Where to Shop For Real Estate in Central America
Are you looking for a property investment in Central America? Wondering which sites are the best to shop on for real estate in the region?
It’s not as easy as visiting a single site to browse through every listing available. There are seven countries in the region and hundreds of brokerages all with their own, often bad, websites.
The marketplaces to search on can be a little confusing as well. There are a few sites with presence across the region, and it varies country to country.
Check out this in-depth guide for a breakdown on where to digitally shop for property in Central America. We cover all the countries in the region: Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize.
There is no Zillow or Trulia in Central America. Realtor.com has a token presence. Searching for a property is significantly more time consuming than in the US, Canada, or major European markets. Rather than a single, amalgamated marketplace to search from, it often takes visiting a number of sites to search through the various property listings.
One of the reasons is a lack of integrated Multiple Listing Service technology. In the United States Zillow, for example, pulls publicly available data from a number of sources to create its database. It is integrated with the MLS’s all over the country that provides, while not completely in real time, a fairly up to date source of information.
All the sites below require native listing by individuals, brokers and agents. And most have a cap on the number of properties that can be listed per paid account. Meaning the databases are not exhaustive.
The dominant marketplace in the region is Encuentra24. Founded in Panama in 2005, it is by far the regional leader in horizontal listings, from real estate, to cars to job. They recently spun off a real estate-only portal, Casas24.
In Panama the site CompreoAlquile is the number one real estate portal. Exclusively for real estate sales and rental, it has the greatest number of listings and is the most like a North-American real estate-only platform.
Point2Home is an international listing service with presence in 50 countries. It has a decent presence in Central America.
The existence, quality, and number of the other sites in each country varies dramatically. I’ve chosen only to list the marketplaces rather than individual brokerages for brevity.
The following list is by no means exclusive, but it provides an overview of the major real estate marketplaces in Central America at the time of writing. All the figures are from May 4th, 2020, so the exact number of listings will likely vary at the time you are reading this.
Panama
Panama has the most well of developed set of digital real estate marketplaces in the region. There are a multiple good options with tens of thousands of total listings to browse through.
CompreOAlquile is Panama’s #1 vertical real estate platform. With an impressive 24,000+ properties for sale, and 18,000+ for rent they are the leader in total number of real estate listings. The site is fast to load and the platform is easy to use.
Encuentra24 is the regional leader in online classifieds search. They operate in 8 countries in Latin America and link buyers and sellers in markets from jobs, to cars to pets and, of course, real estate. There are 12,500+ properties for sale, and 11,500+ for rent on their Panama real estate portal. They recently spun those same listings onto a stand-alone property portal: Casas24.
Point2Homes is is an international real estate marketplace site with listings in 50 countries. To list properties sellers must (self identify) as professional real estate agents. They have 1300+ properties listed for sale in Panama and only 150+ for rent.
Viva Tropical: A cross between an online magazine and a real estate listing site. They feature a lot more for-sale-by-owner properties. With 4600 stated properties their online inventory is good, though the search portion of their site does seem to go down a couple times a month.
Costa Rica
The digital marketplace for real estate in Costa Rica is more fragmented. Despite roughly similar populations, GDP’s, and physical area of the two countries, Costa Rica does not have the same level of digital market organization as Panama.
Encuentra24 / Casas24 is also big in Costa Rica. with 13,800+ sale listings and 10,400+ rental listings they have the most in the market. Listings are posted via the Encuentra24 platform are visible on Casas24.
Point2Homes is solid in Costa Rica, with significantly more market share than in Panama. They have 8,900+ sale listings, 650+ for rent. They are a solid player in the region.
Viva Tropical is also active here. They have 3900+ listings for sale, but none for rent. I’m not entirely sure the listing number are all accurate and up tot date though,
American-European is private Costa Rican MLS service with moderate national coverage. They have 1200 - 1500 sale listings but only about 100 for rent.
Nicaragua
Encuentra24 / Casas24 is here again. By far the largest property marketplace in the country, with 5,200+ sale listings and 3,900 rental listings. For a small country those numbers aren’t bad. There is a large segment of the market not advertised here. As can be seen by all the sale and rental listings on Facebook groups in the region.
Craigslist: What year are we in, 2009? But seriously Nicaragua doesn’t have great national real estate resources so Craigslist makes the list. There are 590 total properties for sale.
Honduras
Encuentra24 / Casas24: In Honduras they have a decent selection 2,400 properties for sale, 4,600+ for rent. By far the largest real estate marketplace in the country.
Realtor.com has 587 properties for sale in the country. A surprise entry from one of the major US based marketplaces which we only see here and in Belize.
Point2Homes: They don’t have much for property in Honduras, only about 220 total properties for sale.
El Salvador
Encuentra24 / Casas24: In El Salvador they have 2500+ sale listings and 1500+ rental listings. Again they are the leader in the country.
Belize
Point2Homes - 600+ properties for sale. A moderate selection give the size of the country and the property market for it’s 600,000 or so citizens.
Realtor.com has a total of 300+ properties for sale in Belize. This is their only other presence in the region besides Honduras.
Guatemala
Bienes Online: 1904 total properties for sale and rent. They have the largest selection of properties in Guatemala.
Luxury Estate: - Features 1,101 total property listings. Featuring listings only in the higher price ranges of the market
Overall there are some decent options there. The more developed, wealthy, and populous countries have better marketplaces Panama and Costa Rica. In the middle are Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have some OK options. Little Belize is definitely lacking but then again it is a geographically small country with less than 400,000 people.
But in all those countries not all, or even most of the listings are online. And that includes a number of the best properties and prices. So what can you do?
Often times the local experts in the region can be super helpful. A good real estate estate could save you tens of thousands of dollars. They will also make sure the process is smooth. Between a good agent and a lawyer your interests will be well protected.
How can you find those? I’m here for you. With nearly a decade of experience in the region I can help you succeed in Central America. Those questions are exactly what my services are for. Check out our Consulting page and schedule a session to help you make the right decisions in Central America.
Have an awesome day!
Joel Stott-Jess
Cell / WhatsApp: +505 8176 8624
Skype: joel.stott.jess
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