When Colombian property is the wrong move

Everything else on this site assumes you are buying and helps you buy well. This piece assumes the opposite. Our income comes from introducing buyers to brokers, so the incentive here runs against us — but a purchase that unravels is worth nothing to anyone, and the buyers who read this and proceed anyway are the ones who proceed with their eyes open.

You have not lived here yet

The most common expensive mistake is not financial. It is buying in a city you have visited on holiday, in a neighbourhood that was excellent for two weeks, before finding out what it is like in the rainy season, on a Tuesday, when the novelty has worn off and you need a dentist.

Medellín in particular is a city people fall in love with quickly and read wrong just as quickly. The barrio that suits a three-week visit is frequently not the one that suits a life. The cost of finding this out as a renter is a lease. The cost of finding it out as an owner is transfer costs twice, a sale into a thin market, and possibly a visa complication.

It is genuinely illiquid

Selling takes longer than buying, and the foreign-buyer segment is thinner than the local one. A large, amenity-heavy apartment bought to clear a visa threshold has a smaller pool of potential buyers than a mid-market unit a local family wants. If there is any chance you will need to exit on a schedule — a job change, a family situation, a change of heart — that constraint should shape what you buy on day one, or argue against buying at all.

You cannot verify the price

Colombia has no MLS. There is no public record of what comparable units actually sold for. Every per-square-metre figure you find is derived from asking prices, from one agency's own book, or from nothing.

This is the structural weakness of the whole proposition for a foreign buyer, and we are the wrong people to pretend otherwise, because our answer to it is "use a broker who knows the comparables" and we are paid by brokers. It is a real answer — a broker who has closed similar units recently genuinely does know things you cannot look up. It is also self-serving, and you should weigh it accordingly.

Your return is partly a currency bet

If you think in dollars, a peso-denominated asset can appreciate respectably in local terms and still hand you a loss when you convert. Over five to ten years, exchange rate movement can comfortably exceed everything the building does. There is no practical hedge available to an individual buyer. If that exposure would keep you awake, this is a reason not to proceed rather than a detail to manage.

Managing from abroad is work

An apartment that is rented is a small business: tenants, the building administration, repairs, tax filings, and a bank account that needs attention. Managed remotely, it is a small business run badly unless you pay someone competent, which is a percentage of your rent and one more relationship to maintain in a language you may not fully have yet.

Residency is available without buying anything

This is the part that most often changes people's minds, and almost nobody raises it because almost everybody writing about it sells property.

Colombia has other visa routes. The pension route asks for a monthly income at a multiple of the minimum wage, which for many retirees is already satisfied by an existing pension — no purchase, no capital locked up, no illiquid asset in a currency you do not earn. There are routes tied to work, to marriage, and to remote employment. Each has its own requirements and none of them require you to convert a large share of your net worth into one apartment in one city.

If your goal is to live in Colombia, ask whether property is the cheapest way to get there before assuming it is the way. Frequently it is not. Rent, get residency through a route that fits your circumstances, and buy in two years if you still want to — by which point you will know the city well enough to buy properly.

When it does make sense

To be even-handed, the case in favour is real when several of these are true at once. You have spent meaningful time in the country and know where you want to be. The capital is a portion of your net worth you can leave illiquid for a decade without discomfort. You want residency and the property route fits your circumstances better than the alternatives. You are comfortable with currency exposure, or you will earn and spend in pesos so it partly offsets. And you have, or will hire, someone competent locally to handle what you cannot.

That is a real set of buyers and we work with them. It is a narrower set than the marketing suggests.

Current as of 22 August 2026. Not investment advice. If this piece has made you less sure, that was the intent — go and be less sure at somebody you are paying.