Underwriting

You will see 7% and 8% quoted for Colombian rental yields. Those figures are usually arithmetic performed correctly on the wrong inputs: annual rent divided by purchase price, full stop. It is a real number. It is just not a number that describes anything you will experience.

The lines that go missing

A gross yield ignores everything between the tenant's payment and your bank balance. In Colombia that list is longer than most foreign buyers expect:

Line	What it is
Administración	The building's monthly quota. In amenity buildings — pool, gym, concierge, salón social — this is a substantial recurring cost and it rises. Ask for the actual current quota and the last two years of increases, not an estimate.
Predial	Annual municipal property tax, assessed on cadastral value.
Vacancy	Months with no tenant. Anything modelled at zero is modelling a fantasy.
Management	A percentage of rent if you are not in the country to handle it yourself — and if you are buying for residency you may well not be, at first.
Maintenance	A reserve, not an event. Set it aside monthly or pay for it in a lump.
Cuotas extraordinarias	Special assessments voted by the assembly for major works. Read the building's financials and recent assembly minutes before you buy.
GMF (4x1000)	The financial transactions tax on bank debits. Small per movement, persistent, and routinely left out of projections.
Income tax	Rental income is taxable. Whether by you as a non-resident or by you as a resident changes the treatment, not the existence.

Strategy changes the shape, not just the number

Short-term letting produces the highest gross figure and the highest operating burden, and it carries regulatory exposure — buildings can restrict short stays through their reglamento, and cities enforce registration requirements. Long-term letting produces the lowest gross and the least work. Furnished mid-term letting, roughly one to six months, sits between them and is structurally less exposed than short-term because it falls outside the rules aimed at tourist accommodation.

For a threshold-sized property bought primarily for residency, mid-term or long-term is usually the sane answer. You are not trying to maximise revenue from an asset you chose for other reasons; you are trying to stop it costing you money while it does its real job.

Why no price-per-square-metre figures appear on this site

Colombia has no MLS. There is no public, verifiable record of transaction prices. Any per-metre average you see published is derived from asking prices, from one agency's own book, or from nothing at all. Publishing one would give you false precision on the single most important input to your decision, so we do not.

What replaces it is a broker who has closed comparable units recently and will tell you what they actually went for. That is the one form of price discovery available, and it is most of the reason to work with one rather than to negotiate alone.

Financing, briefly

Mortgages for foreigners exist and are difficult. Loan-to-value ceilings are lower than most buyers expect, peso interest rates are high by North American or European standards, and the difference in treatment between residents and non-residents is significant. Developer payment plans on pre-construction — a deposit and staged instalments through construction — function as the practical alternative and are how a large share of foreign purchases are actually financed.

If you are considering pre-construction, the fiducia holding the project is the structure worth understanding: what it protects, what it does not, and what happens to your instalments if the developer does not deliver.