Cartagena

Cartagena is a Caribbean port with a UNESCO-listed walled city attached to a modern beach strip, and those two halves behave like different markets. Inside the walls you are buying a restored colonial house or a converted apartment, usually with a heritage restriction on what you can change and an owners' community that is small and opinionated. Outside, in Bocagrande and Castillogrande, you are buying a tower: newer, easier to maintain, and far more liquid when you sell.

Heat and salt are the real variables here. It is hot and humid all year, so air conditioning runs constantly and electricity is a genuine monthly cost, not a rounding error. Salt air attacks metal, glass fittings and façades; a building that skips maintenance shows it within five years. Before you commit, ask for the administration fee, the last two years of extraordinary levies, and whether the façade has been treated. A cheap tower with a deferred maintenance backlog is not cheap.

The tourist calendar shapes rental income more than the property does. December to January, Easter and long weekends are close to full; September and October are thin. Anyone modelling occupancy on a flat annual figure has not run a season here. Short-term rental also depends on the building — several towers on the beach front have banned nightly stays outright, and the walled city has been the most restrictive of all.

Zones worth knowing: the Centro Histórico and Getsemaní for character, lower liquidity and the strictest rules; Bocagrande for the deepest inventory and the most predictable resale; Castillogrande for quieter, larger family units; Manga for local life at a much lower price per square metre; and the northern corridor toward La Boquilla, Manzanillo and Barú for newer beachfront projects where the trade-off is distance from the city and reliance on the developer's own amenities. Check beach access rights in writing — in Colombia the beach itself is public.