Are rents still rising in Mexico?

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Are rents in Mexico still rising now?

Yes, rents in Mexico are still rising overall, although the pace now depends heavily on the city and on whether someone is renewing a lease or looking for a new apartment.

Official data still point upward. INEGI’s consumer-price index shows the broader housing category up 3.11% year over year in its latest reading, almost exactly in line with the 3.12% national inflation rate. Earlier in 2026, the specific residential-rent component was also continuing to increase month by month.

New listings are moving faster in some of the biggest cities. Inmuebles24’s standardized two-bedroom index rose 3.7% during the first half of 2026 in Mexico City and 4.3% in Guadalajara. Monterrey gained only 1.5%.

Those three cities already tell us most of the story. Mexico still has rental inflation, but the synchronized surge that followed the pandemic has broken apart. Mexico City and Guadalajara remain hot, Monterrey has barely moved in real terms, and some other markets have already recorded outright declines.

Why do Mexican rent reports show such different numbers?

Mexican rent reports disagree because a property portal measures what a new tenant sees today, while official datasets capture millions of households whose rents adjust much more slowly.

This difference is bigger than it sounds.

INEGI tracks occupied housing over time. Many tenants stay in the same property for years, and landlords usually change rents periodically rather than every time market conditions move.

Inmuebles24, Mercado Libre Inmuebles and similar platforms mostly show homes looking for a tenant right now. These listings lean toward urban, formally marketed and more expensive properties.

INFONAVIT examined this gap directly in its latest study of Mexico’s digital rental market. Using more than 21,000 traditional online rental observations collected in 2025, it found that properties advertised digitally were more expensive than the wider rental stock recorded by official household surveys.

That means a renter searching Condesa, Providencia or San Pedro today can experience a much sharper increase than Mexico’s national rental index suggests.

The distinction also explains why new tenants often feel that rents have exploded while a household that stayed in the same apartment reports a fairly modest annual increase. Both experiences can be real at the same time.

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Are the rents Mexicans actually pay rising quickly?

The rents already being paid by Mexican households are still going up, but current official data point to fairly steady single-digit increases rather than another national surge.

INFONAVIT reconstructed the path of Mexican residential rents using INEGI data and estimated annual rental inflation at roughly 3.25% toward the end of 2025.

The longer trajectory is useful. Rent growth dropped around the pandemic, accelerated again from 2022 through 2024 and then began to cool. INFONAVIT found that the recent monthly pace had settled around 0.27%, below some of the peaks reached during the previous acceleration.

INEGI’s subsequent readings still show residential rents moving higher, so there is no evidence of a national reversal.

What changed is the speed. The broad market today looks much closer to gradual repricing than to the kind of sharp rent shock that new listings in a few famous neighborhoods can suggest.

Are Mexico City rents still going up?

Yes, Mexico City rents are still going up, and the capital remains one of the clearest places where renters are paying materially more than a few years ago.

Inmuebles24’s standardized two-bedroom asking rent reached roughly MXN 21,900 per month by mid-2026 after gaining 3.7% during the first half of the year.

The bigger number is the cumulative increase. The portal identifies late 2021 as the turning point of the current cycle. Since then, its Mexico City asking-rent index has climbed by roughly 64%.

A comparable apartment indexed near MXN 13,400 around that low point is therefore approaching MXN 22,000 today.

The citywide average also hides enormous differences. Hipódromo de la Condesa was around MXN 38,400 per month in the same dataset, while Pantitlán was close to MXN 10,900. A renter can cross from one part of the city to another and face a price difference of more than threefold.

Mexico City’s rental market has cooled compared with its fastest post-pandemic phase, yet a 3.7% six-month gain on top of a 64% multiyear increase still counts as a genuinely rising market.

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Is Mexico City rent growth finally slowing down?

Mexico City rent growth is slowing compared with the earlier boom, but rents are still increasing fast enough for new tenants to feel the pressure.

Inmuebles24 recorded monthly gains of about 1.0% in February, 0.3% in April and 0.5% in June before the first-half increase reached 3.7%.

Those figures are calmer than the double-digit annual jumps seen during parts of the earlier recovery.

The price level, however, has changed dramatically. Once rents rise by roughly 60% over several years, even a normal 4%-6% annual increase adds a meaningful amount in pesos.

A MXN 13,500 apartment rising 8% adds roughly MXN 1,080 a month. The same percentage increase on MXN 22,000 adds MXN 1,760.

So the slowdown is real, but it is happening from a much higher starting point. That is why Mexico City renters can hear that rent inflation is cooling and still struggle to find anything resembling pre-2022 prices.

Are Guadalajara rents rising faster than Mexico City rents?

Yes, Guadalajara rents have recently been rising slightly faster than Mexico City rents, and the city now has one of the strongest large rental markets in Mexico.

Inmuebles24’s standardized two-bedroom asking rent reached about MXN 18,700 per month after increasing 4.3% during the first half of 2026.

Mexico City gained 3.7% over the same period.

Guadalajara’s longer run is even more striking. Its current rental upswing began around late 2020 in Inmuebles24’s series, and standardized asking rents have since risen by roughly 73%.

The same index sat around MXN 11,000 during 2021. It is now closing in on MXN 19,000.

Growth has cooled from 10.7% in 2024 to 7.7% in 2025 and then 4.3% during the first half of 2026. We can see a slowdown without seeing a plateau yet.

Neighborhood differences are also huge. Providencia was close to MXN 26,900 per month in the latest index, compared with roughly MXN 11,200 in La Aurora.

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Has Monterrey’s rental boom basically stopped?

Yes, Monterrey’s rental boom has largely stalled for now, even though advertised rents remain extremely high.

Inmuebles24’s standardized two-bedroom rent reached roughly MXN 25,500 per month around mid-2026, yet the increase during the first half of the year was only 1.5%.

That is below Mexico’s recent inflation rate.

The longer chart makes the slowdown clearer. Monterrey’s index spent much of the period from mid-2024 through early 2026 hovering in a relatively narrow range around MXN 24,000-25,000 before edging to a new nominal high.

INFONAVIT found a similarly weak pattern in actual occupied rents. Between 2018 and 2024, Monterrey recorded average annual rental growth of roughly 1.8%, one of the lowest rates among the 17 large Mexican cities it studied.

From 2022 through mid-2024, the compound increase was around 1.9% per year.

Monterrey is a useful reality check: a city can have very expensive rents without rents continuing to rise rapidly.

Are rents actually falling anywhere in Mexico?

Yes, some Mexican rental markets have already fallen, and Tijuana shows how quickly a previously hot city can change direction.

Mercado Libre Inmuebles estimated that advertised rents in Tijuana fell about 9% during 2025, bringing the average close to MXN 19,000 per month.

That decline stands out because Tijuana had previously been one of Mexico’s fastest-rising rental markets.

INFONAVIT found average annual rent growth of roughly 5.8% between 2018 and mid-2024, the strongest result among the 17 large cities in its study. From early 2022 through mid-2024, its compound rate reached about 6.4%.

Then the market turned.

During 2025, Mercado Libre’s data showed Mexico City rising about 9%, Guadalajara 8.5%, Querétaro 4% and Monterrey 2%, while Tijuana moved sharply in the other direction.

The lesson is useful for anyone assuming that rents only go up in Mexico. Local supply, cross-border demand, employment and affordability eventually matter. Even one of the strongest rental markets of the previous cycle was capable of a meaningful correction.

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Are Mexican rents rising faster than inflation and salaries?

For Mexico as a whole, rents are currently growing at roughly the same pace as inflation and slower than formal wages; Mexico City and Guadalajara are the important exceptions for people entering the market.

INEGI’s latest consumer-price data put headline inflation at 3.12% year over year and the broader housing category at 3.11%.

INFONAVIT’s recent reconstructed rental index has also been running in the low-3% range.

Formal wages are rising considerably faster. IMSS reported an average contribution salary of MXN 669.1 per day in June 2026, up MXN 40.2 from a year earlier. That works out to nominal growth of about 6.4%.

The comparison is quite different for someone signing a new lease in Guadalajara or Mexico City. Guadalajara’s asking rents gained 4.3% in only six months, while Mexico City gained 3.7%.

There are two affordability stories at once. Existing renters with formal-sector wage growth have recently gained some breathing room in real terms. New renters chasing desirable apartments in the hottest cities can still see housing costs outrun their income.

Are rents in Mexico still too expensive for local incomes?

Yes, Mexican rents remain difficult for a large number of households even though the national rate of increase has cooled.

CONAVI’s analysis of the 2024 ENIGH counted more than six million Mexican households living in rented housing. Around 694,800 of those households were spending more than 30% of their current income on rent.

That 30% threshold matters because housing begins taking a much larger bite out of money available for food, transport, healthcare and education once it is crossed.

The pressure is especially visible in large urban markets. CONAVI identified Mexico City, Querétaro, Baja California Sur, Baja California and Yucatán among the places where rental-cost burdens were particularly important.

Household incomes have improved. The 2024 ENIGH put average current household income at roughly MXN 25,955 per month, up 10.6% in real terms from 2022.

Still, compare that national household income with a standardized two-bedroom rent around MXN 21,900 in Mexico City or MXN 18,700 in Guadalajara. Those apartments are obviously not being financed by a single average Mexican income without a very large housing burden.

Slower rental inflation helps, but several years of accumulated increases have already pushed many urban rents far above what ordinary local incomes can comfortably support.

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Is Mexico building enough housing to stop rents from rising?

No, Mexico still appears to be adding housing too slowly in several high-demand markets to create much downward pressure on rents.

INEGI estimated that Mexico had about 38.8 million households in 2024, an increase of roughly 17.8% from 2016.

Population living in households rose only about 7.8% over the same period.

That gap matters because smaller household sizes create housing demand even when population growth itself is moderate. More divorces, young adults living independently, smaller families and single-person households all mean that a given population needs more separate homes.

Construction has struggled to keep pace in the parts of the market where affordability is tight. INFONAVIT reported only 39,428 completed homes during the first four months of 2025, while total housing inventory stood near 70,700 units.

The federal government is now trying to expand supply aggressively through its housing programs. The current national plan includes more than one million new homes, alongside affordable-rental schemes and subsidized housing for lower-income households.

That new supply could eventually matter a lot. For now, the scale of household formation and the years required to finance, permit and build large housing projects make an immediate rent reset unlikely.

Is expensive homeownership keeping more Mexicans in the rental market?

Yes, expensive homes and costly mortgages are keeping some Mexican households renting for longer, which adds demand to already tight urban rental markets.

Mexico’s average home price reached roughly MXN 1.74 million in 2024, according to Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal figures cited by CONAVI.

CONAVI calculated that a family would need monthly income of around MXN 24,116 to purchase a home at that price without putting more than 30% of income toward the payment.

Only 38.7% of Mexican households reached that income level.

Mortgage rates add another obstacle. Recent INFONAVIT market reporting has placed the weighted average banking mortgage rate around 10%.

Put the down payment, closing costs, property price and financing rate together and renting remains the practical option for a large share of households who might otherwise buy.

The effect is strongest where purchase prices are already high. A household unable to buy in Mexico City, Guadalajara or Monterrey does not disappear from housing demand. It stays in the rental pool, often for several additional years.

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Is Airbnb still pushing up Mexico City rents?

Airbnb still adds pressure to rents in parts of Mexico City, especially tourist-heavy central neighborhoods, but the available evidence does not support using Airbnb as the main explanation for rent increases across Mexico.

INFONAVIT recently compared short-term and traditional digital rental prices in Mexico City and found a very large gap.

Short-term rentals averaged roughly MXN 8,600 per month more than traditional homes being marketed digitally.

The difference reached MXN 10,400 in Miguel Hidalgo, where the median traditional rent in INFONAVIT’s sample was around MXN 11,000 and the temporary-rental median was roughly MXN 21,400.

That creates an obvious incentive for some landlords to target visitors or internationally mobile tenants where short-term demand is strong.

The impact is highly geographic, though. Roma, Condesa, Juárez, Polanco and other central zones have a very different tourism and foreign-demand profile from most Mexican neighborhoods.

With more than six million renter households nationally, Airbnb cannot plausibly explain the whole Mexican rental cycle. It can, however, make the shortage considerably worse in a relatively small number of neighborhoods where local renters are already competing for limited housing.

Will Mexico City’s rent cap stop rents from rising?

Mexico City’s rent cap should slow increases for tenants who stay in the same home, but it cannot prevent new asking rents from moving higher when housing demand remains strong.

The city changed its Civil Code in 2024 so annual residential rent increases cannot exceed the previous year’s inflation rate.

Mexico’s Supreme Court later upheld the restriction.

For an existing tenant, that protection can be meaningful. A landlord can no longer impose an annual increase far above inflation simply because nearby apartments have become much more expensive.

The rule becomes less powerful when a unit returns to the market. If an old lease is far below what new tenants are willing to pay, the next advertised rent can still reflect current market conditions.

That creates a widening gap between people who stay put and people who move.

Mexico City is also working on affordable-rental programs and additional public housing. Those measures could eventually change supply more directly than a rent cap, although their effect depends on how many units actually reach the market.

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Could rents across Mexico start falling soon?

A broad fall in Mexican rents looks unlikely for now; slower increases and local corrections are much more plausible.

We already have evidence that rent growth can stall. Monterrey has spent a long period close to flat in real terms, while Tijuana has recorded an outright decline in asking rents.

National conditions are also less inflationary than they were a few years ago. Consumer inflation is running near 3%, formal wages are growing faster, and rent growth in occupied housing has cooled.

But demand has not weakened enough to point toward a countrywide fall. Mexico keeps creating households, buying a home remains difficult for much of the population, and housing supply is still tight in several major employment centers.

Mexico City and Guadalajara are also providing fresh evidence that desirable urban rental markets can continue appreciating even after national inflation cools.

A recession, major employment shock or surprisingly large wave of new housing could change that picture. Nothing in the current data suggests that such a nationwide rental reversal is already underway.

So, are rents still rising in Mexico?

Yes, rents are still rising in Mexico today, but the boom has become much more local and much less uniform than it was a few years ago.

Mexico City asking rents rose 3.7% during the first half of 2026 and remain roughly 64% above their late-2021 turning point. Guadalajara gained 4.3% in six months and is roughly 73% above its 2020 level.

Monterrey is behaving very differently. Its standardized asking rent increased only 1.5% during the same half-year period, leaving it roughly flat after inflation. Tijuana has gone further and already recorded a meaningful correction.

As seen above, official rent data also look calmer than property portals. Occupied rents across Mexico are generally increasing by a few percent a year, while people entering the most competitive urban markets can face much sharper increases.

The conclusion is clear: the claim is mostly true. Mexican rents are still rising, and renters searching today in Mexico City or Guadalajara have little reason to expect broad price cuts. But Mexico no longer has one rental boom moving in a single direction. City, neighborhood and whether someone is renewing or moving now matter almost as much as the national trend itself.

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