Has Tulum real estate hit the bottom?

Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Tulum

Thinking of buying real estate in Tulum?

Acquiring property in a different country is a complex task. Don't fall into common traps – grab our guide and make better decisions.

Download Now

Why are people suddenly asking if Tulum real estate has hit the bottom?

Tulum real estate has already fallen far enough for serious buyers to start looking for a floor, but the market still has too much unsold property for us to call the bottom with confidence.

The correction is no longer theoretical. A recent InfoHabitat analysis based on Softec and Mexican tourism data found that Tulum residential sales fell from 3,487 units in 2023 to 1,711 in 2025. In two years, annual sales were cut almost in half. Monthly sales per development also dropped from 1.4 units in 2022 to 0.9 in 2025.

At the same time, the current supply remains enormous. Maya Ocean currently tracks more than 8,000 units across 435 developments in Tulum, including more than 4,400 available condos. Different databases cover different slices of the market, so those figures should not be read as a complete census. They do show how much choice buyers still have.

That combination explains why the bottom question has become much more interesting lately. Prices and sales have already taken a meaningful hit, developers are competing harder for buyers, and investors who expected easy Airbnb returns have had several years to become disappointed.

The market has moved well beyond the first stage of denial. We are now trying to work out how much inventory still needs to clear before sellers lose the incentive to cut further.

Why is it so hard to know the real price of a Tulum condo today?

Tulum condo prices are unusually difficult to read because asking prices can stay surprisingly firm while the real deal gets cheaper underneath them.

There is no clean, highly liquid Tulum transaction index showing what comparable condos actually closed for every quarter. Mexico's SHF housing-price index is useful nationally, but Tulum's investor-heavy condo market behaves very differently from the country's typical mortgage-backed housing market.

Much of the local evidence therefore comes from developer inventories, broker databases and resale listings. Those sources are useful, but they often show the advertised price rather than the final economic price paid by the buyer.

That gap can be large these days. A developer may keep a condo advertised at $200,000 while including furniture, absorbing closing costs, extending payment terms or quietly accepting a negotiated discount. A resale owner may leave the listing unchanged for months and then take a much lower offer because rental income no longer covers the carrying costs.

The size of the unit has also changed. InfoHabitat found that Tulum sale prices rose 39% between 2021 and 2025 while construction costs increased 47%. Developers partly protected headline prices by building smaller apartments.

So a stable sticker price does not automatically mean a stable market value. We care much more about what a comparable finished unit can actually be bought for today.

Don't buy the wrong property, in the wrong area of Tulum

Buying real estate is a significant investment. Don't rely solely on your intuition. Gather the right information to make the best decision.

Get the data

Did Tulum simply build too many condos?

Yes, Tulum built far more investor-oriented housing than the market could comfortably absorb.

The scale of the construction boom is the main reason the correction has lasted this long. InfoHabitat found that units under construction increased from 1,466 in 2017 to 13,266 in 2023. That works out to an increase of about 805% in six years.

Housing offered for sale also climbed from 3,243 units in 2019 to 6,340 in 2023. Then demand weakened. By 2025, annual residential sales had dropped to 1,711 units.

Put those figures together and the imbalance becomes easier to grasp. The 6,340 homes already for sale in 2023 represented roughly 3.7 years of sales at the 2025 pace. That rough calculation does not even attempt to count every unit still coming through the construction pipeline.

Tulum could have absorbed aggressive development if tourism, residential demand and investor demand had kept rising together. They did not.

A large share of the boom was built around the idea that a condo could be sold to an investor, placed on Airbnb and generate attractive returns while the underlying property kept appreciating. Once rental returns weakened and appreciation became less certain, thousands of very similar properties began competing for a smaller pool of buyers.

That overhang remains the biggest obstacle to a clean bottom.

Have Tulum condo prices already fallen enough?

Some Tulum condos already look heavily repriced, but generic investment units can still get cheaper if sellers need liquidity.

This is one area where we should resist giving the entire town a single percentage decline. The correction depends on when the owner bought, the development, whether construction is finished, the neighborhood, the unit type and how badly the seller wants out.

Current market trackers generally show much more pressure on ordinary studios, one-bedroom condos and two-bedroom investor units than on scarce beachfront homes, established villas or genuinely unusual properties.

The official and industry evidence also tells us something important indirectly. In 2025, the president of Quintana Roo's real-estate developers association described Tulum as suffering from severe oversupply while Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Puerto Morelos continued reporting much stronger appreciation.

We therefore see little evidence that Tulum as a whole has suddenly regained pricing power.

What has changed is the starting point. A buyer coming in now may already be negotiating against a seller who bought during the boom, endured disappointing rental returns and has accepted that the original exit price is unrealistic.

That creates attractive individual deals before the market itself has clearly bottomed.

A 20% discount is not automatically cheap, though. If the property was originally priced on the assumption of an unrealistic 8% or 10% rental return, the correct price may still be considerably lower.

Get to know the market before buying a property in Tulum

Better information leads to better decisions. Get all the data you need before investing a large amount of money.

Get the data

Are Tulum property sales finally starting to recover?

Tulum property sales have not yet shown the kind of recovery we would want to see before declaring a durable bottom.

The most useful recent sales data still point downward. InfoHabitat's Softec-based analysis put annual sales at 1,711 units in 2025, versus 3,487 two years earlier. Monthly sales per development also weakened.

That does not mean the bottom has to wait until sales return to the old peak. Housing markets usually turn before transaction volumes fully recover. What we want to see first is a change in direction: several periods in which sales stop deteriorating, buyers begin absorbing finished inventory, and sellers no longer need progressively larger concessions.

We do not have that confirmation yet.

The current market feels closer to capitulation than renewed enthusiasm. That is useful for bargain hunters, but it is still different from a broad sales recovery.

Is Tulum's unsold condo inventory actually coming down now?

Tulum's condo inventory is starting to rationalize in some areas, but today's available supply is still far too large to call the excess cleared.

Current developer databases continue to show thousands of units available. Maya Ocean now tracks 8,098 units across 435 developments, with 4,464 condos listed as available in its database. Its median tracked price is around $231,500 and its median price per square meter is roughly $3,292.

These numbers are not the same thing as audited unsold completed inventory. They include the particular developments covered by the platform and can mix ready property with preconstruction. Still, a market in which one current database alone can surface more than 4,000 available condos is clearly giving buyers plenty of alternatives.

That weakens sellers' negotiating position.

The more encouraging part is what we no longer see: the easy assumption that another generic condo project can launch, sell out quickly and rely on endless investor demand. Developers now face a much tougher environment, which should gradually slow additions to future supply.

The inventory problem is therefore improving at the source. Existing stock, however, still needs buyers.

Buying real estate in Tulum can be risky

An increasing number of foreign investors are showing interest. However, 90% of them will make mistakes. Avoid the pitfalls with our comprehensive guide.

Download Now

Is Tulum's Airbnb glut finally clearing?

Yes, Tulum's short-term-rental glut is now clearing aggressively, and this is probably the strongest fresh evidence that the broader real-estate correction is getting closer to maturity.

AirDNA's latest Tulum, Quintana Roo dataset tracks about 4,130 active short-term rentals. Active listings are down 69.4% from a year earlier.

That is a huge supply contraction.

The properties that remain are filling more nights. AirDNA currently puts average occupancy at 46%, up 17.4% year over year. Average annual revenue per active listing has jumped to about $17,700.

We need to be careful with the interpretation, because the healthier averages partly reflect weaker operators disappearing from the sample. If thousands of poorly performing listings are removed, the average property left behind can look much better without destination demand exploding.

Pricing still looks soft. Average daily rates are down 23% year over year, while RevPAR is down 9.7%.

So Tulum's short-term-rental correction has clearly advanced. The mechanism is visible now: marginal hosts are leaving, occupancy among surviving listings is improving, and nightly prices are still being reset.

That is the kind of cleanup we would expect before real-estate values can stabilize.

Are Tulum Airbnb returns actually getting better now?

Tulum Airbnb returns are getting better for some surviving operators, but rental economics still do not justify the optimistic assumptions used to sell many condos during the boom.

The latest AirDNA numbers initially look bullish. Active listings have collapsed, occupancy has improved and average annual revenue per active property is now much higher than a year ago.

Look one level deeper and the recovery is less complete. RevPAR remains down 9.7%, and average daily rates have fallen 23%. Hosts are filling more nights partly by charging less.

There are also costs that gross Airbnb revenue does not capture: property management, platform commissions, electricity, cleaning, furniture replacement, HOA fees, maintenance, taxes and empty periods.

Imagine a $200,000 condo generating $18,000 of gross annual bookings. Once operating costs are deducted, the actual return can quickly become ordinary rather than spectacular.

That gap between the return buyers expected and the return the unit produces is one of the forces still pushing resale prices lower.

The rental market is healthier today than the listing glut suggested a year ago. It still has work to do before rental income alone puts a strong floor under every investment condo.

Don't lose money on your property in Tulum

100% of people who have lost money there have spent less than 1 hour researching the market. We have reviewed everything there is to know. Grab our guide now.

Download Now

Is tourism in Tulum finally recovering?

No, Tulum tourism is still soft enough to keep pressure on both hotels and investment property.

Quintana Roo's official tourism observatory shows Tulum hotel occupancy averaging 66.18% in the first half of 2026, down from 74.32% over the same period of 2025. The decline was 8.13 percentage points.

That is unusually weak within Quintana Roo. Statewide occupancy fell by 2.95 points over the same comparison. Playa del Carmen fell 4.47 points, while Cancún declined by 2.02 points.

The longer trend is not reassuring either. Tulum hotel occupancy averaged 73.8% in 2024 and 69.1% in 2025 before falling again in the latest half-year period.

Hotels and Airbnbs are not identical markets, but both depend on people wanting to stay in Tulum. The destination currently has less accommodation pricing power than a strong rebound story would require.

This is one reason we are reluctant to declare the property bottom today. The housing supply cleanup is becoming visible while tourism demand still looks weak.

Didn't the new Tulum airport bring enough new buyers and tourists?

No, Tulum airport has made the destination easier to reach, but so far it has not created enough extra demand to absorb the real-estate oversupply.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport remains a meaningful long-term infrastructure improvement. Tulum now has direct air access that it did not have during most of the property boom.

The latest passenger data are much less exciting than the original real-estate narrative.

Mexico's federal DataTur statistics show 104,127 foreign tourist arrivals through Tulum airport during the first four months of 2026, down from 160,767 during the same period a year earlier. That is a 35.2% drop.

The most recent month included in that dataset was weaker again, with foreign tourist arrivals down 44.8% year over year.

We should not read those figures as proof that the airport is failing. Mexican international aviation has been softer more broadly, and airport traffic can move sharply with airline capacity.

They do tell us that the airport has not produced a wave of incremental foreign demand large enough to overwhelm Tulum's condo surplus.

That distinction has become much easier to see now that the airport is operating. During the boom, buyers were paying partly for what future infrastructure might do. Today we can start measuring what it actually does.

Get the full checklist for your due diligence in Tulum

Don't repeat the same mistakes others have made before you. Make sure everything is in order before signing your sales contract.

Download Now

Why is Tulum struggling more than Cancún or Playa del Carmen?

Tulum is struggling more because a much larger share of its real-estate boom was built for investors rather than people who simply needed somewhere to live.

That difference changes everything during a downturn.

Cancún and Playa del Carmen have larger permanent populations, deeper local economies and more ordinary residential demand. Families, employees and long-term renters create a base level of housing demand that does not disappear just because short-term-rental returns fall.

Tulum's newer condo districts have a far heavier concentration of properties whose financial logic depended on tourism, Airbnb revenue and appreciation.

When those expectations weakened, many owners found themselves selling to the same investor audience at the same time.

The relative performance of the wider Riviera Maya supports this explanation. In the latest official hotel data, Tulum's occupancy decline is considerably steeper than Cancún's. The Quintana Roo developers association has also specifically singled out Tulum's oversupply while reporting much healthier appreciation in Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Puerto Morelos.

Tulum therefore needs a deeper inventory cleanup before ordinary supply-and-demand conditions return.

Which Tulum properties could already be near the bottom?

Finished properties with real scarcity may already be close to their bottom, while interchangeable investor condos still carry the most downside risk.

The distinction matters more now than trying to predict a single date when "Tulum" bottoms.

A studio in a development surrounded by dozens of similar projects gives the buyer plenty of substitutes. Another seller can cut the price. A nearby developer can offer a better payment plan. A newer project can throw in furniture.

That makes price competition brutal.

A finished villa in a strong location, a genuinely unusual penthouse, an established beachfront property or a unit with something difficult to reproduce has a different supply curve.

Finished property also removes an important layer of risk. The buyer can inspect the building, understand the HOA, see the actual neighborhood, check the noise, test the access, verify construction quality and compare real rental performance.

Presale buyers have to price all of those uncertainties in advance.

This is why we think the eventual Tulum recovery will probably begin unevenly. Scarce, finished and correctly priced property should stabilize first. Generic condos marketed mainly around projected Airbnb returns are likely to lag.

Don't sign a document you don't understand in Tulum

Buying a property over there? We have reviewed all the documents you need to know. Stay out of trouble - grab our comprehensive guide.

Download Now

Could Tulum condo prices still fall another 10% or 20%?

Yes, another 10% to 20% drop is quite plausible for some oversupplied Tulum condos, even if the market as a whole is already late in the correction.

The easiest way to understand the remaining downside is through rental economics.

Take a condo originally sold for $200,000 on the expectation that it could generate roughly $16,000 of net annual income. That would imply an 8% yield.

Suppose the actual sustainable net income ends up closer to $8,000. At the original purchase price, the yield falls to 4%.

A new buyer demanding a 5% return would value that same $8,000 income stream at about $160,000. At a 6% required return, the value falls to roughly $133,000.

Real property valuation is obviously more complicated than one yield calculation. Buyers may expect appreciation, use the condo personally or value amenities. Still, the example shows why a property can already be down 15% and remain expensive.

The risk is concentrated. A seller with no debt, no urgency and a scarce property can simply wait. An owner paying HOA charges on a generic condo with mediocre rental income may eventually accept whatever price brings liquidity.

So we would expect the next leg of the correction, if it comes, to be much more property-specific than the first.

What would convince us that Tulum real estate has finally bottomed?

Tulum real estate will look genuinely bottomed once buyers absorb inventory faster, tourism stops weakening and sellers no longer need deeper discounts to close deals.

Today, only part of that picture is in place.

The Airbnb cleanup is the strongest positive change. Active short-term-rental supply has dropped dramatically, and occupancy among surviving units has improved. That tells us the market is capable of correcting itself.

The sales side remains less convincing. The latest comprehensive residential data still show weak absorption and a sharp decline from the 2023 sales peak.

Tourism is another problem. Tulum hotel occupancy remains below last year's level, and foreign arrivals through Tulum airport have also weakened sharply in the latest available federal data.

Finally, we would want to see much less dispersion between ambitious asking prices and actual negotiated deals. A healthy floor becomes easier to identify when motivated sellers stop having to undercut one another.

We do not need every indicator to turn bullish at once. Three developments would make us much more confident: sales stop falling for several periods, available finished inventory clearly contracts, and rental RevPAR starts improving without relying mainly on the disappearance of weaker listings.

Tulum is closer to passing those tests than it was before. It has not passed them yet.

Get fresh and reliable information about the market in Tulum

Don't base significant investment decisions on outdated data. Get updated and accurate information.

Get the data

Has Tulum real estate hit the bottom?

No, Tulum real estate has probably entered the later part of its correction, but calling a market-wide bottom today is still premature.

The evidence is much more constructive than it was earlier in the downturn. Sales have already been cut roughly in half from their 2023 level. The Airbnb market is finally purging excess supply. Buyers have far more negotiating power, and developers can no longer assume that generic investor condos will sell simply because they are in Tulum.

Those are the ingredients we normally expect to see near the later stage of a correction.

The remaining problems are substantial. Thousands of condos are still competing for buyers. Residential sales have not yet shown a convincing rebound. Tulum hotel occupancy remains weak. Foreign tourist arrivals through the new airport have dropped sharply in the latest available comparison. Short-term-rental occupancy has improved, but nightly rates remain under pressure.

As we saw above, the most encouraging change is happening in rental supply. Weak operators are leaving and the surviving properties are performing better. If that process continues while tourism stabilizes, the floor could become much easier to see.

We would therefore avoid the simple claim that Tulum has already bottomed.

A better reading of the market is that the broad correction is mature enough for good individual purchases to exist before the overall market has fully stabilized.

That distinction is important for buyers today. Someone purchasing a finished, legally clean, hard-to-replicate property from a motivated seller may already be buying near or below its long-term clearing value. Someone paying a polished developer price for another interchangeable one-bedroom Airbnb condo could still be early.

So our answer is fairly sharp: Tulum real estate has probably not hit a confirmed market-wide bottom yet, and weaker condos can still fall further.

Parts of Tulum may already be there.

Get to know the market before buying a property in Tulum

Better information leads to better decisions. Get all the data you need before investing a large amount of money.

Get the data

Who is the author of this content?

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