Foreign buyers · Colombia
Buying here is not hard. It is just undocumented.
That is not a reason to stay away. It is a reason to know what replaces each one before you wire anything. This site explains the process the way someone who lives here would explain it to a friend — and then introduces you to a broker who has actually closed with foreigners.
Start a file
Tell us what you're after. One person reads these — usually within a day.
The binding pre-contract. Deposits, penalties and deadlines are set here, and this is where most bad deals are actually lost.
The public deed, signed at a notaría. The value written on it drives your tax, your visa eligibility and your future capital gain.
Filed at the Oficina de Registro. Until this is done, the deed is signed but the property is not yet legally yours.
Your folio number. From here on, one document shows every lien, transfer and dispute the property has ever had.
What's missing, and what replaces it
Three safeguards you don't have here.
Understanding these three gaps is most of what separates a foreign buyer who does fine from one who gets hurt.
Nobody knows the real price
There is no public record of what anything sold for. Asking prices float free of reality, and the same unit is often listed by three agents at three prices. Without comparable-sale knowledge you are negotiating blind — which is exactly how the foreigner premium survives.
Nobody indemnifies a bad title
There is no policy to buy and no insurer to sue. What replaces it is the estudio de títulos: a lawyer reading the certificado de tradición y libertad back through the ownership chain, looking for liens, embargoes and spousal-consent defects. It is the only shield there is.
Anyone can call themselves an agent
Colombia does not license real estate agents. No exam, no register, no body to complain to. Track record and references are the entire verification method, which is why the introduction you get matters more here than it would at home.
What we do, plainly
We make one introduction and we tell you the truth.
What you get
- An introduction to a broker who has closed with foreign buyers before, in the city and price band you're actually shopping in.
- A straight read on your plan before you commit — including when the honest answer is that your budget doesn't reach what you're describing.
- The questions to ask at each stage, so you can tell whether the professionals around you are doing their jobs.
What we don't do
- We are not agents. We don't list, show, or represent you in a negotiation. The broker does that.
- We are not lawyers. We'll tell you what an estudio de títulos should cover and what a thorough one costs. You hire your own lawyer, and it should be one with no relationship to the seller.
- We don't hold your money. Ever, at any stage, for any reason. Anyone in this market who offers to is telling you something important about themselves.
If your situation is one where we're not useful — you already have a broker you trust, or you're buying somewhere we don't know — we'll say so rather than pass you to someone at random.
Questions we get weekly
The honest answers.
Budget roughly 1.6–2.2% of the deed value for the buyer's side in a normal Medellín purchase: registration tax and boleta fiscal at about 1.67% combined, plus your half of the notarial fees. The seller carries retención and usually the bigger share of the notaría by custom, though every line of that is negotiable and custom is not law. Add legal fees for the estudio de títulos and the 4x1000 bank levy that catches almost everyone by surprise. Full breakdown here.
Usually not on terms you'd want. Colombian banks cap foreign buyers around 70% loan-to-value and rates have been running in the low-to-mid teens, which is a different universe from a US mortgage. Non-residents face more friction than residents, and several banks quietly decline foreigners regardless of what the branch tells you. In practice most foreign buyers pay cash, and the realistic middle ground is a developer payment plan on pre-construction. Anyone promising you an easy "international mortgage" is selling something.
It carries real risk, and the fiducia is narrower protection than people assume. A fiducia holds your payments in escrow until the project hits its trigger conditions — that protects you against the developer spending your money before breaking ground. It does not protect you against delivery running two years late, against the finished unit being worth less than you committed to, or against a developer who technically performs but builds badly. Vet the developer's completed projects, not their renders.
No, but the paperwork gets heavier. You can buy through a power of attorney — drafted correctly, apostilled or executed at a Colombian consulate. The hard rule: your POA should never be held by anyone on the seller's side of the table. Sequencing also matters, because the money has to enter through the formal channel and be registered before certain steps, and some of those steps can't be fixed after the fact.
Owning property does not by itself trigger tax residency. Presence does — 183 days inside any rolling 365-day window. That's a threshold you can cross by accident if you're splitting time. If you're a US citizen you're filing at home regardless, so the question is how the two systems interact, and that's a conversation for a cross-border accountant before you buy, not after.
It can. The investor route is indexed to the minimum wage, which moves every January, and the 2026 figures put the real-estate threshold materially higher than most English-language sites still claim. The number that counts is the value on your deed — not what you actually paid — which is why under-declaring the escritura to save on tax can quietly destroy your eligibility. Current thresholds and a calculator here.
Go deeper
Where to read more.
This site covers the country-level process. These go further on the parts you'll need next.
Next step
Tell us what you're trying to do.
Whether that's a firm plan with a wire ready or a half-formed idea you're testing. Either is a normal first message, and we answer both the same way.