Is there more than one apartment of 1, 2 or 3 rooms? Years of rent by size in 12 countries (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.

In 6 of 12 countries an apartment of 3 or more rooms needs more years of rent to be paid than one of 1 rooms; Colombia has the lowest ratio in 2 rooms (12.8 years) and Chile the highest (38.6). The less years, the more you pay the rent against the purchase price.

Abstract: We compare price and rental of 281,088 apartments by number of rooms in each country.

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

Summary

Years of rent by number of rooms and country

Medians per country in the majority currency of each operation, converted to dollars.

Frequently asked questions

Is it better to invest in a small or large apartment to rent? In 6 of 12 countries the 1 room needs less years of rent than the 3 or more.

How many years of rent is an apartment of 2 rooms in Colombia? 12.8 years in the national median.

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). Is there more than one apartment of 1, 2 or 3 rooms? Years of rent by size in 12 countries (October 2026). Aptology (aptologia.com). https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/comprar-o-alquilar-segun-habitaciones-por-pais-latinoamerica-2026. Data: datos.csv, CC BY license 4. 0.

Sources and data

• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23475768 (Zenodo)
• Original study (Spanish): ¿Rinde más un apartamento de 1, 2 o 3 habitaciones? Años de arriendo por tamaño en 12 países (octubre 2026)
• GitHub (CSV, PDF): https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/comprar-o-arrendar-segun-habitaciones-por-pais-latinoamerica-2026
• Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/datasets/aptologia/comprar-o-arrendar-segun-habitaciones-por-pais-latinoamerica-2026

More questions

• Is it better to invest in a small or large apartment to rent?
• How many years of rent is an apartment of 2 rooms in Colombia?
• What does the study “Is there more than one apartment of 1, 2 or 3 rooms? Years of rent by size in 12 countries” show?

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