I'm a referrer, not an agent. Here's exactly what that means.

What I do

Foreign buyers arrive in Colombia with a fairly consistent problem: everything they can find online is either a listing site trying to sell them a specific apartment, or a relocation blog written by someone who left three years ago. Almost nothing tells them what the paperwork means, what things cost, or which of the dozen agencies advertising in English actually knows the market they're asking about.

So I write that down, and when someone needs a person rather than an article, I introduce them to one — a broker who genuinely works the barrio they're asking about, a lawyer who does title studies all day, an accountant who handles cross-border clients. If the introduction turns into a closed deal, the professional pays me a share of the fee they were already charging.

How the money works

• You pay me nothing, ever. There is no consulting fee and no retainer.
• The referral fee comes out of the broker's or lawyer's own commission. It is not added to your purchase price or your legal bill.
• I have no inventory, so there is no particular property I need you to buy.
• If nobody in the network is right for what you want, I'll say that, and I'll usually tell you what to look for instead.

The obvious failure mode in a model like this is that whoever pays the most referral fee receives the most buyers, regardless of fit. The defence is that it only pays if deals actually close, and deals close when the match is right. A broker who pays well and disappoints buyers stops receiving them.

How I vet the people I refer to

Colombia has no licensing board that will do this for you. There is no exam, no registry and no complaints process — anyone can print a card. So the checks are practical rather than official:

• Verifiable transaction history in the specific barrio, not a general claim about the city.
• Actual working English, not a menu of memorised phrases, if that's what you need.
• A lawyer they work with regularly on title studies — and a willingness to have you use your own.
• A straight answer about commission structure, on the first ask.
• How they behave with a buyer who turns out not to be ready. That one tells you the most.

What I am not

Not a lawyer, not an accountant, not a licensed agent, not a fiduciary. Nothing on this site is legal, tax or investment advice, and none of it substitutes for a Colombian real estate lawyer reading your specific contract. Where I give figures I show where they come from and when they were last checked; where I don't know, I say so rather than rounding to a confident number.

The rest of the network

This site covers buying, at a national level. Its neighbours go deeper in one direction each: medellinrealestate.co for Medellín specifically, rentmedellin.co for renting before you buy, and colombiainvestorvisa.com for the visa mechanics in detail. Same person behind all of them.