Buyer-side only · Written from Medellín
There is no MLS in Colombia. That's the whole problem.
Every asking price you see is somebody's opinion, and the opinion goes up when the buyer has a foreign accent. This is the buyer's side of that transaction: what the paperwork actually says, what the costs actually are, and which brokers actually know what the neighbours sold for.
- 2026 minimum wage · SMMLV
- COP 1,750,905Decreto 1469 de 2025. Most thresholds in Colombian property and visa law are multiples of this number, so they all move every January.
- M-visa property threshold
- COP 612,816,750350 SMMLV — about US$196,348 at today's rate. Measured on the registered deed value, not on what you paid.
- TRM · 12 August 2026
- 3,121.07The peso has strengthened sharply through 2026. Sites still quoting the visa threshold at US$150,000 are converting at last year's rate.
- Public sale-price databases
- NoneNo MLS, no recorded-sale feed, no Zillow. Nobody can hand you a verified average price per square metre, including me.
The map that actually matters
You don't pick a city here. You pick an altitude.
Colombia sits on the equator, so climate is a function of elevation rather than season. That one number decides whether you will ever run air conditioning, what your utility bill looks like, whether the building has hot water at all — and, quietly, who else wants to live there when you go to sell. Start with the metres.
Elevations at city centre · mean annual temperature · sea level to 2,640 m
Run your own numbers
Three tools, because the answers you're being quoted are usually wrong.
No email gate, no signup. They run in your browser and the figures behind them are dated on the page, so you can see when they were last checked.
Buyer readiness check
Budget, timeline, city, visa intent, financing, and whether you're in the country. It ends with a written brief you can send me on WhatsApp — so the first conversation starts at the useful part.
Start the check → CalculatorWhat closing actually costs
Notary fees, registration tax, departmental stamp, the 0.4% bank tax everyone forgets, legal fees. Enter a price in pesos or dollars and see the line items, with the ranges shown honestly.
Open the calculator → Calculator · updated 12 August 2026Does this property clear the visa threshold?
The M and R investor visas are pegged to the minimum wage, so the bar moved COP 612,816,750 this January and moves again next. Check a deed value against the current figure.
Check a threshold →Six steps, in order
The purchase, start to finish
The order is not optional. Two of these steps cannot be fixed retroactively, and both of them happen before you ever see a deed.
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Confirm you can buy — you almost certainly can
Foreign nationals buy in their own name with a passport. This step is short, and it is mostly about deciding whether you are buying to live, to rent, or to qualify for a visa, because those three answers point at different buildings.
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Send the money through the formal exchange channel
Every dollar should enter Colombia as registered foreign investment, with the exchange declaration filed and the sender's name matching the name that will appear on the deed. This is what lets you repatriate the proceeds when you sell, and what the visa office reads. It is also the step that is genuinely unfixable after the fact.
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Offer, then the promesa de compraventa
The promesa is the binding contract; the escritura is the delivery. Penalty deposits, payment schedules and timelines all get set here, and asymmetric penalty clauses are the standard trap for buyers who sign the seller's template unedited.
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Run the estudio de títulos before you commit money
Your lawyer pulls the certificado de tradición y libertad and reads the whole ownership chain: liens, embargoes, inheritance gaps, spousal consent defects, unpaid administración. There is no title insurance behind you, so this is the shield.
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Sign the escritura pública at the notaría
The deed value is the number that follows you: it sets your capital gains basis, it is what the visa office measures, and under-declaring it to save a few million pesos in tax is how people disqualify themselves from the visa they bought the apartment for.
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Register the deed, and only then relax
Ownership transfers at the Oficina de Registro de Instrumentos Públicos, not at the notary. You own it when the folio de matrícula inmobiliaria says you do — pull a fresh certificado afterwards and confirm your own name is on it.
The part most sites leave out
How I get paid, in one paragraph.
I have no listings and I don't represent sellers. When you tell me what you're after, I introduce you to a broker or a lawyer in my network who does that specific thing well. If you close, they pay me a share of the commission they were charging anyway. You pay them what you would have paid. You pay me nothing.
- No inventory of my own, so there is nothing I need you to buy.
- The referral fee comes out of the broker's commission. It is never added to your price.
- If nobody in the network fits what you want, I'll tell you that instead of guessing.
- I live in Medellín full time. You can meet me before you wire anything.
Straight answers
Questions worth asking before you wire anything
Can a foreigner actually own property in Colombia?
Yes, in your own name, with the same ownership rights a Colombian has. No residency, no local partner, no Colombian company, no minimum stay. You need a valid passport and, for registration, a Colombian tax identification number, which your lawyer arranges. The narrow exceptions are border strips, coastal zones and certain protected or collectively-titled land — none of which touches a normal apartment purchase in a city.
Do I need a visa before I buy?
It runs the other way around. Buying is what qualifies you for the M-type investor visa, not the reverse. You can arrive on a tourist stamp, buy, and then apply. What matters is that the money arrives through the formal exchange channel and the deed value clears the threshold — get either wrong and you own a perfectly good apartment that will not support a visa application.
What does buying cost on top of the purchase price?
Budget roughly 2–4.5% of the purchase price on the buyer's side once notary fees, the registration tax, the departmental stamp, the 0.4% financial transaction tax and legal fees are counted. The spread is real, because the registration tax and stamp vary by department and some line items are split with the seller by local custom rather than by law. The closing cost calculator works it through line by line.
Is there title insurance in Colombia?
No. There is no title insurance product covering ownership defects the way there is in the United States. What replaces it is the estudio de títulos — a lawyer's review of the certificado de tradición y libertad and the ownership chain behind it. It is the single line item you should never cut, and it is cheap relative to what it protects.
Can I buy without being in Colombia?
Yes, through a power of attorney granted at a Colombian consulate or apostilled abroad. Two rules carry most of the risk: the person holding your power of attorney must be independent of the seller's side, and the money must still arrive through the formal exchange channel in your own name. Remote purchases fail on sequencing far more often than on paperwork.
Will owning property make me a Colombian tax resident?
Owning property does not, by itself, make you a tax resident. Presence does — broadly, spending more than 183 days in Colombia across a rolling 365-day period. Tax residency has real consequences for US citizens in particular, since you keep filing at home as well. This is general information, not tax advice; if you are near the line, pay a cross-border accountant before you buy, not after.
What is the catch with the referral model?
That you should ask. I make money when a broker or lawyer in the network closes with someone I introduced, and they pay me out of the commission they were already charging. Nothing is added to your price. The failure mode is obvious — someone paying me more to receive buyers who do not fit them — which is why the network stays small and why I will tell you when nobody in it is right for what you want.
Tell me what you're trying to buy.
The fastest version is WhatsApp — say what you have to spend, roughly when, and whether the visa matters to you. If I can help, I'll say how. If I can't, I'll say that too.