How a furnished El Poblado apartment delivered a visa, a home, and a strong return — and what the numbers really say once you separate the lifestyle from the mathLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
The acquisition: 25 apartments, a lost wire, and a set of keys
The search was not quick, and I showed Devin almost all of those apartments myself. We walked through at least 25 units, and made several offers that were very close but ultimately fell apart. A couple flaky sellers of some gorgeous places lead to some serious disapointement. However, we finally closed on a gorgeous place on the 27th floor of Urbanizacion Saint Marteen. The driving motivation for Devin’s property search was Colombia’s investor visa, which requires a qualifying real-estate investment; Devin has held and maintained that visa ever since.
Getting the money into Colombia was, frankly, harder than finding the apartment. At one point Bancolombia effectively lost track of Devin’s incoming wire, and I had to go with him to the main Bancolombia branch in Industriales several times to trace it before we could complete the purchase. It was a difficult, frustrating stretch — but also a satisfying one, after we solved it together. When the wire finally cleared and Devin got his keys in April 2021, it was an emotional moment for both of us. We have stayed close friends ever since. None of that appears in the return figures, but it is the real cost of entry that most ROI tables quietly omit: time, uncertainty, and persistence.
At close, Devin paid COP 19,500,000 in buyer closing costs — notary only, no buyer’s commission — bringing his all-in entry cost to COP 994,500,000.
The investment at a glance
The table below summarizes the five-year ROI of our client Devin’s Medellín real estate investment, including acquisition costs, resale proceeds, rental income, and total cash profit.
Two returns in one: capital gain plus rent
The headline gain is the resale. The COP 1,520,000,000 sale price, less COP 65,200,000 in seller closing costs (notary plus the 3% sales commission), nets COP 1,454,800,000. Against the COP 994,500,000 all-in cost, that is a net capital gain of COP 460,300,000 (≈ USD 139,300) — about +46% on the property over the hold, or roughly 7.5% per year, before a single peso of rent.
The second engine was rent. Devin lived in the apartment for the first 18 months, then rented it for the remaining 45 months at about 95% occupancy whenever it was available — helped enormously by one 18-month straight lease, and then supplemented by month-to-month Airbnb stays. At an average rent of COP 13,000,000/month (≈ USD 3,300), the unit generated COP 555,750,000 in gross rent across roughly 42.75 occupied months.
Where the COP 809.7M profit came from (net capital gain plus net rental income). Capital gain and rental income contributed almost equally — a balanced “live-and-rent” hold, not a speculation play. The lifestyle dividend is shown for reference and is deliberately excluded from ROI caluclations
What it cost to run
Operating costs were modest and predictable. Crucially, Devin spent almost nothing on renovations — the furniture that came with the apartment held up across all five years and we’re negotiated as part of a fully-furnished sale price. The only surprises were minor: a fridge repair and a washing-machine repair and some other routine handyman stuff over the years. The recurring costs were administración (HOA), property tax (predial), utilities (EPM), internet, and the property manager’s fee.
Administración and predial escalated each year by Colombia’s actual IPC inflation (5.62% in 2021, 13.12% in 2022, 9.28% in 2023, 5.20% in 2024, ~5.2% in 2025). The owner is assumed to cover admin, utilities and internet throughout — a conservative treatment that lowers reported net income.
Net operating cash flow by year (rent minus all operating costs, before the sale). Year 1 is negative — Devin lived there, so it earned no rent while still incurring costs. From Year 3 on, the unit threw off COP 100M+ a year. Year 6 covers only Apr–Jun 2026 and excludes sale proceeds.
Rental income, deconstructed (full hold)
The following table breaks down the property’s rental income over the full holding period, net of key operating expenses such as property management, administración (HOA), property tax (predial), utilities (EPM), and internet. By separating gross rent from recurring ownership costs, it shows the true net rental income generated by the apartment in this case study.
That net rental stream — roughly COP 100M a year at full occupancy — was, by itself, enough for Devin to live on in Medellin without working at all. The apartment didn’t just appreciate; it replaced an income.
The hard question: how do you value the 18 months he lived there?
This is where most investment write-ups quietly cheat. For 18 months the apartment earned no rent, because Devin was living in it. You can treat that two ways, and the honest thing is to show both rather than bury the choice.
In the cash ROI above, those 18 months count as zero income — a real opportunity cost. That is the conservative, defensible number: the 81% total cash return and the 11.2% IRR already absorb the “penalty” of not renting it out for a year and a half.
But zero is the wrong figure for the value he received. Economists treat owner-occupied housing as producing imputed rent — the rent you’d otherwise pay to live somewhere comparable. For a furnished Poblado apartment of this caliber, that’s the same ~COP 13,000,000/month it commanded on the open market:
There is a second piece of the lifestyle that no spreadsheet will ever capture, and I saw it firsthand. Between the month-to-month Airbnb bookings there were often small gaps — a week here, five days there, etc — and Devin always took advantage of them. He’d move back in, bring friends over, host dinners on the terrace, put people up who were visiting Medellín. Those weeks weren’t vacancy to him; they were part of the lifestyle benefit that isn’t captured in ROI. He owned a beautiful place in El Poblado and used every window it gave him. You cannot put a peso figure on that, and I won’t pretend to — but it was real, and it was a meaningful part of why this investment felt even better than the numbers say.
So the right way to read the personal-use period is not as a drag on returns but as essentially free premium housing, plus the enjoyment of it, on top of an investment that still returned 11.2% a year on cash alone. Add the visa — substantial value of its own — and those 18 months look less like a cost and more like a third payout. I deliberately do not fold the COP 234M of imputed rent into the ROI headline, because imputed rent is value received, not cash in the bank; but ignoring it entirely would understate what the apartment actually did for him.
Pesos versus dollars: the currency story
Because Devin’s capital is dollar-denominated, the exchange rate matters as much as the peso price. Here the timing was kind in a way that’s easy to miss. The peso he bought at (≈ 3,602/USD in April 2021) was almost exactly where it sat when we sold (≈ 3,502/USD in June 2026) — it actually strengthened slightly, nudging his USD return (82.9%) marginally above his COP return (81.4%).
The bottom line
By any honest measure, this was an excellent investment. On cash alone — capital gain plus rent, with the personal-use period scored as zero income and a conservative cost treatment — it returned about 81% over 5.25 years, an 11.2% IRR. That return came with three things a pure financial asset can’t offer: a residency visa, a year and a half of free premium housing he genuinely enjoyed, and a rental income large enough to live on. The intangibles aren’t padding the numbers; they sit on top of a return that already stands on its own.
The realistic asterisks are worth stating plainly: the figures are pre-tax (Colombian ganancia ocasional on the gain, and tax on rental income, would reduce the net – although creative accounting can reduce this dramatically); the favorable currency outcome was partly timing; and the entry process — 25 viewings, failed offers, a lost wire — cost real time and stress that no ROI captures. None of that changes the verdict. It just keeps it honest.
What's next: Le Prestige
Devin has rolled the net proceeds into his next Medellín project, Le Prestige, in Provenza — the subject of a separate analysis that can be read here: Read the Le Prestige breakdown →
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Methodology & Sources
Hold modeled at 63 months (Apr 2021–Jun 2026). Personal use = first 18 months at zero rent; remaining 45 months at 95% occupancy (42.75 rented months). Administración and predial escalated by Colombia’s annual IPC; EPM held at the stated five-year average; management fee 13% of collected rent. Returns are pre-tax and exclude financing (all-cash). The “lifestyle dividend” is imputed market rent for the owner-occupied period and is reported separately from cash ROI.
Exchange rates (real, dated): USD/COP 3,601.98 on 2021-04-15; 3,898.58 (2022-06); 4,148.00 (2023-06); 4,128.17 (2024-06); 4,122.70 (2025-06); 3,502.11 on 2026-06-12. Rental income converted at the five-year blended average ≈ 3,900. Sources: FXRatesAPI (api.fxratesapi.com) and ExchangeRate-API (open.er-api.com), retrieved June 2026.
