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Are rents falling in Mexico after the World Cup?

Did the World Cup really push rents up across Mexico?

The World Cup pushed accommodation prices sharply higher in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, but ordinary rents across Mexico never experienced anything close to the same jump.

Some of the numbers circulating before the tournament were extraordinary. N+ tracked 90 properties across the three Mexican host cities and found that projected World Cup accommodation prices were 248% above normal levels in Mexico City, 392% higher in Guadalajara and 660% higher in Monterrey.

Near the stadiums, some owners went much further. A Monterrey room normally offered for about MXN 1,093 a night appeared at MXN 18,552 for World Cup dates. A Guadalajara hotel room that had cost MXN 909 per person for an ordinary football weekend was advertised at MXN 14,176 during the tournament.

Those increases mostly belonged to hotels, Airbnb-style rentals and other temporary accommodation. Mexico hosted World Cup matches in only three metropolitan areas, while millions of tenants elsewhere continued renting under normal monthly contracts.

So when we ask whether Mexican rents are falling after the World Cup, we have to separate a temporary accommodation boom from the much larger residential rental market.

Were people actually paying those huge World Cup rental prices?

No. A large share of the extreme World Cup accommodation prices failed the simplest market test: guests refused to book them.

N+ returned to the same 90-property sample shortly before the tournament. Only 23 properties had bookings for the relevant period, while 40 of the remaining listings had virtually no reservations.

The price difference tells the story. Properties that had managed to fill were averaging about MXN 1,815 per person per night. Listings that still had availability were asking roughly MXN 2,504.

Cheaper properties were finding guests. More ambitious landlords were sitting on empty rooms.

Monterrey became the clearest example. Every property in the N+ sample cut its World Cup price between the first and second checks. The average reduction reached 42%, with some listings dropping as much as 70%.

The room near Estadio BBVA that had been quoted at MXN 18,552 fell to MXN 9,008 before kickoff. Near Guadalajara's stadium, the hotel quoted at MXN 14,176 dropped to MXN 3,609.

A meaningful part of the supposed World Cup rental explosion had therefore disappeared before the tournament even started.

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How far have World Cup accommodation prices fallen now?

World Cup accommodation prices have fallen dramatically from their speculative peaks, and the post-tournament correction here is unquestionable.

The cleanest example comes from Monterrey. N+ found an average World Cup quote of MXN 4,743 per person per night in its sample, compared with roughly MXN 796 for the following month. That represents an 83% drop from the tournament price.

We should be careful with the interpretation, though. An 83% fall sounds like a housing crash when written without context. In reality, the MXN 4,743 figure had itself been inflated by a one-off global sporting event. Returning toward MXN 796 mostly erased the temporary premium.

Current short-term rental data tell a similar story in a less extreme way. AirDNA's latest completed month shows Guadalajara's average daily rate at $59 and Monterrey's at $66. Guadalajara's broader rate was only 3.9% above a year earlier despite the World Cup, while Monterrey was up 4.8%.

Those figures are far removed from the 300%, 500% or 600% increases that appeared in individual World Cup quotations.

So yes, the World Cup price spike has collapsed. The harder question is whether monthly residential rents are following it down.

Did the World Cup bring fewer guests than landlords expected?

Yes. Mexico's World Cup accommodation market made a lot more money, but higher prices did much more of the work than additional guests.

AirDNA calculated that short-term rentals across the 16 World Cup host cities generated about $1.33 billion during the tournament, 26% more than during the comparable period a year earlier.

The interesting part is where that extra revenue came from. AirDNA attributes 84% of the increase to higher nightly rates and only 16% to additional booked nights.

Mexico followed the same pattern. Short-term rentals in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey generated about $78.8 million during the tournament, roughly $30.6 million more than a year earlier.

Mexico City accounted for $59.1 million, Guadalajara $10.8 million and Monterrey $8.8 million.

So the World Cup was financially valuable for hosts who managed to book guests. But the market never produced the huge occupancy shock implied by some early pricing.

There were plenty of visitors, just not enough visitors willing to pay almost any price.

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Are normal apartment rents falling in Mexico City now?

No. Mexico City has gained more apartments for long-term rent since the World Cup, but residential asking prices are still high.

Homie reported that the number of apartments available for traditional rent in Mexico City increased about 10% after the tournament. Inventory on Homie's own platform rose by at least 35%.

That is a real post-World Cup shift. Owners who had moved units into tourist accommodation are bringing some of them back to the ordinary rental market.

Prices have not reacted the way tenants might hope. Homie was still seeing advertised rents roughly 25% to 30% above their year-earlier levels in the market it tracks.

Inmuebles24's standardized index points in the same general direction with a smaller increase. Its benchmark two-bedroom apartment was already above MXN 21,700 per month in the spring and continued edging higher into the World Cup period.

Current listing data also show how expensive the central districts remain. Roma Sur listings around MXN 16,900 can coexist with much higher prices in Roma Norte, Condesa, Polanco or Cuauhtémoc, making the citywide average particularly resistant to a quick drop.

For renters, the encouraging development today is more choice. We do not yet have evidence of a broad Mexico City rent decline.

If Mexico City has more apartments now, why aren't rents dropping?

Mexico City's extra post-World Cup rental supply is still small compared with the city's housing shortage, and many returning Airbnb units sit in expensive neighbourhoods.

Homie estimates that Mexico City needs at least 500,000 additional homes. Against a shortage of that size, a 10% increase in the inventory visible on rental platforms helps but does not suddenly create an oversupplied market.

The type of housing returning also matters. A furnished apartment in Roma Norte, Condesa or Juárez that spent several years serving tourists does not automatically reappear as affordable housing for a local family.

Owners can try medium-term rentals, corporate leases or expensive conventional contracts first. If those properties remain empty, asking rents may eventually come down.

That takes time.

The earliest evidence of a softer market will probably appear through longer listing periods, landlord concessions and negotiated discounts before it becomes obvious in a citywide asking-rent index.

Mexico also lacks a comprehensive real-time database of signed residential leases. Portal data show what landlords ask for; they do not tell us perfectly what tenants ultimately pay.

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Are Monterrey rents falling after the World Cup?

Monterrey's World Cup rental bubble has burst, but normal apartment rents are only beginning to soften around the edges.

Monterrey had the most aggressive temporary pricing of Mexico's three host cities. N+'s early sample showed the average short-term World Cup quote rising from MXN 624 to MXN 4,743 per person per night.

Those prices did not hold, and the adjustment has continued after the tournament. AMPI president Oscar Cortés Campos recently told Reporte Índigo that owners with properties sitting vacant for more than a month were cutting their asking prices by roughly 10% to 30%.

That is useful current evidence because it refers to landlords reacting to actual vacancy rather than theoretical projections.

Yet Monterrey's ordinary apartment market still looks expensive. Current Inmuebles24 listings show two-bedroom averages around MXN 24,500 to MXN 25,700 in central Monterrey, while neighbourhoods such as Ladrillera and Santa María remain around MXN 37,000.

AirDNA's latest completed short-term data also show 5,085 active Monterrey listings, only 5.6% fewer than a year earlier. Occupancy is currently about 55%, while average daily rates remain 4.8% above last year's level.

We are seeing a correction in overambitious listings, not a citywide rental collapse.

Are Guadalajara rents falling after the World Cup?

Guadalajara is showing clearer short-term rental cooling than Mexico City or Monterrey, but ordinary apartment rents still have not entered a broad decline.

AirDNA's freshly updated Guadalajara data are useful here. The city has 7,227 active short-term rental listings, down 14% from a year earlier.

That is a sizeable supply contraction. At the same time, occupancy is 56%, up 14.2%, and the average daily rate is $59, up 3.9%.

In other words, fewer properties are competing for guests while the remaining market is still functioning well.

Another AirDNA geographic series covering a smaller Guadalajara subset even shows average daily rates down 2.1% year over year. We should not mix the two datasets as though they measure the same geography, but both point away from the extraordinary World Cup pricing seen earlier.

The conventional rental market remains expensive. Current Inmuebles24 listings put typical asking rents around MXN 20,800 in Americana, MXN 28,700 in Providencia and above MXN 36,000 in Country Club.

Back in February, Inmuebles24's standardized two-bedroom index was already at MXN 18,299 per month, up 2.2% in the first two months of the year and 69% since the current upward cycle began in late 2020.

Guadalajara could soften further because a meaningful amount of temporary World Cup inventory was created there. As of now, the evidence shows short-term normalization rather than falling residential rents.

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Are rents falling across Mexico as a whole?

No. Mexico's latest nationwide housing data still show prices rising, so describing the country as being in a post-World Cup rental downturn would be wrong.

INEGI's latest completed consumer-price data show the broad housing category 3.11% above its year-earlier level. Housing prices also increased 0.15% in the latest month measured.

The national consumer price index rose 3.12% over the same year, which means housing costs were moving almost exactly in line with overall inflation.

INEGI's housing category is broader than private apartment rents, and it moves more slowly than Airbnb or property portals. We should not use it to estimate the current asking rent for an apartment in Roma Norte.

It is still valuable as a national reality check.

Only three Mexican metropolitan areas hosted World Cup games. There is no plausible mechanism through which a six-week accommodation boom in those cities would quickly push residential rents down across Mérida, Puebla, León, Tijuana, Querétaro and the rest of the country.

The latest national data confirm that no such broad decline has appeared.

Are former Airbnbs actually coming back to the long-term rental market?

Yes. Former short-term rentals are returning to ordinary housing in meaningful numbers, especially in Mexico City, and this is the strongest reason to watch rents closely from here.

Homie's post-World Cup data showed traditional Mexico City rental inventory up about 10%, with inventory on its own platform rising at least 35%.

AirDNA provides a second piece of evidence. Its latest completed data show 26,476 active short-term rentals in Mexico City, down 25.1% year over year.

Guadalajara has also fallen to 7,227 active listings, down 14%, while Monterrey's 5,085 listings represent a smaller 5.6% decline.

We cannot assign every lost Airbnb to the World Cup. Mexico City regulation has tightened, some hosts may have sold properties, and platform economics change constantly.

Taken together, though, the numbers show a genuine shift in supply. Traditional rental inventory is increasing at the same time short-term rental inventory is shrinking in two of the three host cities.

The effect has appeared first in availability. Prices are proving slower to move.

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Did Airbnb demand collapse once the World Cup ended?

No. Airbnb demand remains healthy in Mexico's host cities, which limits how many owners will permanently abandon short-term rentals.

AirDNA's latest completed Mexico City data show 64% occupancy, up 15.4% year over year. Average daily rates are $89, up 3.2%, and revenue per available rental is up 18.7%.

Guadalajara is currently at 56% occupancy, up 14.2%, with a $59 average nightly rate. Monterrey is at 55% occupancy, up 10.9%, with a $66 nightly rate.

These trailing figures still contain the World Cup period, so the tournament boosts them. Even allowing for that, the data give us no reason to think tourist demand has disappeared.

For long-term renters, owners still have a viable alternative. If Airbnb economics had collapsed completely, far more units could flood back into residential leasing at once.

Instead, owners now face a more normal choice. Some will stay short-term, some will return to annual leases, and some will switch between the two depending on regulation, seasonality and profitability.

That makes a gradual supply adjustment much more plausible than a sudden wave of cheap apartments.

Could Mexico City's Airbnb rules push rents down more than the World Cup?

Possibly. Mexico City's tightening short-term rental rules could add more long-term housing than the end of the World Cup itself, although there is still no evidence that regulation has pushed citywide rents down.

The capital has introduced a registration framework for short-term rental hosts and moved toward restrictions on how intensively residential properties can operate as tourist accommodation.

At the same time, Mexico City's rules limit annual rent increases inside existing residential contracts to the previous year's inflation rate. Mexico's Supreme Court has upheld that protection.

For an existing tenant, the inflation cap directly slows how quickly the rent can rise.

A vacant apartment is different. Owners still have much more freedom when setting the initial rent for a new tenant, so an inflation cap on renewals does not automatically lower advertised prices across property portals.

The more powerful channel may therefore be supply. If tighter short-term rental rules convince professional hosts to convert apartments back to conventional leases, tenants gain more alternatives.

That process appears to have started already. Whether it becomes large enough to lower citywide rents remains one of the main things worth watching over the next several months.

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Why are normal rents still so high after the World Cup?

Mexico's big-city rents were climbing long before the World Cup because housing supply, purchase prices and rental demand have been under pressure for years.

In Guadalajara, Inmuebles24's standardized rent index was already 69% above its late-2020 level by early this year. Mexico City's equivalent index has also climbed strongly since 2021.

Buying has become more expensive at the same time. Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal reported an 8.7% national increase in home prices during 2025, including 11.3% around Guadalajara, 9.4% in Monterrey and 5.1% in the Valley of Mexico.

That keeps many households renting for longer.

Demand is also concentrated in the same central areas where short-term tourism is strongest. Homie cites Inmuebles24 data showing that 54% of real-estate searches in Mexico City are now aimed at renting rather than buying, while neighbourhoods such as Cuauhtémoc, Roma, Condesa and Miguel Hidalgo were posting annual rent increases around 10% to 12% independently of the tournament.

The World Cup temporarily added another layer of demand on top of those existing pressures.

Once that temporary layer disappeared, Mexico was left with the same expensive housing market underneath.

Could Mexican rents start falling later?

Some rents could fall over the coming months, especially overpriced apartments returning from Airbnb, but a nationwide decline still looks unlikely.

The conditions for localized cuts are already visible. Mexico City has more long-term inventory. Short-term listings are down sharply there and in Guadalajara. Monterrey landlords with stubborn vacancies are reportedly cutting asking prices by 10% to 30%.

Those changes give tenants more bargaining power than they had during the World Cup buildup.

We would expect the biggest discounts on furnished apartments that were explicitly positioned for tourists, properties near stadiums that were repriced too aggressively and listings that have already spent several weeks empty.

Current structural demand makes the broader story different. Mexico City still has a major housing shortage, purchase prices remain high and Airbnb demand continues to generate respectable occupancy.

So the next phase is more likely to look messy than dramatic: discounts on individual properties, more negotiation and slower rent growth in certain neighbourhoods while citywide averages remain sticky.

A genuine Mexican rental downturn would require several months of declining long-term rent indexes across multiple cities. We are not there yet.

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So are rents falling in Mexico after the World Cup?

Partly. Mexico's World Cup accommodation premium has collapsed and some landlords are cutting overpriced units, but normal residential rents are still too strong for us to say that Mexico has entered a rental downturn.

The post-World Cup correction is easiest to see in temporary accommodation. Some Monterrey World Cup quotes fell 50% to 80% from their speculative peaks. Guadalajara's short-term market has 14% fewer active listings than a year ago. Mexico City's short-term inventory is down 25.1%.

Residential supply is responding too. Homie says Mexico City now has about 10% more traditional rental inventory than immediately around the tournament, while its own platform recorded an increase of at least 35%.

Yet the price evidence has not crossed the line into a broad decline. Mexico City's long-term asking rents remain elevated. Guadalajara's conventional apartment market is still expensive. Monterrey landlords are discounting stale properties, but typical central rents remain around the mid-MXN 20,000s. Nationwide, INEGI's latest housing-cost measure is still 3.11% higher than a year ago.

The sharp post-World Cup fall people can see online is therefore mostly the disappearance of event pricing.

For ordinary tenants, the change is subtler but still useful. There are more apartments to choose from, some landlords have lost the bargaining power they expected to have, and overpriced properties are becoming negotiable again.

If that new supply keeps building while long-term demand weakens, actual rents could start falling in parts of Mexico City, Guadalajara or Monterrey. Today, calling that a nationwide trend would be premature. The World Cup rental bubble has deflated; Mexico's housing market has not.

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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.