Poblado prices.

Laureles currently sits around COP 7.1 million per square meter in ElBroker’s broader inventory, compared with roughly COP 9.6 million in El Poblado. That is about 26% cheaper per square meter.

Demand is hardly obscure. Metrocuadrado recorded more than 220,000 searches for Laureles during the first ten months of 2025, making it the most searched Medellín neighborhood in its dataset.

Laureles also attracts several different renter groups: Colombian professionals, families, international residents, students and tourists. That mixture reduces the risk of depending entirely on one source of demand.

We would be much more cautious once “Laureles” becomes shorthand for a 25-square-meter investor studio costing COP 15 million per square meter. As seen above, current new-build pricing in parts of the neighborhood is far removed from its broader resale market.

For us, the more attractive Laureles setup today is a conventional apartment bought at a sensible price per square meter, particularly when it can work under both furnished medium-term and standard long-term rental scenarios.

Is Medellín building too many investment apartments?

There is no convincing citywide oversupply yet, although some investor-heavy buildings could absolutely end up with too many identical units chasing the same tenant.

Medellín currently has hundreds of projects being marketed across Antioquia, yet the broader construction industry is still under pressure.

Camacol has said Colombia’s formal housing production has fallen back toward levels last seen more than a decade ago, and the building sector recently completed three consecutive years of contraction.

Antioquia’s own figures also show 17,187 housing starts against 23,762 sales in the latest full year. That does not look like developers flooding the entire market with supply.

The bigger risk is lower down, building by building.

Imagine a new project containing 150 nearly identical furnished studios. If 80 owners intend to list them on Airbnb or rent them to digital nomads, those owners will compete directly against one another on price, furniture, reviews and occupancy. A healthy citywide housing market does very little to protect that building from internal oversupply. That can get ugly fast.

Project-level research matters more now than a broad “Medellín supply is limited” narrative.

Before buying, we would want to know how many units the building contains, how many are studios, whether short-term rentals are permitted, how many owners are investors, what competing projects are being delivered nearby and what ordinary local tenants would pay if the furnished-rental strategy disappoints.

Would waiting for Medellín property prices to fall be smarter?

Probably not for a strong cash buyer, because there is still no good evidence that a broad Medellín price correction is close.

There are enough negatives to prevent us from being aggressively bullish. Financing is expensive, the peso is strong, premium Medellín neighborhoods already cost far more than they used to, short-term rentals face more scrutiny, and real price appreciation has recently been modest once inflation is included.

But a real housing correction usually needs more than expensive mortgages.

We would expect to see demand weakening for a sustained period, inventories piling up, developers discounting heavily, forced selling increasing and rents struggling. Instead, Antioquia recently came out of a three-year downturn with sales up 31.7%, while sales exceeded construction starts.

The latest DANE release also showed Colombian new-home prices rising 2.41% in a single quarter. Again, that does not prove Medellín itself rose by the same amount, but it hardly points toward a nationwide property market suddenly breaking downward.

A weaker scenario is easier to imagine: Medellín prices rise only around inflation for a few years, expensive micro-units underperform, and some Airbnb-focused projects need discounts.

Waiting specifically for a 20% citywide crash therefore looks like a weak strategy today.

Waiting because the available property is overpriced, the financing is bad or the buyer expects a better currency entry point is much more reasonable.

Could buying Medellín property become easier later if interest rates fall?

Yes, although cheaper mortgages could quickly bring more buyers back into the market.

This is the awkward part of waiting for better financing.

Mortgage rates around 14% to 15% currently keep many Colombian households out of the purchase market. If financing eventually becomes materially cheaper, some of that postponed demand can return.

Antioquia has already shown what happens when demand recovers: annual new-home sales jumped almost 32% after three weak years.

Supply may not adjust quickly enough either. The latest full-year figures showed roughly 17,200 construction starts against almost 23,800 sales.

So a future buyer could face a better mortgage rate but a higher property price.

There is also no guarantee that a foreign buyer gets both lower interest rates and a weaker peso at the same time. Waiting for every variable to become favorable usually means waiting for a combination the market never offers.

For heavily leveraged buyers, rates are bad enough today that patience can still make sense. Cash buyers have much less reason to postpone an excellent property solely because Colombian mortgage rates are high.

What kind of Medellín property would we actually buy now?

We would look hardest at a reasonably priced resale apartment with strong everyday rental demand and no need for Airbnb to make the numbers work.

That removes several of the weakest parts of the current Medellín market in one move.

A resale apartment gives the buyer more room to negotiate with an individual owner. A conventional one- or two-bedroom unit usually has a broader tenant pool than a tiny investor studio. Buying in a building that allows furnished rentals without relying entirely on stays under 30 days adds flexibility.

Price per square meter would be our first filter.

If comparable resale apartments trade around COP 7–9 million per square meter, we would need a compelling reason to pay COP 13–16 million simply because a project is new and comes with an investor presentation.

Then we would test the rent.

The deal should still look reasonable with a normal 12-month tenant after administración, property tax, maintenance, vacancy and management. Any additional income from furnished or legal short-term rental can improve the result later.

We would also avoid excessive Colombian mortgage debt at current rates. A good property can become a bad investment when financed at 14% to 15%.

The most interesting areas will depend on the buyer, but today we see more room for selective value in conventional parts of Laureles, Envigado and other established residential neighborhoods than in expensive investor products sold purely around the Medellín tourism story. A bit less glamorous, usually healthier.

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

Yes, for selective cash or low-leverage buyers. Medellín currently looks good enough to buy, but nowhere near cheap enough to buy carelessly.

The underlying market has recovered. Antioquia home sales jumped almost 32% after three weak years, sales recently exceeded construction starts, Medellín’s latest detailed new-home prices remained 6.51% above a year earlier, and Colombia’s next quarterly housing release showed prices accelerating again.

Rental economics also remain unusually supportive. FincaRaíz data imply gross long-term apartment yields around 9% across several higher-income Medellín segments. AirDNA still sees 63% occupancy in the short-term-rental market, so rental demand has hardly disappeared.

The weaker side of the case has become harder to ignore. Foreign buyers currently get only around COP 3,200 for a dollar versus a 2025 average above COP 4,000. Mortgage rates are running around 14% to 15%. El Poblado is already near COP 9.6 million per square meter in current inventory, while some compact new projects in Laureles are asking above COP 15 million. Medellín has also become much more active in enforcing short-term-rental rules.

Put together, these numbers point toward a very specific buying window.

We would buy a strong resale property at a defensible local price, especially when long-term rent already produces an acceptable return and the plan is to hold for at least five years. A cash buyer waiting indefinitely for a Medellín-wide crash could easily miss several years of rental income without ever getting the correction they expected.

We would wait when the deal depends on a large Colombian mortgage, when the developer is charging a huge new-build premium, or when almost the entire projected return comes from aggressive Airbnb assumptions.

So our answer today is yes: Medellín is still worth buying. The opportunity has moved away from simply owning anything in a fashionable neighborhood. The buyers most likely to do well from here are the ones who negotiate hard, compare price per square meter locally and buy a property that works before any optimistic appreciation or Airbnb forecast is added.

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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 Medellín. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.