Cartagena as a Rental Investment: What a Walled-City Home Actually Earns

Most buyers arrive in Cartagena for the house. They stay for the arithmetic. A restored colonial home inside the walls, a duplex above Bocagrande’s water, a loft in Getsemaní — each is first a pleasure and second a business, and the second question is almost always asked in the courtyard, quietly: what does it earn when we are not here? The honest answer depends less on the property than on three legal gates it must pass, and on which of the four Cartagenas it stands in.

The demand side: a city that fills its own calendar

Rental performance begins with arrivals, and Cartagena’s are no longer seasonal folklore. Rafael Núñez International moved 7,756,298 passengers in 2025 — a record, 245,437 more than the year before — with international traffic growing faster than domestic and roughly 1.75 million international passengers landing in the year. December alone carried more than 705,000 people. The national hotel association’s figures tell the same story from the other side of the ledger: Cartagena recorded the highest occupancy of Colombia’s major cities in the first quarter of 2025, comfortably above the national average. A rental thesis is only ever as good as the demand under it; here the demand is measured, published, and rising.

Where yield lives: the four Cartagenas

Investors talk about Cartagena as one market. It is four. The walled city — the centro histórico, UNESCO-inscribed since 1984 — holds the scarcest asset in the Americas’ Caribbean: a fixed number of colonial houses that can never be added to. It commands the highest nightly rates and the strongest resale narrative, and it asks the highest entry price. Getsemaní, just outside the walls, trades scarcity for energy: smaller footprints, a younger and more international guest, and an entry point that still allows a sensible ratio between price and nightly rate. Bocagrande and Castillogrande are the vertical city — sea-facing apartments and penthouses, reliable year-round demand, buildings with services and security, and a guest who wants a lift and a pool rather than a patio. And the island and peninsular addresses — Barú, Tierra Bomba, the beachfront north of the city — are a different business entirely: fewer, longer stays, higher operating complexity, exceptional photographs. Our reading of each is set out in the Cartagena neighbourhood guide, and the current inventory sits in the destination profile.

The first gate: the RNT

Before a single night is sold, a property let to tourists in Colombia must be registered in the Registro Nacional de Turismo. Registration is a prior and mandatory condition of operating a vivienda turística, not an administrative afterthought, and where the operator is not the owner, the owner’s express authorisation forms part of the file. It is inexpensive and it is quick. It is also the line that separates a professional rental asset from an informal one — and, increasingly, the line that determines whether a property can be advertised at all.

The second gate: the building’s own rulebook

This is the gate that catches foreign buyers. Colombian apartments and many walled-city conversions live under the horizontal-property regime, and each building’s reglamento de propiedad horizontal decides whether short-term letting is a permitted use of a private unit. Where it is not, the law does not look away: the administrator is required to report tourist accommodation offered in units that the building’s own rules do not authorise, or by operators without an active RNT registration. A Dutch buyer will recognise the logic of a VvE and its splitsingsreglement; a German buyer, the Teilungserklärung and the WEG; a French buyer, the règlement de copropriété. The instinct is correct, and so is the remedy: the rulebook is read before the offer, never after. We obtain and review it as a matter of course.

The third gate: the platforms

Colombia’s 2020 tourism law closed the informal route. Digital platforms are obliged not to publish — and to withdraw — listings from tourism providers without an active, valid RNT registration. In practice this means the compliance question and the marketing question are now the same question. A property that cannot register cannot be listed; a property that cannot be listed has no rental thesis, whatever its courtyard looks like. Our own view of how this market should be entered is set out in the guide to short-term rental investment in Colombia.

The cost of carrying it

The carrying costs of a Cartagena asset are light by international standards and should still be modelled honestly. The annual municipal property tax — the predial — runs from a fraction of a percent up to roughly 1% of cadastral value, and cadastral values typically sit below market. A unit in a building adds its monthly administración for security and shared services. A let property adds the things that actually protect the rate: professional management, housekeeping between stays, linen and maintenance in a salt-air climate, and insurance. The complete acquisition and ownership budget — closing at 3–5%, notarial and registration charges, annual carry — is laid out line by line in our budget article and in the cost and tax guide.

What actually rents at the top of the market

At the level we work in, the difference between a good year and an exceptional one is rarely the address alone. It is water — a plunge pool in the patio or a rooftop pool over the tiles — and it is the count of genuine en-suite bedrooms, because the premium Cartagena booking is a family or two couples travelling together, not a solo traveller. It is a restoration that kept the house’s original intelligence rather than flattening it, which is the subject of our note on colonial architecture. It is air conditioning that works in August, a kitchen that can host, and a roof terrace with a view of a bell tower. Assets of that description are the ones that hold their rate when the city is quiet, and they are the ones that resell fastest — which is the point at which yield and capital stop being separate arguments. Homes we currently represent of this kind include the walled-city estate, the Getsemaní colonial loft and the Los Morros beachfront residence.

The exit, planned at the entrance

A rental asset is bought twice: once from the seller, once from the buyer who takes it from you. Colombia treats the gain on property held for more than two years as an occasional gain, taxed at a flat 15% — and purchase funds brought in through the formal exchange market and declared as foreign investment with the central bank preserve the right to repatriate capital and gains through the same channel. Rental income is declared under Colombia’s ordinary rules, and a well-run property keeps the records that make that straightforward: an RNT number, invoices, a management report, a clean tax history. Buyers who intend to let should read why global capital returned to Cartagena before they model a single night.

Cartagena and Antioquia, held together

The clients who do this best rarely hold one asset. A Cartagena home carries the heritage scarcity and the international guest; a furnished apartment in Medellín, or a lakefront house at Guatapé, carries a different calendar, a different currency of demand and a milder operating burden. Held together, the two territories smooth what either would do alone. The full portfolio across both is in the Collection.

The Lux Haven view

Cartagena rewards owners who treat a rental property as a business with a beautiful front door: the registration in place, the building’s rules read before the offer, the management professional, the numbers modelled on published demand rather than on a good week in December. That is the only version of this market we will put a client into. To discuss a specific building, a specific street, or a specific set of numbers, begin a private conversation.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules vary by building and municipality and evolve over time; obtain counsel specific to your circumstances before committing.