Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Tulum
SUMMARY
Tulum rental returns are getting worse, especially for ordinary condos bought at boom-era prices.
The clearest long-term pattern is not a collapse in one metric but a worsening balance between supply and demand. Airbtics shows active listings up 126.8% over three years while median annual revenue is down 17.3% and occupancy is down 14.6%.
The recent numbers can look better than the market really is because the pool of tracked properties keeps changing. AirDNA's average revenue is up sharply, yet like-for-like RevPAR is down 9.7%, which suggests surviving listings are not enjoying the same headline rebound.
Nightly pricing is now doing more of the work. AirDNA has ADR down 23% year over year, so some hosts are protecting occupancy by cutting rates rather than by generating stronger underlying demand.
The oversupply problem is not just Airbnb hosts adding spare rooms. Tulum's condo pipeline was built around investor demand, so every completed building can add both another property for sale and another short-term rental competing for the same guests.
Tourism is softer at the same time. Official hotel occupancy in Tulum fell from 74.32% to 66.18% in the latest first-half comparison, which makes it hard to explain rental weakness as an Airbnb-only problem.
Property prices have come down enough to create better entry points, but not enough to make every deal attractive. The same rental earning $18,000 gross looks poor at $300,000 and much more interesting at $180,000.
Broad market numbers now point to roughly 7% to 9% gross yields for a normal condo before costs. Once management, platform fees, HOA charges, utilities, repairs, insurance, furnishing replacement and tax enter the picture, low-single-digit net yields are very plausible.
The performance gap inside Tulum has become huge. Nearby one-bedroom rentals can produce roughly $14,000 or more than $29,000 a year, so the city average increasingly hides a property-selection problem rather than a simple destination story.
Tulum Airport has improved access but has not rescued the economics. Foreign tourist arrivals through the airport were down 35.2% in the first four months of 2026 compared with the same period of 2025.
The market is now better for disciplined buyers than for owners who bought generic units at inflated prices. Proven resale units, real booking histories and sellers willing to negotiate matter more than glossy projections.
The practical conclusion is simple: Tulum Airbnb still works for good properties bought well, but the average investor can no longer depend on destination growth to compensate for a mediocre unit or an aggressive purchase price.
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Are Tulum rental returns getting worse right now?
Yes. Tulum rental returns are generally worse today than they were a few years ago, especially for owners who bought ordinary condos at boom-era prices.
Airbtics gives us the cleanest longer-term view. Its current Tulum dataset puts median short-term-rental revenue at MXN237,000 a year. Revenue has recovered 2.5% over the latest year, but it remains 17.3% below its level three years earlier. Over the same three-year period, occupancy fell 14.6% while active listings jumped 126.8%.
That combination tells the story better than one year's revenue change. Tulum now has more than twice as much tracked Airbnb supply competing in a market where the typical property earns less than it did three years ago.
The freshest AirDNA data points in the same direction, although its sample behaves differently. Its broad Tulum market currently shows ADR down 23% year over year and like-for-like RevPAR down 9.7%. Owners may be filling more nights in that dataset, but they are doing it at much lower prices.
So yes, returns have deteriorated. The size of the decline depends heavily on the property, but the easy version of the Tulum Airbnb trade has clearly faded.
| Tulum rental measure | Current level | 1-year change | 3-year change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airbtics annual revenue | MXN237K | +2.5% | -17.3% |
| Airbtics occupancy | 47% | -6.0% | -14.6% |
| Airbtics active listings | 6,635 | +23.4% | +126.8% |
| AirDNA ADR | $125 | -23.0% | — |
| AirDNA like-for-like RevPAR | $57 | -9.7% | — |
Why do the Tulum Airbnb numbers look so contradictory?
Tulum Airbnb data looks contradictory today because the major providers are counting very different pools of properties, so headline averages can move sharply even when comparable rentals are getting weaker.
Airbtics currently counts 6,635 active Tulum listings and estimates 47% occupancy. AirDNA's broad Tulum, Quintana Roo dataset counts 4,130 and reports 46%. Another AirDNA page labeled simply "Tulum, Default" contains only 99 listings, with an implausibly high $626 average nightly rate for the ordinary condo market.
The biggest warning comes from AirDNA's broad Tulum dataset. Average revenue is up 62.2% year over year, which sounds spectacular. Yet measured active listings are down 69.4%. When AirDNA compares properties that were actually present in both periods, RevPAR falls 9.7%.
That comparison is much more useful. If thousands of weaker or differently classified listings disappear from a dataset, the average of those left behind can improve without individual owners becoming richer.
Airbtics gives us another check. Its Tulum revenue is up slightly over one year but still down 17.3% over three years. There is evidence of a recent bounce in some measures, but nothing close to a broad return to boom-era rental economics.
| Dataset | Listings tracked | Occupancy | Annual revenue | What we take from it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbtics | 6,635 | 47% | MXN237K | Stronger long-term comparison |
| AirDNA, Tulum QR | 4,130 | 46% | $17.7K | Useful current pricing data |
| AirDNA comparable properties | — | — | RevPAR $57 | Down 9.7% YoY |
| AirDNA "Default" | 99 | 30% | $23.1K | Too narrow for ordinary Tulum condos |
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Did Tulum simply build too many Airbnbs?
Yes. Tulum has built far more short-term-rental supply than the market has been able to absorb comfortably.
Airbtics shows active Tulum listings up 126.8% in three years. In its Mexico-wide 2025 review, Tulum added another 1,379 listings in a single year, the third-largest absolute increase among the 60 Mexican markets it studied.
The condo pipeline fed that growth. A Riviera Maya market report comparing early 2024 with early 2025 showed Tulum's development count rising from 294 to 306 and its unit count from 10,967 to 11,614. Local development data has also documented the huge longer-term construction wave that turned Tulum into one of Mexico's most heavily promoted investor-condo markets.
Many of those apartments were designed and sold with short-term rental income in mind. Every completed building therefore created two kinds of competition at once: another condo for sale and another potential Airbnb.
This supply problem is bigger than normal tourism seasonality. Tulum does not need visitor numbers to collapse for rental returns to weaken. Demand only needs to grow more slowly than the number of rooms chasing it.
Is tourism demand in Tulum weaker too?
Yes. Tulum is currently dealing with softer tourism demand as well as too much rental supply, and the official hotel numbers make that hard to dismiss.
Quintana Roo's tourism observatory reports that Tulum hotel occupancy fell from 73.8% in 2024 to 69.1% in 2025. During the first half of 2026, it dropped again from 74.32% to 66.18%.
That latest fall is unusually large. Tulum lost 8.13 occupancy points year over year during the first half, while Quintana Roo as a whole lost 2.95 points. Playa del Carmen declined 4.47 points and the Riviera Maya 3.87.
Hotels and Airbnbs are different products, but they compete for the same broad pool of visitors. When hotels are also filling fewer rooms, Airbnb weakness cannot be blamed only on hosts oversupplying themselves.
The market is getting squeezed from both directions these days: much more accommodation is available, while tourism demand is softer than it was during the stronger years.
| Hotel occupancy | Earlier period | Latest comparable period | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tulum, full year | 73.8% | 69.1% | -4.7 pts |
| Tulum, first half | 74.32% | 66.18% | -8.13 pts |
| Riviera Maya, first half | 76.63% | 72.77% | -3.87 pts |
| Playa del Carmen, first half | 77.05% | 72.58% | -4.47 pts |
| Quintana Roo, first half | 75.82% | 72.87% | -2.95 pts |
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Are Tulum Airbnb owners cutting prices to keep bookings?
Yes. The clearest recent pressure in Tulum is on nightly rates, which shows owners competing harder for each booking.
AirDNA's broad Tulum dataset currently puts ADR at $125, down 23% in one year. Occupancy in that same dataset has improved, yet comparable-property RevPAR is still down 9.7%.
That pattern fits an oversupplied market. A host can preserve occupancy by dropping a $180 night to $140, adding weekly discounts or becoming more aggressive with last-minute pricing. The calendar looks healthier, but the revenue generated by each available night falls.
Airbtics' longer history is less dramatic on ADR, with its current MXN1,355 nightly rate only 2.4% below three years ago. But occupancy in that dataset has fallen much more heavily over the same period.
The providers disagree on exactly where the pain shows up. One sees more weakness in occupancy, another in pricing. Both point to the same problem: thousands of Tulum rentals are fighting harder for enough guest spending to support them all.
Have Tulum condo prices fallen enough to make the weaker rentals worthwhile?
Sometimes, but Tulum condo prices have not fallen enough across the board to cancel out the deterioration in rental performance.
A Riviera Maya condo-market comparison showed average Tulum inventory pricing dropping from roughly $321,000 in early 2024 to $283,000 a year later. Average prices on units reported as sold fell from about $283,000 to $245,000.
That is a meaningful reset. Someone buying a $245,000 condo obviously has an easier yield hurdle than someone who paid $320,000 for a similar unit during the boom.
Current listing data still does not make Tulum look universally cheap. TuLugar's monitored market puts the median apartment around $206,000, with one-bedrooms around $171,000 and two-bedrooms around $283,000. These are asking prices rather than verified closed-sale prices, so they are a market guide rather than a transaction index.
The opportunity is increasingly in the discount. A mediocre rental bought at $300,000 can be a bad investment while exactly the same rental bought at $180,000 becomes interesting. Right now, entry price matters more in Tulum than the city's headline Airbnb revenue.
| Property measure | Earlier level | Later/current level | Approx. change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. condo inventory price | $321K | $283K | -11.7% |
| Avg. reported sold price | $283K | $245K | -13.1% |
| Median apartment asking price | — | ~$206K | — |
| Median 1-bedroom asking price | — | ~$171K | — |
| Median 2-bedroom asking price | — | ~$283K | — |
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What rental yield can a normal Tulum condo realistically make now?
For an ordinary Tulum condo, a realistic current gross yield is often somewhere in the mid-to-high single digits, while the net yield can easily fall into the low single digits.
We can see the rough scale by combining broad market figures. AirDNA currently estimates $17,700 in average annual rental revenue. Against TuLugar's roughly $206,000 median apartment asking price, that works out to about 8.6% gross.
Airbtics estimates roughly $14,000 equivalent annual revenue. Against that same property-price reference, gross yield falls to around 6.8%.
Neither calculation represents a specific condo, but they show the order of magnitude. Today's average economics look much closer to 7% or 9% gross than to the effortless 12%, 15% or 18% returns that appeared in many investment pitches during Tulum's expansion.
Gross yield is only the first layer. A professionally managed Airbnb still has to pay management, platform charges, HOA fees, electricity, internet, repairs, insurance, linen and furniture replacement. Once those costs are included, a 7% gross yield can quickly become 3% or 4% before personal taxes.
For some owners, a stable long-term tenant is now closer to the short-term-rental outcome than it used to be. Current monitored rents around Tulum often imply gross long-term yields in the mid-single digits, with much less turnover and fewer operating expenses. Airbnb can still beat that, but it has to earn the difference.
How much do Tulum Airbnb costs eat into the return?
Tulum Airbnb costs can easily absorb 30% to 45% of gross rental revenue for an absentee owner, and expensive condos can go beyond that.
Several Tulum management companies openly advertise commissions around 20%. Ambar Villas and House Tulum both publish rates at roughly that level, while other operators typically sit somewhere around 15% to 25% depending on what is included.
Airbnb then takes its share. The exact host fee depends on the fee structure and hosting setup, but professional operators can face a substantially higher platform charge than hosts using the traditional split-fee model.
Fixed costs continue even when guests disappear. HOA charges, electricity, internet, insurance and repairs are particularly painful during weak months because the owner cannot reduce them in line with occupancy.
Take a condo earning $15,000 gross a year. A 20% manager removes $3,000. A 4% host platform fee removes another $600. A $200 monthly HOA costs $2,400. Only $9,000 remains before utilities, insurance, maintenance, furnishing replacement and tax.
On a $206,000 purchase, that $9,000 represents 4.4% before several genuine expenses have even been paid.
| Example on $15K gross revenue | Annual cost | Revenue left |
|---|---|---|
| Starting gross revenue | — | $15,000 |
| 20% management | $3,000 | $12,000 |
| 4% platform fee | $600 | $11,400 |
| $200/month HOA | $2,400 | $9,000 |
| Utilities, repairs, insurance, tax | Still excluded | Below $9,000 |
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Can a Tulum condo still really return 10% to 15% a year?
A Tulum condo can still reach those numbers, but a 10% to 15% net return is no longer a sensible base-case assumption for a normal unit.
The arithmetic shows how demanding the target has become. A $200,000 property needs $20,000 of net annual income for a 10% net return.
If operating expenses consume 35% of revenue, that condo needs roughly $30,800 in annual bookings. If half of gross revenue disappears through management, platform costs, HOA, utilities, repairs and other expenses, gross bookings need to reach $40,000.
Compare that with the current broad-market estimates of roughly $14,000 from Airbtics and $17,700 from AirDNA. The property would need to perform far above the Tulum average.
Strong units do achieve that. Airbtics has shown one-bedroom comparables in the same broader Aldea Zamá area generating roughly $14,000 at the weak end and more than $29,000 at the strong end.
So a 10% gross yield remains perfectly possible in the right deal. A sustained 10% net yield requires a much better property, a much lower purchase price or unusually efficient operation. Treating it as the standard Tulum outcome today would be aggressive.
Why are some Tulum Airbnbs still doing much better than others?
Tulum's best Airbnbs are still making good money because the market now rewards properties that give travelers a clear reason to choose them.
The revenue gap between superficially similar units is huge. In Airbtics' Aldea Zamá comparisons, one-bedroom properties ranged from roughly $14,000 to more than $29,000 in annual revenue, while occupancy ranged from about 28% to 70%.
A generic one-bedroom with tropical decor, a shared rooftop pool and ten near-identical competitors in the same building has little pricing power these days. A well-reviewed unit with better design, professional photography, reliable management, a strong listing history and an exact location guests already search for can behave very differently.
Airbtics' current market data also shows meaningful revenue premiums around specific Tulum hotspots and professionally operated portfolios. One tracked manager with 34 listings, for example, was running an ADR 79% above the broader Airbtics market rate.
That does not mean hiring that particular manager magically creates a 79% premium; the portfolio itself may contain better properties. It does show how wide the quality gap has become.
Tulum is increasingly a property-picking market. Buying something merely because it has one bedroom, a pool and "Tulum" in the address leaves too much to chance.
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Has Tulum Airport actually helped Airbnb demand?
Tulum Airport has improved access, but it has not created enough new demand to rescue rental returns.
The airport passed two million cumulative passengers relatively quickly after opening, so calling it irrelevant would be unfair. It gave Tulum direct air connectivity that the destination had never had before and removed some dependence on the long transfer from Cancún.
The more recent numbers are much less exciting. Federal tourism data shows foreign tourist arrivals through Tulum Airport falling from 160,767 during the first four months of 2025 to 104,127 in the same period of 2026, a 35.2% decline. In April alone, the drop was 44.8%.
That sits alongside the official fall in Tulum hotel occupancy. The airport may be structurally useful, but right now it has not produced enough incremental demand to offset weaker tourism and the large accommodation pipeline.
Infrastructure can make Tulum easier to reach for years to come. Investors still need enough travelers per available room, and that ratio has become harder.
Is buying a Tulum rental property actually better now than during the boom?
For a disciplined buyer, buying a Tulum rental can actually make more sense now because weaker sales and rental conditions give buyers far more leverage on price.
This sounds contradictory after everything above, but the investment equation has changed. During the strongest years, buyers often paid high presale prices based on projected Airbnb income. Today we have completed buildings, years of real rental histories and far more resale inventory.
That means we can ask for trailing booking revenue, review actual Airbnb calendars, inspect management statements, compare the unit with nearby listings and negotiate against sellers who have been waiting longer.
Price does most of the work. A property earning $18,000 gross produces a 6% yield at a $300,000 purchase price. The same revenue becomes a 10% gross yield if the property can be bought for $180,000.
For buyers now, the best Tulum deals will probably come from existing units with proven rental histories and distressed or realistic sellers rather than from glossy future-return projections.
The market has become harder for owners who bought expensive generic condos. It can be more interesting for a buyer who understands that weakness and refuses to overpay.
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So, are Tulum rental returns getting worse?
Yes. Tulum rental returns are getting worse on average, and by now the evidence is broad enough to say it clearly.
Over three years, Airbtics shows Tulum short-term-rental supply up 126.8%, occupancy down 14.6% and median annual revenue down 17.3%. As seen above, AirDNA's latest comparable-property measure also has RevPAR down 9.7%, while its broad-market ADR has fallen 23%.
Official tourism data adds another layer. Tulum hotel occupancy fell 8.13 percentage points during the latest first-half comparison, almost three times the decline across Quintana Roo. Foreign tourist arrivals through Tulum Airport were also down 35.2% during the first four months of 2026.
The average rental now has to compete harder for a visitor who has far more choices. Meanwhile, broad annual Airbnb revenue estimates around $14,000 to $18,000 still sit against apartment asking prices commonly above $170,000 and often above $200,000. Once normal ownership costs are deducted, the net yield can get thin very quickly.
Tulum Airbnb has not stopped working. Top properties can generate roughly twice the revenue of weaker nearby competitors, and today's softer sales market gives new buyers a chance to enter at much better prices.
The conclusion is quite specific: Tulum rental returns have deteriorated, particularly for generic condos bought at high prices, and the average investor can no longer rely on destination growth to cover a mediocre deal. Good Tulum rentals still work, but the property and the purchase price now decide far more than the city name.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether Tulum rental returns are getting worse by looking at the parts of the market that actually determine rental economics: short-term-rental revenue, occupancy, nightly pricing, listing supply, tourism demand, property prices, operating costs and the performance gap between ordinary and stronger properties.
We prioritized recent, directly relevant data and did not force different providers to produce the same answer. Airbtics and AirDNA track different pools of properties, so when their headline figures moved differently we looked for the metric that best isolated underlying performance, especially AirDNA's like-for-like RevPAR measure when its active-listing count changed sharply.
We treated market averages as a starting point rather than a verdict on individual properties. Property-level comparisons from Airbtics were used to show how wide the spread has become between weak and strong rentals in the same broader Tulum market.
Rental data was cross-checked against independent demand evidence. Official hotel-occupancy data from SITURQ and tourism reports from SEDETUR were used to test whether Airbnb weakness was happening alongside softer tourism more broadly, while DataTur airport statistics were used to assess recent foreign-arrival trends through Tulum Airport.
For property prices, we used The RED Search's Riviera Maya Property Tracker for development inventory, unit supply and price changes, and TuLugar for current monitored apartment asking prices. Asking prices are treated as market guidance rather than verified closing prices.
Operating-cost assumptions were grounded in published local management fees from Ambar Villas and House Tulum, together with Airbnb's official host-fee documentation. These costs were used to show the difference between headline gross yield and the return an absentee owner may actually keep.
We also used AirDNA's methodology and data-source notes to interpret how its current metrics are built, including changes to Booking.com integration, deduplication and reservation modeling. That context is important in a market where the tracked listing pool has changed materially.
The conclusion is based on the combined weight of these sources rather than any single provider. A recent bounce in one metric was not treated as a market recovery unless it was consistent with supply, pricing, tourism demand and comparable-property performance.
Key sources used for this analysis include: Airbtics' Tulum short-term-rental market data, Airbtics' Mexico Short-Term Rental Market Review 2025, Airbtics' Aldea Zamá comparable-property report, AirDNA's Tulum, Quintana Roo market overview, AirDNA's 2026 methodology update, SITURQ's official hotel-occupancy series, SEDETUR's tourism reports, DataTur's January-April 2026 foreign-arrival report, The RED Search Property Tracker, TuLugar's Tulum housing market data, Ambar Villas' published property-management terms, House Tulum's property-management terms, and Airbnb's official service-fee documentation.
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