For the right American income structure, the math is hard to ignore.

Colombia runs on a quiet contradiction. The country taxes residents on worldwide income at up to 39 percent, has no tax treaty with the United States, and just elected a right-leaning president who campaigned on military crackdowns and mass deportations. And yet, in 2026, it is one of the most tax-efficient places on earth for an American with the right income structure. Not because of a loophole. Not because of some offshore shell game. Because of a single provision in the Colombian tax code, confirmed by DIAN Concepto 6606 of 2024 [1] and codified in Law 2381 of 2024 [2], Article 84: foreign pensions are exempt from Colombian income tax up to 1,000 UVT per month.

That exemption, combined with the US foreign earned income exclusion, can legally reduce your federal income tax to zero while living in Medellin, Bogota, or the Coffee Triangle. Rent runs $500 to $2,000 in most cities depending on the neighborhood. A full lunch costs $4. Private health insurance costs less than your US copay. The math is not subtle. But the execution has teeth, and the people who get burned are the ones who skip the details. This piece walks through what the structure actually looks like, what it costs to live in the places people actually move to, and what changes on August 7 when a new administration takes power.

Two things are true at the same time. The United States taxes by citizenship, not residency. If you hold a US passport, you file a US return every year for the rest of your life, no matter where you live. Only one other country does this, Eritrea, and they do not enforce it like the IRS does.

But the US also gives Americans abroad one of the most powerful legal tax tools available: the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. For 2026, you can exclude up to $132,900 per qualifying person from US income tax, according to IRS Publication 54 [3]. Married couple, double it. Qualify through either the Physical Presence Test, 330 full days outside the US in any 12-month period, or the Bona Fide Residence Test, and earned income below that threshold can legally owe zero to the IRS.

Now here is where Colombia changes the equation. Colombia’s tax system has a progressive scale from 0 to 39 percent. The first roughly $14,000 of income is taxed at zero. But Colombia also exempts foreign pension income up to 1,000 UVT per month. According to DIAN, Colombia’s tax authority, one UVT in 2026 equals 52,374 Colombian pesos. One thousand UVT is roughly 52 million pesos per month, or about $15,000 at current exchange rates. Per month, not per year. This is confirmed in the DIAN normograma, specifically Concepto 6606 of September 2024 and Concepto 7359 of 2024 [4], which explicitly states: “Todas las pensiones, incluyendo las que perciban los residentes colombianos provenientes del exterior, estaran exentas del impuesto sobre la renta”: all pensions, including those received by Colombian residents from abroad, are exempt from income tax.

That means a retiree with $30,000 per year in foreign pension income, Social Security, a private pension, an annuity, sees effectively zero Colombian tax on that money. The exemption swallows the entire amount and then some. A couple with $200,000 in combined pension income would still shelter roughly $180,000 of it before the first peso of Colombian tax hits.

The pension label is the key. Earned income, W-2 wages, freelance income, those do not get the 1,000 UVT shield. They get taxed on the progressive scale. A remote worker earning $80,000 as a contractor would owe roughly $7,000 to $9,000 in Colombian tax after the tax-free band. Still less than US self-employment tax alone, but not zero. The structure determines the outcome.

For Americans, the US-Colombia no-treaty situation creates a specific playbook. Since there is no tax treaty between the two countries, Americans lean on the FEIE for earned income and the Foreign Tax Credit for investment income and anything above the FEIE cap. The FTC offsets US tax with Colombian tax already paid, dollar for dollar. You cannot use both the FEIE and the FTC on the same dollar of income, but you can apply the FEIE to earned income below the cap and the FTC to passive income like dividends, interest, and rental earnings. Self-employment tax, 15.3 percent for Social Security and Medicare, still applies on US-source self-employment income even when the income itself is excluded, a catch that surprises people who structure as independent contractors.

And then there is the FBAR, the Foreign Bank Account Report, which is not a tax at all but can carry penalties larger than the tax you never owed. If your combined non-US accounts cross $10,000 at any point, for any single day, you must report them to FinCEN, not the IRS. The non-willful penalty, you genuinely did not know, maxes at roughly $16,500 per year. The willful penalty is the greater of roughly $165,000 or 50 percent of the account balance, per account, per year. That $10,000 threshold was set in 1970 and has never been indexed for inflation. If it had been, it would sit somewhere north of $80,000 today. The gap between those two numbers is where normal people with normal savings get caught.

Here is how the structure functions, based on Colombian tax law and the experience of cross-border professionals who set this up for clients. The usual caveat applies: this is not tax advice. You need a cross-border professional who knows your specific situation.

Step one: become a Colombian tax resident. Colombia’s tax residency trigger is 183 days in any rolling 365-day window. Not the calendar year. Any 365-day window counting backward from today. This is confirmed by Colombia’s National Institute of Public Accountants (INCP [5]) and by Tributi [6], a Colombian tax education platform. Cross that line and Colombia can tax your worldwide income, pension, dividends, your rental property back in Florida, everything. Stay under 183 days and you are a tourist for tax purposes. Colombia only taxes Colombian-source income, and most expats have none.

Step two: your income must arrive labeled as a foreign pension. This is the part where people make expensive mistakes. The Colombian exemption, per DIAN Concepto 6606 and Law 2381 of 2024, applies to foreign pensions from recognized providers: Social Security, defined-benefit pensions from former employers, and qualifying annuity payments from insurance companies. What does not qualify: distributions from an LLC, wages from an S-Corp, standard IRA or 401(k) withdrawals, or investment income from a brokerage account. Colombia’s tax code says pension. It does not say retirement account withdrawal. The difference has been litigated in Colombian tax rulings, and the DIAN has been clear: only lifetime benefit payments from a recognized pension or annuity provider qualify.

Step three: the monthly math. Once your income is classified as a foreign pension, Colombia exempts the first 1,000 UVT per month, about $15,000 at current rates, before calculating tax. The exemption is calculated per payment, per month, not annually, as confirmed by DIAN Concepto 6606. You cannot front-load a year’s worth of pension into a few months and expect the full exemption to apply. Monthly consistency matters. For most retirees on Social Security plus a private pension, this wipes out the Colombian tax bill entirely. On the American side, the FEIE handles earned income below the cap and the FTC handles anything above or passive. The net effect: the US return shows little to no federal income tax owed, and the Colombian return shows the pension exemption absorbing the taxable base.

What cross-border professionals actually recommend for structuring. The most common path for Americans who want to optimize for the Colombian pension exemption is not an LLC or corporate entity. It is converting savings into a qualifying income stream before becoming a Colombian tax resident. Here are the approaches that immigration and tax attorneys in Medellin and Bogota, including firms like CM Legal [7] and ExpatGroup [8], consistently describe:

Social Security is the simplest route. It is automatically recognized as a foreign pension by the DIAN. The SSA-1099 form, apostilled and translated, serves as proof.

Defined-benefit pensions from former employers, CalPERS, TIAA, military pensions, qualify the same way. The key document is a benefits verification letter stating the monthly amount, the recipient name, and that the benefit is for life.

Qualifying annuities are the bridge for people who do not have a traditional pension but do have savings. Purchasing an immediate annuity from a US insurance company that converts a lump sum into a guaranteed lifetime monthly payment can satisfy the Colombian definition of a pension. The annuity contract must specify lifetime payments. A fixed-period or fixed-amount annuity does not qualify because Colombia requires the “for life” characteristic.

What does not work, and what professionals warn against: forming a US LLC and paying yourself a salary labeled as a pension, routing 401(k) or IRA distributions through a corporation, or using an offshore trust to reclassify investment income as pension income. The DIAN treats these as business income or investment returns, not exempt pensions. Several expats have learned this the hard way during Colombian tax audits.

The early retiree problem is real. If you are 45 and funding your life from a brokerage account, those dividends and capital gains are investment income, not pension income. Colombia taxes them on the progressive scale. The FEIE does not cover passive income, only earned income. You would rely on the Foreign Tax Credit to avoid double taxation, but you would still owe Colombian tax on the gains. The retiree wins on tax efficiency. The early retiree living off investments has a different, more expensive math problem.

A concrete example. An American retiree with $3,500 per month in Social Security and a private pension moves to Medellin. Under Colombian rules, $3,500 is well below the 1,000 UVT monthly threshold, about $15,000. Colombian tax on that pension: zero. On the US side, Social Security may be partially taxable depending on total income, and the private pension distributions follow the same US tax rules they always would. But the Colombian obligation is effectively null. Total monthly cost of living in a comfortable Medellin apartment, with private health insurance, groceries, and dining out: roughly $2,200 to $2,800 in Poblado or $1,400 to $1,800 in Laureles. In most US cities, rent alone exceeds that.

Colombia is not one real estate market. It is five or six distinct ones, each with its own price trajectory, expat density, and trade-offs. The numbers below are based on live July 2026 listings from Fincaraiz, Colombia’s largest real estate portal, supplemented by local brokerage reports. Prices are in USD at an exchange rate of roughly 4,000 Colombian pesos to the dollar and reflect furnished rentals in neighborhoods where expats actually live.

Medellin is the magnet. El Poblado, the neighborhood every expat has heard of, averages COP 8.1 million per month across all apartment types, about $2,000, according to Fincaraiz data. A furnished one-bedroom in Poblado runs $1,000 to $1,500 per month. Two-bedrooms range from $1,600 to $2,500, with luxury units above COP 10 million, roughly $2,500 and up. Poblado’s premium micro-neighborhoods, Provenza, Manila, Los Balsos, carry a 15 to 25 percent markup over the baseline. A comfortable single lifestyle in Poblado, rent, utilities, food, transport, private health insurance, runs $2,000 to $2,800 per month. This is no longer the bargain it was in 2019. Medellin rents grew 6 to 8 percent year over year according to Colombia Move [10], slower than the double-digit surge of 2023 to 2024, but the base is higher now, and the trend is still up.

Laureles, the next neighborhood over, is where the value-conscious expat goes. Fincaraiz shows two-bedroom apartments from COP 2.5 million to COP 4.8 million, about $600 to $1,200. A three-bedroom in a building with security runs COP 4 million to COP 5.8 million, roughly $1,000 to $1,450. Total monthly cost for a comfortable single lifestyle in Laureles, rent included, runs $1,200 to $1,800. You trade Poblado’s restaurant density and English-speaking bubble for a more Colombian neighborhood that is still safe, still walkable, and substantially cheaper. Envigado and Sabaneta, further south, offer larger units for families at similar or slightly lower prices, but the commute to Poblado’s social center adds 20 to 30 minutes.

Bogota is bigger, colder, and more stratified. Rosales, the high-end district tucked into the eastern hills, averages a striking COP 13.1 million per month on Fincaraiz, about $3,270. Two-bedroom apartments in Rosales list from COP 6.5 million to COP 10.9 million, roughly $1,600 to $2,700. At the top end, a penthouse with 480 square meters lists for COP 23 million, nearly $5,800. This is not a value play. It is the diplomatic and executive tier, and it is priced accordingly. Total monthly cost in Rosales runs $2,500 to $4,000 plus. Chapinero Alto, the next neighborhood down the hill, averages COP 3.7 million, about $925, with one-bedrooms from $450 to $925 and comfortable two-bedrooms from $800 to $1,200. This is where young professionals and digital nomads cluster. Chia, a satellite town about 45 minutes north, gives you a house with a yard for what a Chapinero apartment costs, at the expense of a commute. Ciencuadras [11], Colombia’s largest real estate portal, projects 15 to 25 percent appreciation along Bogota’s new Metro corridor over the medium term, and nearby Sabana towns like Cajica and Zipaquira are catching overflow demand as the city expands north.

The Coffee Triangle, Manizales, Pereira, Armenia, is where the value still lives. A comfortable apartment in Manizales runs $500 to $800 per month. The weather is springlike, the landscape is dramatic, and the expat footprint is small enough that prices have not been bid up by foreign demand. But that is changing. Spain’s CEOE [12] business confederation recently flagged the Eje Cafetero as having “great potential for Spanish investment,” and ProColombia, the government’s investment promotion agency, has been actively pitching the region to foreign buyers. The price-to-income ratio here, roughly 12 to 15 according to The Latin Investor [9], compares favorably to Medellin’s 18 and Bogota’s 22. In plain terms: your money buys more house here than in any tier-one Colombian city. Total monthly cost in the Coffee Triangle runs $900 to $1,400 for a comfortable lifestyle.

Bucaramanga, further northeast, sits in a similar price band, $500 to $800 for a good apartment, and is attracting attention for reasons that have nothing to do with expat hype. Colombian brokerage Ruiz Perea [13] points to low market volatility, consistent appreciation year over year, and rental demand driven by a large student and professional population. New road infrastructure is improving connectivity to its metro area. The city ranks high on quality-of-life metrics and its climate, springlike and stable, draws Colombian families from hotter coastal cities. Total monthly cost runs $900 to $1,400. The trade-off for both the Coffee Triangle and Bucaramanga: less English spoken, fewer expat-oriented services, and further from an international airport. For some buyers, that is the point.

Cali is a different proposition. Fincaraiz shows an average rent of COP 3 million across the city, about $750, but the range is wide. A decent two-bedroom in a middle-class neighborhood runs $300 to $600. A nicer apartment in the western hills, Bellavista or Cristales, runs $1,000 to $1,750. Total monthly cost for a comfortable single lifestyle runs $800 to $1,400 in normal areas and $1,500 to $2,500 in the premium western zone. Cali is hot, salsa is the cultural center of gravity, and the city has a rougher reputation than Medellin or Bogota. The real estate is the cheapest of any major Colombian city and the upside is real if security improves under the new administration. For now, it is a speculative bet with high return potential and higher risk.

The Caribbean coast splits into three lanes. Cartagena is the postcard, priced like a tourist destination because it is one. A decent apartment runs $1,000 to $2,500 depending on proximity to the Old City. Santa Marta, an hour east, runs $700 to $1,800 and gives you beach access without the full Cartagena premium, though infrastructure is patchier. Barranquilla, the least touristed of the three, runs $500 to $1,200 for a comfortable apartment and is a functioning city with a Carnival culture, an airport, and almost no expat premium baked into prices. If you want the Caribbean and do not need the Instagram backdrop, Barranquilla and Santa Marta are where the numbers work better than Cartagena.

Imported goods are the silent budget killer across all of these cities. A bottle of wine that costs $12 in the US runs $25 to $35 in Colombia. Cheese, electronics, cars, anything that crossed a border, carries a premium. The local economy is genuinely cheap. The imported economy is not. Expats who live like Colombians, eating at local restaurants, shopping at markets, using public transit, see their money stretch dramatically. Expats who import their US lifestyle see the savings erode one Amazon shipment at a time.

The pension exemption is elegant for retirees. Social Security lands in your account, the DIAN sees a pension, you owe nothing. But what about the 45-year-old who owns a business generating real cash flow and wants to move to Colombia before retirement age? This person has income but no pension. The business is reinvesting profits. There is no SSA-1099. There is no employer pension letter. And the DIAN does not care about your LLC’s distributions.

The question cross-border tax attorneys in Medellin and Bogota hear most often is some version of: “I have a business. I want to move. How do I create pension income that Colombia recognizes?” The answer is not simple, but there are legal paths. None of them involve calling your LLC distribution a pension. All of them require setup before becoming a Colombian tax resident.

Path one: the qualifying annuity. This is the most straightforward bridge for someone with savings but no formal pension. You take a lump sum, from business sale proceeds, accumulated savings, or a rolled-over retirement account, and purchase an immediate annuity from a US insurance company. The annuity contract must specify lifetime monthly payments. A fixed-period annuity of 10 or 20 years does not satisfy Colombia’s “for life” requirement under Law 2381 of 2024 and DIAN Concepto 6606. A joint-life annuity covering a spouse qualifies. The key is the word lifetime in the contract. Colombian tax professionals, including CM Legal in Medellin, have confirmed that properly structured lifetime annuities from foreign insurers satisfy the exemption criteria. The US tax treatment of annuity payments follows normal rules, and the Colombian side, with the 1,000 UVT monthly shield, can be zero for most practical payment amounts.

Path two: the defined benefit plan. Business owners have an option that employees do not. Before leaving the US, you can establish a defined benefit pension plan for your own business. These plans, sometimes called cash balance plans, allow business owners to contribute and deduct far more than a 401(k), often $100,000 to $300,000 per year depending on age and income. The contributions reduce current US taxable income. When you begin taking distributions, the payments come from a formal pension plan with documentation stating the monthly benefit amount and lifetime nature. This is precisely the kind of documentation the DIAN recognizes. The plan must be set up and funded before you become a Colombian tax resident. A cross-border tax attorney and a US pension actuary are both required. The cost to establish and administer a defined benefit plan runs $2,000 to $3,000 per year, which is noise compared to the tax savings.

Path three: 72(t) substantially equal periodic payments. Under IRS rule 72(t), you can take early withdrawals from an IRA or 401(k) without the 10 percent penalty if the payments are structured as a series of substantially equal periodic payments, SEPP, calculated over your life expectancy. These payments must continue for five years or until age 59 and a half, whichever is longer. The IRS treats them as early retirement distributions. Whether the DIAN treats them as pension income is a gray area that depends on how the payments are documented. Some Colombian tax professionals argue that SEPP payments from a qualified US retirement plan, presented with the IRS 72(t) calculation and the plan’s benefit verification, satisfy the spirit of the pension exemption. Others are more conservative and recommend using SEPP only after a formal annuity or defined benefit plan is in place. This is not settled law. Anyone pursuing this path needs a Colombian tax attorney who has successfully defended it in a DIAN review, not just someone who thinks it should work.

What does not work, no matter how creative the structure. Taking loans against your retirement account and calling the proceeds non-taxable, Colombia treats loan proceeds from retirement accounts as ordinary income, not exempt pension income. The DIAN does not distinguish between a distribution and a loan the way the IRS does. Forming an LLC and paying yourself a salary labeled as pension, the DIAN sees business income, not pension. Contributing to a Colombian voluntary pension fund, an AFC, as an American, the PFIC rules make this unattractive. The US taxes the growth annually even if you never withdraw, and the Colombian tax benefit does not offset the US compliance headache. The Colombian AFC is a tool for Colombian citizens, not for Americans trying to optimize cross-border.

The timing rule that ties it all together. Every strategy above has one thing in common: it must be executed before you cross the 183-day threshold and become a Colombian tax resident. Once you are a resident, income you bring into Colombia is scrutinized. Income you already converted into a pension before residency simply arrives as what it is, a pension. The planning window is the 12 to 18 months before you move. Use it.

Again: this is not tax advice. These are concepts that cross-border professionals work with. The structures described require a US tax attorney, a Colombian tax attorney, and in the case of defined benefit plans, a pension actuary. The cost of getting these professionals in a room together is a fraction of what getting the structure wrong costs.

Colombia’s visa system rewards three things: remote income, passive income, and capital. All requirements below are sourced from Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Cancilleria [14]) and Colombian immigration law firms.

The Digital Nomad Visa, Type V, requires three times the minimum monthly salary, COP 5,252,715 in 2026, about $1,400 per month, proven through three months of bank statements. It is valid for up to two years and does not lead directly to residency. You must prove the income comes from foreign sources, no Colombian clients. Health insurance covering Colombia for the full visa period is mandatory. Processing runs $50 to $200. It is straightforward on paper and slower in practice. Colombian bureaucracy rewards patience and Spanish fluency.

The Retirement Visa, Pensionado, requires proof of a lifetime pension of at least three times minimum wage, same threshold as the digital nomad visa, roughly $1,400 per month. The pension must be lifetime. A temporary annuity does not qualify. This is the preferred path for anyone old enough to claim Social Security or a defined-benefit pension, and according to Medellin Law Firm [15], it is the second most popular visa category among Americans.

The Investor Visa requires a real estate investment of roughly 100 times the minimum monthly salary, about COP 650 to 700 million, roughly $160,000 to $175,000. Immigration lawyers, including CM Legal in Medellin, consistently advise exceeding the minimum by 50 percent, closer to $250,000, because the threshold adjusts annually with inflation and a renewal that falls below the updated minimum gets rejected. The property must be held for five years to convert to permanent residency. The visa does not require you to live in the property. You can rent it out.

The Rentista Visa, for people with foreign passive income but no formal pension, requires roughly $3,000 per month in provable foreign income. This is the fallback for early retirees living off investment income, rental income, or business distributions. It is more documentation-heavy than the pensionado but accessible to anyone with a steady foreign income stream.

The common thread across all of these is documentation. Colombia wants apostilled birth certificates, apostilled criminal background checks from your home country, translated and notarized documents, proof of health insurance, and patience. The process is not opaque. It is slow. People who try to do it themselves in six weeks get frustrated. People who hire a local immigration lawyer and budget three to six months have a smoother ride.

One more item that does not show up on any visa checklist: the cedula, Colombia’s national ID card. Once you have a visa, you register for a cedula de extranjeria. That card unlocks everything, bank accounts, phone contracts, apartment leases, health insurance enrollment. Without it, you are renting Airbnbs and paying tourist prices. The cedula process adds another four to eight weeks after visa approval.

On August 7, 2026, Abelardo de la Espriella takes office. He defeated the leftist candidate Ivan Cepeda by less than one percentage point in a runoff, a margin thin enough that the country is still absorbing the result. BBC [16] and Al Jazeera [17] covered the result extensively.

De la Espriella ran as a right-leaning millionaire lawyer with a business empire spanning law, real estate, fashion, and spirits, and with explicit backing from Donald Trump. His platform is a hard pivot from the outgoing Gustavo Petro administration. The headliners: a 90-day military crackdown on armed groups and cartels modeled on Bukele’s playbook in El Salvador, mega-prison construction, a 40 percent downsizing of the state, lower corporate and individual tax rates, and the revival of Colombia’s oil and gas sector. He has proposed allowing US military bases on Colombian soil and joining the Shield of the Americas coalition. The diplomatic posture toward Washington is the warmest in a generation.

For expats and foreign investors, the implications cut both ways. The pro-business stance, lower taxes, energy deregulation, special economic zones, should strengthen the peso and attract capital. The hardline security posture, if it works, would reduce the violent crime that keeps some investors away from cities like Cali and parts of Bogota. Colombia’s stock market and bond spreads have already moved favorably on the result. Notably, the cautious economic forecasts from the IMF [18], 2.3 percent GDP growth, and BBVA [19], 1.8 percent for 2027, were published before the June runoff. They do not price in a pro-business administration. Allianz Trade [20], the most optimistic forecaster pre-election, already had Colombia at 2.8 percent for 2026 accelerating to 3.5 percent in 2027. The real estate market reflects the optimism that the macro forecasts have not yet caught up to: new home sales rose 38 percent in the first half of 2025, and Ciencuadras projects 5 to 8 percent national housing appreciation in 2026 with specific corridors, Bogota’s Metro zone, the Sabana towns, Medellin’s premium micro-markets, outperforming.

The risks are not imaginary. De la Espriella’s security doctrine echoes the hardline tactics of the Uribe era, which produced dramatic security gains and a legacy of human rights abuses that are still being litigated. A militarized crackdown that goes too far could trigger protests, instability, or international sanctions. His margin was razor-thin, his opposition is organized, and Colombian politics does not reward overreach quietly. The administration has also signaled a stricter stance on immigration, which could tighten visa processing or add friction for residency applicants.

Our base case: short-term turbulence around the transition, protesters, currency swings, political theater, followed by a pro-business tailwind that benefits property owners and income earners. Medellin and Bogota, already on an uptrend, should continue to appreciate. Cali remains highly speculative but has the most upside if security improves. The Caribbean coast, particularly Barranquilla and Santa Marta, benefits from infrastructure investment pledges and a lower starting baseline. The Coffee Triangle stays what it already is: stable, undervalued, and largely indifferent to who sits in the Casa de Narino.

One variable we are watching closely: whether De la Espriella’s tax reform touches the pension exemption. He campaigned on lower taxes broadly, and the exemption is popular with retirees, a constituency he courted. But any tax reform creates uncertainty until the bill text is public. The exemption is not in the constitution. It is in the tax code, and tax codes get rewritten.

Colombia in mid-2026 is a specific kind of opportunity. It is not the cheapest country in Latin America. It is not the easiest. But for an American with pension income and a tolerance for bureaucracy, the tax math is difficult to beat elsewhere. The combination of the US foreign earned income exclusion, up to $132,900 per person, and Colombia’s foreign pension exemption, up to roughly $15,000 per month, creates a corridor where federal income tax can legally go to zero while the cost of living runs at 40 to 60 percent of US equivalents.

The people who do this well structure their income as a genuine pension or qualifying annuity, hire a local accountant before they arrive, file the FBAR on time, learn enough Spanish to handle a notary, and pick their city based on what they actually value rather than what Instagram shows. The people who get burned try to route LLC distributions through a corporate wrapper and call it a pension, assume the rules do not apply to them, skip the reporting requirements, and discover that FinCEN penalties do not care whether you owed tax.

The cities worth watching are Medellin and Bogota for appreciation, the Coffee Triangle and Bucaramanga for value, Cali for high speculation if the security situation improves, and Barranquilla for a Caribbean play that has not yet been bid up by expat demand. On August 7, the country gets a new president and a new direction. The cautious macro forecasts, IMF at 2.3 percent, BBVA at 1.8 percent for 2027, are pre-election numbers. The real estate market, new home sales up 38 percent, 5 to 8 percent projected appreciation, is already pricing in something better. The trend was already up. The politics are noisy, but the fundamentals are not complicated.