Are rents still rising in Santa Marta?

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Are rents still rising in Santa Marta right now?

Yes, Santa Marta rents are still going up, but the latest numbers point to moderate growth rather than another big rental surge.

Trovit currently puts the average advertised apartment rent in Santa Marta at about COP 2.8 million per month, or COP 37,975 per square meter. Its latest reading is 4.4% above a year earlier and 1.2% above the previous month. That gives us a useful answer straight away: landlords are still asking more than they were last year.

The pace has cooled, though. Earlier readings from the same platform were running closer to 7% annual growth. Meanwhile, Colombia's latest annual inflation readings have remained around 6%. A 4.4% rise in asking rents therefore looks very different from the double-digit increases that would point to another major squeeze.

There is one catch with the COP 2.8 million figure. Santa Marta combines ordinary residential apartments with furnished six-month rentals and expensive coastal properties marketed partly to tourists, so the average can move simply because the mix of listings changes.

Still, the direction is fairly clear. Santa Marta rents have not started falling. They are rising more slowly than during the strongest years of the recent boom.

Why do Santa Marta rental averages vary so much?

Santa Marta rental averages vary so much because the city contains several rental markets that happen to appear on the same property websites.

A conventional unfurnished apartment rented by a local household can sit beside a fully furnished property in Pozos Colorados offered for six months, which in turn competes with short-term tourist accommodation. Treating all three as one market creates messy averages.

We can see that in the listings. Trovit currently reports an average around COP 2.8 million. Other property platforms often produce figures closer to COP 2 million or above COP 3 million depending on their inventory. Individual apartments can start below COP 1 million, while newer furnished units near the beach regularly ask COP 3 million, COP 4 million or more.

Location alone does not explain the whole difference. Furniture, minimum lease length, sea views, pools, administration fees, building age and whether the condominium accepts tourist stays can move the rent substantially.

That makes the annual direction more useful than pretending there is one perfect Santa Marta average. Across the available evidence, the direction these days is still upward, but nowhere near uniformly so.

Are Santa Marta rents actually beating inflation?

No, the latest Santa Marta rent growth does not appear to be beating inflation across the broader market.

Trovit's current 4.4% annual increase in asking rents sits below Colombia's recent annual inflation rate of roughly 6%. Even if we use a slightly stronger rental estimate from another portal, there is little convincing evidence of large real rent gains citywide.

Suppose an apartment moved from COP 2.5 million to roughly COP 2.61 million after a 4.4% increase. The landlord collects about COP 110,000 more each month, but general prices have risen at least as quickly. In purchasing-power terms, that landlord is not obviously better off.

This gets lost easily when people say Santa Marta rents are "still rising." Nominally, yes. In real terms, the market currently looks much flatter.

Some individual coastal properties can outperform that citywide trend, particularly after renovation or when a lease resets to a new tenant. Those cases are not enough to describe the normal Santa Marta rental experience.

How much does it cost to rent an apartment in Santa Marta now?

Renting an entire apartment in Santa Marta currently costs roughly COP 2 million to COP 3 million per month in much of the visible market, while good coastal properties can go well above COP 4 million.

Trovit's overall advertised average is COP 2.8 million. Current listings also show perfectly ordinary apartments closer to COP 1.5 million–COP 2 million, while furnished or newer properties around the beach move into another price bracket.

A useful example comes from current medium-term listings. A furnished one-bedroom apartment in Pozos Colorados has recently been advertised around COP 2.6 million with a minimum six-month stay. Other larger furnished properties are asking around COP 3.8 million. Prime newer apartments can stretch beyond COP 4 million.

The range is therefore more useful than the average. Someone moving to Santa Marta can still rent below COP 2 million, but usually by compromising on neighborhood, building quality, size, furniture or proximity to the coast. Once we ask for a modern building, pool, security, air conditioning and beach access, the rent moves up quickly.

Are El Rodadero, Bello Horizonte and Pozos Colorados still getting more expensive?

Yes, Santa Marta's main coastal areas still command some of the city's highest rents, although the premium varies enormously from one building to another.

El Rodadero remains the most established mass-market beach district. Current long-term and medium-term listings commonly move above COP 2.5 million once an apartment is furnished or close to the beach. Bello Horizonte and Pozos Colorados increasingly compete at the higher end because much of their housing stock is newer and built around pools, security, views and resort-style amenities.

A compact apartment around Bello Horizonte can still appear below COP 2 million. A newer two-bedroom unit in Pozos Colorados can ask more than twice that. The building often matters as much as the neighborhood.

This also explains why coastal rents can keep rising while citywide rents barely beat inflation. A new tower delivered with better amenities can establish a much higher rental level than an older apartment nearby without proving that every existing Santa Marta property has appreciated by the same amount.

El Rodadero currently shows another limit to that premium. During the latest Fiesta del Mar, formal hotel occupancy there reached only 52.39%, compared with 62.9% across Santa Marta and 77.07% in the Centro area. El Rodadero clearly remains popular, but demand is no longer concentrated there to the extent that landlords can assume every coastal unit will fill at almost any price.

Is Airbnb still pushing Santa Marta rents higher?

Airbnb still influences Santa Marta rents, but current short-term-rental data gives us much less reason to expect an endless Airbnb-driven rent spiral.

AirDNA currently tracks 6,999 active short-term rentals in Santa Marta. That is 34.5% fewer than a year earlier. At the same time, occupancy has climbed to 46%, while the average daily rate has fallen 16.8% to US$71.

That combination is revealing. Hosts who remain active are filling more nights, but they are doing so at lower nightly prices. RevPAR, which combines occupancy and price, is up 13.3%, so the market is still generating demand. Yet hosts clearly do not have unlimited pricing power.

Almost nine out of ten active Santa Marta short-term rentals are entire homes, and nearly half are one-bedroom units. These properties overlap directly with the same apartments that could serve furnished medium-term renters or, in some cases, conventional tenants.

Airbnb therefore still removes a meaningful number of units from the ordinary rental pool. What has changed lately is the direction of supply: active STR inventory is shrinking rather than exploding.

Is tourism still strong enough to keep Santa Marta rents climbing?

Santa Marta tourism is still strong, but visitor growth alone no longer guarantees rapidly rising apartment rents.

Simón Bolívar Airport handled 3.79 million passengers last year, 4.7% more than the previous year. The latest Fiesta del Mar then attracted an estimated 117,334 visitors in one week and generated roughly COP 106 billion in economic activity. Santa Marta clearly has not lost its appeal as a destination.

The more interesting part appears once we compare visitor numbers with accommodation performance. Formal hotel occupancy during Fiesta del Mar was 62.9%. El Rodadero managed just over 52%, despite being one of the city's best-known tourist districts.

Semana Santa tells a similar story over a longer period. An Asotelca Magdalena analysis put weighted hotel occupancy at roughly 74% in 2024, 61% in 2025 and about 57% in 2026, even though the city continued attracting very large numbers of visitors.

More tourists are coming, but those tourists are being spread across a much larger accommodation market. Tourism remains supportive without delivering the scarcity needed for another easy wave of rent increases.

Has Santa Marta built too many tourist rentals?

Santa Marta now looks much closer to an oversupplied tourist-accommodation market than it did a few years ago.

Asotelca Magdalena estimates that more than 9,000 tourist-housing units were added between 2024 and 2026. Over roughly the same period, its representative Semana Santa hotel sample saw occupancy drop from 74% to around 57%.

Hotel pricing weakened as well. Asotelca calculated that real average rates in its sample fell from roughly COP 283,000 to COP 248,000. Meanwhile, AirDNA's latest data shows short-term rental nightly rates down 16.8% year over year.

Those datasets measure different parts of the accommodation market, so we should not combine them mechanically. Their direction, however, lines up unusually well: Santa Marta has added a lot of places to stay, and operators are having to work harder on price to fill them.

That pressure could eventually help conventional renters. An owner facing lower nightly rates, management fees, cleaning costs and seasonal vacancies may prefer a six- or twelve-month tenant. Not every Airbnb listing that disappears becomes a long-term rental, but the incentive to consider that switch is much stronger now than during the easiest years of the STR boom.

Is new construction starting to hold Santa Marta rents down?

Yes, Santa Marta's construction boom is starting to create a real supply constraint on how quickly rents can rise, especially around the premium apartment market.

Camacol's Coordenada Urbana data showed 9,996 homes under construction across Magdalena at the end of 2025, the highest level recorded for the department. Santa Marta accounts for much of that activity, particularly in apartment projects near the southern tourist corridor.

That is a significant pipeline for a market of Santa Marta's size. Current project inventories continue to show new towers around Rodadero Sur, Bello Horizonte and Pozos Colorados, where investors and second-home buyers are especially active.

Those 9,996 homes will not flood the rental market all at once. Some are outside Santa Marta, some will be owner-occupied and others will stay in the tourist market. Even so, every additional investor-owned apartment eventually has to compete for a tenant or guest.

The impact should be strongest at the top end. A household looking for a cheap local apartment cannot necessarily substitute into a COP 500 million resort-style condo. Someone looking for a furnished two-bedroom apartment near the beach often can choose among several new projects.

Can Santa Marta residents actually afford much higher rents?

Santa Marta's local-income market cannot comfortably absorb another large round of rent increases, and affordability is now one of the clearest brakes on the market.

Colombia's current monthly minimum wage is COP 1,750,905. A COP 2 million apartment already costs more than one entire minimum wage. A COP 2.8 million apartment, close to Trovit's current Santa Marta average, costs about 1.6 minimum wages before utilities, food, transport or anything else.

Of course, many households have two earners and higher-income tenants rent the more expensive properties. The comparison still shows why coastal listing averages cannot simply keep climbing at double-digit rates and remain relevant to local renters.

The cheaper end is also under pressure. Local reporting in Santa Marta has documented students paying around COP 900,000 for a single room, with basic residential options often falling somewhere around COP 600,000 to COP 1.5 million depending on location and size.

Higher rents are therefore possible, but increasingly through segmentation. Wealthier households, tourists, remote workers and furnished-rental customers can pay more. The ordinary local market hits an affordability wall much sooner.

Are Santa Marta landlords still finding tenants easily?

Santa Marta landlords still have plenty of demand, but renters currently have enough choice to punish an overpriced apartment.

The rental portals remain full of active inventory. Trovit alone currently shows more than 400 apartment listings matching broad Santa Marta rental searches. Other large portals also carry hundreds of properties, although there is substantial duplication between websites.

That is very different from a genuinely starved rental market where almost anything gets leased immediately. Owners still have to compete on rent, administration fees, furniture, air conditioning, parking, building quality and location.

The tourist market reinforces this. As seen above, Airbnb occupancy has improved even while nightly prices have fallen sharply. Owners are finding customers, but price still matters.

This is why a seller's assumption that any Santa Marta apartment can simply raise its rent 10% every year deserves skepticism. Good properties can outperform. Average ones increasingly have alternatives sitting beside them.

Will Colombia's higher minimum wage make Santa Marta rents jump again?

Colombia's much higher minimum wage should support Santa Marta rental demand, but it does not give landlords a legal way to raise existing residential leases by 23%.

The current minimum wage is COP 1,750,905, 23% above the previous level. That is an unusually large increase and gives some formal workers considerably more nominal income.

Residential rent renewals follow a completely different rule. Colombia's Law 820 allows a landlord to increase an urban housing rent after 12 months, with the adjustment capped by the previous year's inflation. DANE measured 2025 inflation at 5.10%, so 5.10% is the relevant maximum increase for eligible residential lease renewals this year.

A tenant paying COP 2 million would therefore move to a maximum of roughly COP 2.102 million under that annual adjustment, rather than COP 2.46 million.

The minimum-wage increase can still affect newly negotiated leases because some households have more income available. Its biggest effect should be supporting demand and making modest rent increases easier to absorb. Expecting a 23% repricing of Santa Marta rents would be a serious misreading of how the market and the law work.

Could Santa Marta rents actually fall from here?

Santa Marta rents could fall in some buildings and neighborhoods, but a broad citywide decline still looks unlikely for now.

There are more reasons to consider the possibility than there were a few years ago. Tourist accommodation has expanded heavily. Airbnb nightly prices are down. Hotel occupancy has softened. Nearly 10,000 homes were under construction across Magdalena at the latest year-end count. Local renters are already stretched.

Those forces make aggressive rent increases increasingly difficult.

Demand has not disappeared, though. Airport passenger traffic is still growing, large events continue bringing more than 100,000 visitors at a time, short-term-rental occupancy has improved, and advertised long-term rents remain above last year's levels.

A realistic downside scenario would therefore start with certain apartments sitting vacant longer and owners accepting lower prices, particularly where several similar new units compete in the same building. That can happen without Santa Marta's overall rental index turning negative.

A genuine citywide rent decline would probably require weaker tourism, softer local employment and enough excess apartment supply to force widespread discounting at the same time. We are not there yet.

So, are rents still rising in Santa Marta?

Yes, Santa Marta rents are still rising, but anyone expecting another broad rental boom is looking at the wrong part of the story.

The freshest asking-rent data we found shows roughly 4.4% annual growth. That confirms that rents are still moving upward. It also puts the increase around or below general inflation, meaning real rental growth across Santa Marta is currently weak.

The coastal market can still do better. Newer apartments in Bello Horizonte, Pozos Colorados and parts of El Rodadero can command strong premiums because they appeal to tourists, furnished-rental tenants and wealthier residents. Even there, owners now face much more competition.

The biggest change is supply. More than 9,000 tourist-housing units are estimated to have entered the market since 2024, Magdalena recently reached a record 9,996 homes under construction, and Airbnb's average nightly rate has dropped sharply. Santa Marta no longer has the same easy scarcity story that helped push rents higher before.

For a landlord or investor underwriting a property now, assuming roughly inflation-like rent growth is far more defensible than building a deal around repeated double-digit increases. Around 4%–6% annual nominal growth is plausible if demand stays healthy. Some prime properties will beat it, and weaker ones may barely grow at all.

So yes, rents are still rising in Santa Marta. The important update is how they are rising: slowly, unevenly and with far less pricing power than the headline tourism growth might suggest.

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