How much is an extra square meter worth? The price and size of the apartment in 20 Latin American and Portuguese 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.

An apartment for sale 10% larger is requested + 6.2% more expensive in Guayaquil (Ecuador), the weakest effect of 20 cities, and + 10.7% in Buenos Aires (Argentina), the strongest. In the medium of the cities, 10% more area increases the price + 8.6% for sale and + 7.3% for rent.

Abstract: We estimate the value-area ratio of 101,862 apartments for sale and rent in 26 cities outside Colombia.

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

Summary

Sale

Price elasticity - area by log-log regression (apartments from 25 to 400 m², majority currency of the city); value of the extra m² = average price × medium area, in dollars.

Rental

Frequently asked questions

Is the square meter cheaper in large apartments? Where the elasticity is less than 1, yes; in the median of cities, 10% more area increases the price + 8.6%.

Where is every extra meter worth more? Where the elasticity is greater, like Buenos Aires City (Argentina).

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.
• Model: log (price) = b · log (area), by city and operation with 200 ads or more, in the majority currency; b does not depend on the exchange rate. It does not control area or antiquity.
• 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). How much is an extra square meter worth? The price and size of the apartment in 20 Latin American and Portuguese cities (October 2026). Aptology (aptologia.com). https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/cuanto-vale-un-metro-cuadrado-extra-ciudades-latinoamerica-2026. Data: datos.csv, CC BY license 4. 0.

Sources and data

• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23481479 (Zenodo)
• Original study (Spanish): ¿Cuánto vale un metro cuadrado extra? El precio y el tamaño del apartamento en 20 ciudades de Latinoamérica y Portugal (octubre 2026)
• GitHub (CSV, PDF): https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/cuanto-vale-un-metro-cuadrado-extra-ciudades-latinoamerica-2026
• Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/datasets/aptologia/cuanto-vale-un-metro-cuadrado-extra-ciudades-latinoamerica-2026

More questions

• Is the square meter cheaper in large apartments?
• Where is every extra meter worth more?
• What does the study “How much is an extra square meter worth? The price and size of the apartment in 20 Latin American and Portuguese cities” show?

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