Are rents still rising in Medellín?

How fast are Medellín rents going up?

Medellín rents are still going up: about 5% a year for people already in a lease, and closer to 9% for apartments that come back on the market.

The cleanest benchmark comes from DANE. Its effective-rent measure rose 5.12% year over year in September 2026, while Colombia's overall inflation reached 6.29%. Medellín was hotter still: the city's annual inflation hit 7.04%, the highest of any Colombian city since July (El Colombiano, 8 October 2026).

So people already renting are paying more in pesos, but less than the rise in everything else. The picture changes for anyone looking for a new place: Ciencuadras and El Libertador measured Medellín asking rents at an average of COP 4.92 million for about 111 m², up 8.7% between June 2025 and June 2026 (El Colombiano, 25 August 2026).

Both numbers are true. Colombia's official rent series mostly captures what households are actually paying, while property portals show apartments being advertised today. Those two markets move at different speeds.

Current measure	Latest change	What it says about Medellín rents	Our read
Effective rent, Colombia (DANE, Sept 2026)	+5.12% YoY	Existing rents are still increasing	Clearly rising
Medellín asking rents (Ciencuadras–El Libertador)	+8.7% YoY (June 2026)	New tenants pay much more than last year	Faster than inflation
Colombia CPI (Sept 2026)	6.29% YoY	General prices are rising faster than leases	Leases cooling in real terms
Medellín CPI (Sept 2026)	7.04% YoY	Highest inflation of any Colombian city	Cost of living is the bigger squeeze
Existing-lease adjustment ceiling (2026)	Up to 5.10%	Many renewals can still rise materially	Continued upward pressure

Why do Medellín rent numbers seem to contradict each other?

Medellín rent numbers seem contradictory because people are usually comparing three different markets: existing leases, newly advertised long-term rentals and furnished short stays.

An existing residential lease in Colombia moves slowly. Law 820 allows the landlord to increase the rent only after twelve months at the same price, with the increase capped by the previous calendar year's CPI. A tenant who stays in the same apartment therefore has some protection from sudden market repricing.

A vacant apartment is different. Once a property goes back onto the market, the owner can advertise it at a price reflecting current demand, within Colombia's general legal limits. Asking rents can therefore jump well ahead of the rent being paid by tenants who have stayed put.

Then there is Medellín's furnished market. Apartments rented for weeks or a few months compete partly with hotels, Airbnb listings, foreign visitors and remote workers. Prices in Provenza or Laureles can move for reasons that have little to do with a conventional family lease in Belén.

That is why one renter can say rents went up 5% while someone apartment-hunting in El Poblado sees a jump of 10% or more. Both experiences can be genuine.

How much can an existing Medellín landlord raise the rent now?

For most qualifying urban residential leases, a Medellín landlord can currently raise the rent by no more than 5.10% after twelve months at the same price.

That ceiling comes directly from Colombia's rent law. Article 20 of Law 820 says the increase cannot exceed 100% of the previous calendar year's CPI, and Colombia finished 2025 with inflation of 5.10%.

The difference with the earlier inflation shock is large. Colombia ended 2022 with inflation of 13.12% and 2023 with 9.28%, which fed into steep rent adjustments in 2023 and 2024. Inflation then fell to 5.20% in 2024 and 5.10% in 2025.

For a tenant paying COP 2 million, a full 5.10% adjustment means about COP 102,000 more per month. At COP 3 million, the increase is roughly COP 153,000. That hurts, but it is far from the 13% resets tenants faced in 2023.

CPI year (cap applies the following year)	Annual CPI	Maximum normal adjustment	Change in pressure
2022	13.12%	13.12% (in 2023)	Very high
2023	9.28%	9.28% (in 2024)	Still high
2024	5.20%	5.20% (in 2025)	Sharp slowdown
2025	5.10%	5.10% (in 2026)	Almost unchanged
2026 (Sept: 6.29%)	Known in early January 2027	Likely above 6% (in 2027)	Rising again

Are new Medellín asking rents rising faster than existing leases?

Yes. Asking rents for vacant apartments rose about 8.7% in the year to June 2026, well above the 5.10% cap on existing leases. La Lonja had already measured 2025 increases of 6.5% across the Valle de Aburrá, 7.1% in Laureles and 7.5% in El Poblado.

Fincaraíz gives a useful picture of the level of the market rather than a perfect price index. Its 2025 Medellín data put apartment asking rents at COP 26,250 per square meter in estrato 3, COP 39,060 in estrato 4, COP 45,990 in estrato 5 and COP 56,805 in estrato 6.

Those differences are too large to treat a single "Medellín average rent" as particularly meaningful. A 70 m² apartment priced at the estrato 3 average works out to roughly COP 1.84 million a month. At the estrato 6 average, the same 70 m² becomes almost COP 4 million.

Portal averages also change when the mix of listings changes. If more luxury El Poblado properties appear one month, the average can rise even when the price of a comparable apartment has barely moved.

Medellín is now the most expensive big city in Colombia to rent in. Aptologia's October 2026 index puts the median asking rent at COP 4.5 million (about $1,400), against COP 3.6 million in Cartagena, COP 2.9 million in Bogotá and COP 1.7 million in Cali. Treat it as a level, not a growth rate: it mixes all apartment sizes.

Did Medellín rents really become much more expensive over the past decade?

Yes. Medellín's long-term rental increase is large enough that today's affordability problem cannot be explained by a few expensive Airbnb apartments.

Medellín's planning material estimates that the city's average rental cost rose by roughly 50% between 2014 and 2023. Over roughly the same period, the city's housing stock continued to expand. The basic story is therefore more complicated than "Medellín stopped building." Rents rose sharply even while thousands of homes were being added.

A 50% cumulative increase means that a property renting for COP 1 million at the start of that period would be around COP 1.5 million before adding the subsequent increases that came afterward.

The latest housing debate also shows that the shortage has not disappeared. Medellín's government currently cites a deficit of about 38,000 homes as it reviews the city's land-use plan.

That decade-long picture is more useful than focusing on one strong year. Medellín entered today's market after a long period in which housing demand kept pushing against limited supply in the locations people most wanted.

Are Medellín rents still rising faster than inflation?

It depends which rents. Signed leases are rising more slowly than the cost of living; advertised rents are rising faster.

DANE's effective-rent measure was up 5.12% in September 2026, while total Colombian inflation was 6.29% and Medellín's own inflation 7.04%. Asking rents in Medellín, by contrast, were up about 8.7% in the year to June.

For tenants, that does not make a rent increase pleasant. A monthly payment that goes from COP 2 million to COP 2.1 million is still an extra COP 1.2 million a year.

For a sitting tenant, rent is losing ground to the overall Medellín price level. For someone moving, it is still beating it.

So the earlier rent shock has cooled for existing leases, but not for new ones.

Are small apartments still the hottest part of Medellín's rental market?

Yes. Small Medellín apartments remain one of the tightest rental segments, and tenants pay a striking premium for each square meter.

Fincaraíz found that 79% of demand for apartaestudios on its Medellín platform was rental demand. Regular apartments were much more evenly split, with 48% of demand for rent and 52% for purchase.

The price premium appears at almost every income level. In estrato 3, apartaestudios averaged COP 34,755 per square meter in asking rent versus COP 26,250 for apartments, roughly 32% more. In estrato 6, the figures were COP 76,440 versus COP 56,805, a premium of about 35%.

Studios attract several groups at once: young professionals, students, couples, temporary residents and investors looking for units that can also work as furnished rentals. That concentration of demand helps explain why someone searching for a small modern apartment can feel much stronger rent pressure than Medellín's citywide figures suggest.

Medellín asking rent per m²	Apartment	Apartaestudio	Apartaestudio premium
Estrato 2	COP 19,900	COP 23,625	~19%
Estrato 3	COP 26,250	COP 34,755	~32%
Estrato 4	COP 39,060	COP 44,415	~14%
Estrato 5	COP 45,990	COP 63,000	~37%
Estrato 6	COP 56,805	COP 76,440	~35%

Are El Poblado and Laureles still much hotter than the rest of Medellín?

Yes. El Poblado and Laureles still sit inside a different rental economy from large parts of Medellín.

Medellín's own figures show that El Poblado, Laureles, Belén, La Candelaria and Santa Elena hold about 80% of the city's short-term rental supply. These neighborhoods combine normal local housing demand with tourists, foreigners, remote workers and furnished-rental operators.

That extra layer of demand changes what landlords can ask, particularly for modern one- and two-bedroom apartments. A renter paid in dollars who wants a furnished apartment for three months is competing on a very different budget from a household signing a traditional Colombian lease.

The effect also spreads unevenly within those neighborhoods. Provenza, Manila or prime parts of Laureles can behave differently from streets only a short distance away.

Using El Poblado listings to describe "Medellín rents" exaggerates what much of the city costs. Ignoring those neighborhoods would be just as misleading because that is where the strongest pressure sits: a 2-bedroom asks about COP 5.2 million in El Poblado and COP 6 million in Los Balsos, against COP 3.0 million in Laureles-Estadio and COP 2.6 million in Belén (ClickCasa, October 2026).

Is Airbnb still pushing Medellín rents higher?

Airbnb and other short-term rentals are still adding pressure in parts of Medellín, especially El Poblado and Laureles, although we cannot credibly blame them for every citywide rent increase.

The city has 8,322 tourist homes registered in the RNT in 2026, while AirDNA counts about 14,957 active listings. Between 2024 and September 2026, the Alcaldía inspected 408 tourist homes and temporarily suspended 105 of them, about one in four.

The rules are clear on paper: each tourist apartment needs its own RNT, permission in the building's bylaws, compatible land use, and guests must be registered. Tourist housing has been banned in low-mix residential zones since 2014, and fines can reach 2,000 minimum wages (city Q&A, 13 October 2026). The POT revision proposed in September 2026 maps where tourist housing would be allowed; it is not a ban.

The rental impact is easiest to understand locally. Every apartment that can earn more as tourist accommodation has an alternative to a twelve-month lease. That option holds up prices for furnished units in tourist-heavy buildings. But the short-stay business itself has cooled: AirDNA puts the average nightly rate at $72, down 16.4% in a year, and the city's own survey shows tourist-home occupancy at 50.5% in the first half of 2026 against 52.2% a year earlier. Part of the 37.5% drop in AirDNA's listing count is a change in its method, not owners leaving.

Across Medellín as a whole, local demand remains far too large for Airbnb to explain the market by itself. Short-term rentals are better understood as an extra source of pressure layered on top of an already tight city.

Is Medellín's rental demand still strong today?

Yes. Medellín still has a huge renter base, which makes a broad collapse in rental demand difficult to see right now.

The city's 2025 Quality of Life Survey found that 44.95% of Medellín households lived in rented or sublet housing. Fully paid homes accounted for 42.09%, while another 4.14% of households were still paying for their property. Rental housing therefore serves almost half the city rather than a small mobile population.

Online search behavior points in the same direction, especially for smaller units. As discussed above, Fincaraíz recorded a strong rental bias for apartaestudios.

The scale is what counts here. Tourism can move prices dramatically in a few neighborhoods, but Medellín's basic rental demand comes from hundreds of thousands of ordinary households that need somewhere to live.

That large built-in tenant pool is one reason rents can keep creeping upward even after the most aggressive phase of the market has cooled.

Is Medellín finally building enough homes to cool rents?

Medellín sold a lot more new homes in 2025, but 2026 is going backwards, and the recovery is too small to say the rental shortage is being solved.

After three weak years, new-home sales in Medellín city jumped 56% in 2025, to 6,371 units, and 44% across the Valle de Aburrá, to 17,350 (La Lonja). The Alcaldía says social-housing sales more than doubled, from 1,090 to 2,346 units. Then the market turned: new-home sales in Medellín fell about 15% in the first half of 2026 (El Colombiano, 25 August 2026), with mortgage rates around 15% and a policy rate raised to 12.25%.

Across Antioquia, 2025 finished with 23,762 new homes sold, 17,187 housing starts and 22,641 units launched. Camacol Antioquia's Expoinmobiliaria in February 2026 showcased a record 518 projects.

The 2025 numbers were genuinely better, but new-home sales do not become available rental supply overnight. Projects take time to build, and some are owner-occupied rather than rented.

The city's estimated 38,000-home deficit gives us the scale of the remaining gap. Medellín would need several years of strong delivery before we could confidently say that new supply alone will hold rents down.

Housing indicator	Earlier level	Latest level	Change
Medellín city new-home sales (La Lonja)	—	6,371 in 2025	+56%
Valle de Aburrá new-home sales (La Lonja)	—	17,350 in 2025	+44%
Medellín VIS sales (Alcaldía)	1,090 in 2024	2,346 in 2025	+115.2%
Antioquia new-home sales	18,039 in 2024	23,762 in 2025	+31.7%
Medellín new-home sales, H1 2026 vs H1 2025	—	—	About −15%
Medellín estimated housing deficit	—	~38,000 homes	Still large

Will more people buying homes take pressure off Medellín rents?

More homebuying should gradually ease Medellín's rental pressure, but the numbers are still too small to transform the market quickly.

The 2025 rebound to 6,371 new-home sales in Medellín city was encouraging, but it is small beside a city where 44.95% of households rent or sublet their home, and sales dropped again in the first half of 2026.

Medellín is trying to accelerate the shift. The city has committed more than COP 39 billion to down-payment subsidies, while its housing programs aim to help households that can afford monthly payments but struggle to accumulate the savings needed to buy.

If that strategy works for several years, some renters will leave the rental pool and some new construction will add investor-owned units back into it.

With mortgages averaging about 15% a year in September 2026, many would-be buyers will keep renting for now. Homebuying is part of the solution, not a reason to expect rents to flatten soon.

Could Medellín rent growth speed up again?

Yes. Medellín rent growth could speed up again, and inflation has recently made that risk more credible.

Existing Colombian leases have a built-in delay because their annual adjustment depends on the previous calendar year's CPI. The 2026 ceiling is 5.10%, which reflects 2025 inflation rather than today's.

Inflation has turned upward again: 6.24% in August and 6.29% in September 2026 (DANE). Banco de la República answered by raising its policy rate to 12.25% from 1 October, up from 9.25% at the start of the year, and analysts expect inflation of about 6.8% at the end of 2026.

If 2026 inflation ends near that level, the legal ceiling for renewals in 2027 will be well above this year's 5.10%. The exact figure will only be known when DANE publishes December's CPI in early January 2027.

A second acceleration route would come from the spot market. Strong tourism, more demand for small furnished apartments or another slow period for housing completions could push asking rents faster in specific neighborhoods even before regulated leases catch up.

So the cooling of existing leases should not be read as a guarantee that Medellín rents will stay around 5% growth.

What could finally make Medellín rents stop rising?

Medellín rents would probably need more housing supply, weaker demand and lower inflation at the same time before we see widespread flat or falling rents.

Supply is the weak link. Antioquia's construction cycle recovered in 2025, but Medellín new-home sales fell about 15% in the first half of 2026, and fewer sales today mean fewer completed homes in two or three years.

Affordability also creates a natural limit. Medellín has had the highest inflation of any Colombian city since July 2026 (7.04% in September), so renters are absorbing higher costs well beyond housing. At some point, landlords asking too much face longer vacancies or have to negotiate.

Short-term-rental enforcement could free some properties as well. With 105 tourist homes suspended after 408 inspections and a POT revision that maps where tourist housing is allowed, fewer ordinary apartments can become legal short stays.

None of these forces looks strong enough today to produce a broad fall in nominal rents. Together, though, they make another citywide rental surge less likely than it looked a few years ago.

How much does a 1- or 2-bedroom rent for in Medellín now?

A 2-bedroom apartment asks about COP 3 million a month in Laureles-Estadio and about COP 5.2 million in El Poblado. These are listing medians from ClickCasa, read in September and October 2026, and they mix furnished and unfurnished units.

The gap between areas is bigger than the gap between sizes. A 1-bedroom in El Poblado asks more than a 2-bedroom anywhere outside El Poblado in this table.

Area (ClickCasa listing medians)	1-bedroom	2-bedroom	Read on
Los Balsos (El Poblado)	COP 4.5 million ($1,400)	COP 6 million ($1,900)	22 Oct 2026
El Poblado (whole comuna)	COP 4.3 million ($1,350)	COP 5.2 million ($1,650)	18 Oct 2026
Laureles-Estadio	COP 2.6 million ($815)	COP 3 million ($940)	22 Oct 2026
La Candelaria (Centro)	COP 2 million ($625)	COP 2.8 million ($875)	15 Sep 2026
Belén	COP 2.3 million ($720)	COP 2.6 million ($815)	13 Oct 2026

Before signing, ask whether the building's administration fee is included. Those fees rose 17.14% in a year nationally (DANE, September 2026), much faster than rents, and they can add several hundred thousand pesos a month in a building with a pool and a gym.

How much will Medellín rents go up at renewal in 2027?

Probably more than this year. The cap for 2027 renewals is the full 2026 CPI, which DANE publishes in early January 2027. Inflation was 6.29% in September, and analysts quoted by Portafolio expect about 6.8% at year end; one forecast reported by Bloomberg Línea went as high as 7.1%.

At 6.8%, a COP 3 million rent could go up by about COP 204,000 a month, against COP 153,000 under this year's 5.10% cap.

Current monthly rent	Max rise in 2026 (5.10%)	Rise in 2027 if cap is 6.8%	Difference per month
COP 2 million	COP 102,000	COP 136,000	COP 34,000
COP 3 million	COP 153,000	COP 204,000	COP 51,000
COP 4.5 million	COP 229,500	COP 306,000	COP 76,500

Tenants: check your lease's anniversary date, because the increase only applies after twelve full months at the same rent, and ask for a longer lease at a fixed rise if you plan to stay. Landlords: the cap is a ceiling, not an obligation, and a good tenant is worth more than the last 1% or 2%.

Does the strong peso make Medellín rent more expensive for foreigners?

Yes, a lot. The dollar closed 2025 at about COP 3,757 and is now worth about COP 3,190, so it buys about 15% fewer pesos than at the start of the year.

A COP 3 million rent cost about $800 at the end-2025 rate; today it costs about $940, roughly 18% more in dollars with no change in the peso rent. Add a 5.10% rent increase and a remote worker paid in dollars renewing today pays about 24% more in dollars than at the end-2025 rate.

Don't count on a quick reversal: BBVA expected about COP 3,640 per dollar at the end of 2026 when it forecast in June, while Bancolombia expects an average of 3,420 for the year. If you are paid in dollars, negotiate the rent in pesos and keep the peso amount fixed for the year rather than accepting a dollar price tied to the rate.

So, are rents still rising in Medellín?

Yes. Medellín rents are still rising, faster for new tenants than for those who stay put.

DANE's effective-rent measure is still rising at about 5% a year, existing tenants face increases of up to 5.10% in 2026, and asking rents for vacant apartments rose about 8.7% in a year. There is no sign of a falling-rent market.

The claim that Medellín rents are exploding across the board doesn't fit either. Existing leases are rising below inflation, and the hottest pricing depends on what you rent: a small furnished apartment in El Poblado can still be fiercely contested while an old lease in Belén moves slowly.

We see Medellín today as Colombia's most expensive city to rent in, still getting dearer. The biggest risk of faster increases now comes from 2026 inflation feeding into 2027 lease renewals while new-home sales are falling.