What more does it give to rent: apartment 1, 2 or 3 rooms? Profitability by size in Colombia (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 Colombia, buying for rent yields more in apartments of 3 or more rooms (8.1% gross annual) and less in those of 1 room (7.4%). In 2 rooms the profitability is 7.7%. The table shows the same calculation in large cities.
Abstract: We cross-rent and sell by m² of 184,425 apartments according to their number of rooms.
Updated: 18 October 2026 (data from 18 October 2026) · Next update: monthly.
Summary
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| 1 room | 7.4% |
| 2 rooms | 7.7% |
| 3 or more rooms | 8.1% |
Gross return by number of rooms
| Place | 1 room | 2 rooms | 3 or more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colombia | 7.4% | 7.7% | 8.1% |
| Bogotá | 7.6% | 7.2% | 7.7% |
| Medellin | 7.3% | 7.5% | 7.7% |
| Cali | 7.7% | 7.0% | 8.1% |
| Barranquilla | 9.3% | 8.3% | 8.8% |
| Cartagena | 5.9% | 6.3% | 7.2% |
| Envigado | 7.5% | 6.8% | 6.8% |
| Pereira | 6.7% | 7.1% | 7.3% |
| Santa Marta | 5.8% | 5.9% | 7.6% |
Gross profitability = medium rental per m² × 12 -mean selling price per m², in each group.
Frequently asked questions
Which apartment is most cost-effective for rent in Colombia? The 3 or more rooms, with 8.1% gross per year 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.
- Colombia: Prices in Colombian pesos, no currency conversion.
- 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). What more does it give to rent: apartment 1, 2 or 3 rooms? Profitability by size in Colombia (October 2026). Aptology (aptologia.com). https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/rentabilidad-del-alquiler-por-numero-de-habitaciones-colombia-2026. Data: datos.csv, CC BY license 4. 0.
Sources and data
- DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23471301 (Zenodo)
- Original study (Spanish): ¿Qué rinde más para arrendar: apartamento de 1, 2 o 3 habitaciones? Rentabilidad por tamaño en Colombia (octubre 2026)
- GitHub (CSV, PDF): https://github.com/elbroker/aptologia-datos/tree/main/estudios/rentabilidad-del-arriendo-por-numero-de-habitaciones-colombia-2026
- Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/datasets/aptologia/rentabilidad-del-arriendo-por-numero-de-habitaciones-colombia-2026