Buy or rent a house? Years of rent worth a house in 48 Latin American cities (October 2026)

Machine-assisted English version of the Spanish original by Aptología. All figures are locked to the original (numbers are copied, not re-translated); if in doubt, the Spanish original prevails.

A house in San Isidro (Argentina) costs the same as 5.9 years of its rent, the lowest ratio of 48 cities; in Piedecuesta (Colombia) are 25.0 years. In 18 of 47 cities the house needs more years of rent than the apartment, that is, it pays less for rent.

Abstract: We compare average price and rental of 119,483 houses for sale and for rent in 48 cities.

Updated: 18 October 2026 (data from 18 October 2026) · Next update: monthly.

Summary

Years of rent worth a house, by city

Medians of all houses (not matched by size); the apartment uses all rooms.

Frequently asked questions

Where should you buy a house instead of renting it? By price / rent ratio, in San Isidro (Argentina): 5.9 years.

Do you have more rent a house or an apartment? In 18 of 47 cities the apartment is more delivered.

Methodology

• Source: night events of the Aptology database (aptologia.com) of 18 October 2026: current housing ads in real estate portals of 13 countries, collected by Aptology and seen online between 11 and 18 October 2026. Court: 18 October of 2026.
• Debugging: exact duplicates (same city, area, type, price, currency, area, rooms and bathrooms) and prices outside the percentile 1 - 99 of each country, operation, currency and type are removed; the price per m² uses only ads with declared area between 12 and 2,000 m² and is also cut to P1-P99.
• What is measured: prices ordered (published), not closing prices. For rent, monthly rent without HOA fee, common expenses or condo.
• Minimum sample: each published figure is based on at least 30 ads; cells with less are omitted.
• Coins: never mix different coin ads without converting them. Conversión a dólares con la tasa de mercado de ExchangeRate-API (open.er-api.com, actualización del 18 Oct 2026): 1 USD = 3,182.80 COP, 1 USD = 18.47 M.N, 1 USD = 5.09 BRL, 1 USD = 3.44 PEN, 1 USD = 982.44 CLP, 1 USD = 1,514.57 ARS, 1 USD = 40.20 UYU, 1 USD = 5,705.37 PYG, 1 USD = 61.27 DOP, 1 USD = 0.89 EUR, 1 USD = 11.72 BOB; la UF chilena a 41,178.64 CLP (mindicador,cl. 18-oct-2026). The ads published in dollars are used as they are.
• Coins: In each city and operation only the majority currency of the ads is used (the ads in another currency are excluded) and the median is converted to dollars at the rate mentioned; no different currency ads are ever averaged.
• Years of rent to pay for the house: The average sales price (monthly average rental × 12) between the same type of ads and the cell; it is the price / rent ratio (price-to-rent ratio) and is equivalent to 100 - gross profitability. It does not include HOA fee, taxes, vacations, financing or recovery: it is a reference to compare to purchase and rent, not an investment recommendation.
• Season destinations: Punta del Este, Maldonado and Punta Cana are excluded from the comparisons of years of rent because many rental ads are seasonal (monthly summer price), which inflates the rent and would give an artificially low relationship.
• Limitations: The coverage depends on the portals that travel Aptology in each country and is greater in large cities and in the medium-high and high segments; the area is the one that declares the announcement, unverified; the area names come from the portals.
• Privacy: only aggregates are published; no personal data, link to ads or name of advertiser is published.
• Open data: datos.csv, CC BY license 4. 0.

How to quote

Pinzón Pineda, D. M. (2026). Buy or rent a house? Years of rent worth a house in 48 Latin American cities (October 2026). Aptology (aptologia.com). https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/comprar-o-alquilar-una-casa-ciudades-latinoamerica-2026. Data: datos.csv, CC BY license 4. 0.

Sources and data

• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23475764 (Zenodo)
• Original study (Spanish): ¿Comprar o arrendar una casa? Años de arriendo que vale una casa en 48 ciudades de Latinoamérica (octubre 2026)
• GitHub (CSV, PDF): https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/comprar-o-arrendar-una-casa-ciudades-latinoamerica-2026
• Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/datasets/aptologia/comprar-o-arrendar-una-casa-ciudades-latinoamerica-2026

More questions

• Where should you buy a house instead of renting it?
• Do you have more rent a house or an apartment?
• What does the study “Buy or rent a house? Years of rent worth a house in 48 Latin American cities” show?

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