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Buying Real Estate in Laureles, Medellin – Neighborhood Deep-Dive

Apr 15, 2026 | Private List update

Each time I go back to Laureles, I see more gentrification. This is where I invested in a penthouse, the results of which I am very happy with. 

But let’s not forget the current situation

The world is gradually running towards a serious energy crisis. Inflation will come back, gas prices with go up, plane tickets will increase significantly and thus people’s discretionary income will decrease.

Medellin in Colombia is a “good times” city. It does very well when money is flowing.

Will it continue like this?

I’d say that Medellin, as opposed to other destinations, will be more resilient. Why?

  • Most tourism is from the US, which will be much less impacted by the energy crisis than other Western countries due to being a major oil & gas producer
  • Colombia itself is a net exporter of crude oil and has a lot of refining capacity
  • The upcoming May presidential elections in Colombia will likely lead to a more pro-business government

Am I trying to say that Medellin will not be impacted? Of course not. What is transpiring in the Middle East will hurt medium and long haul tourism globally. This being said, I believe that on a relative basis, Medellin will probably be less impacted than most other international destinations.

Watch this video of Mauricio & I discussing the various sub-neighborhoods within Laureles.

https://youtu.be/vU4B88CrNWk?si=qmJZJQsH8vie0w8j

To a World of Opportunities,

The Wandering Investor.

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Transcript of “Buying Real Estate in Laureles, Medellin – Neighborhood Deep-Dive”

LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello everyone, Ladislas Maurice from The Wandering Investor. So today we’ll be doing a full detailed analysis of the neighborhood of Laureles in Medellin, which is one of the hot spots for real estate investment here. And we’re going to do this together with Mauricio, my realtor from Sweden. How are you, Mauricio?

MAURICIO: I’m doing great as always. Yes.

Laureles vs. El Poblado

LADISLAS MAURICE: Your agency has helped people invest in El Poblado and here in Laureles. People typically go for El Poblado rather than Laureles, but Laureles is actually a really interesting place to invest in. Personally, that’s also where I bought my apartment. Can you give us a little bit of an overview, the thesis for Laureles as a whole?

MAURICIO: Well, it’s a little bit different from Poblado because now we’re here down in the valley of the city. So, the yeah, it’s much more flat, it’s much more walkable. To have a family, if you have a dog, if you like to walk and nice coast restaurants. They don’t like the the party life that you find in Poblado and like all the bars with the banks and the hotels and everything, that is less tourist here. You find more locals. It’s a little bit more like an Colombian experience, but still high-end, so you get both of the worlds.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. So, personally, I invested in this neighborhood because I really value walkability and I wanted the sort of tenants that party a bit less, um, which I’m I’m happy I found. So, this is also one of the thesis here. Your apartments get a bit less damage, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah, and also a lot of times people who comes to Laureles, they have been in Poblado or in Medellin before, so it’s likely going to maybe stay a bit little bit longer. You tend to get also long-term clients. You have a good nice unit, as you experienced. Yeah.

The micro-neighborhoods of Laureles

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, exactly. So now we’re going to go through the the six different micro-neighborhoods within Laureles because it’s easy to say Laureles in general, but the reality is they’re very different dynamics from little micro-neighborhood to micro-neighborhood.

MAURICIO: Exactly, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Can you tell us about this area here?

MAURICIO: Yeah, so here we’re located in the first park and in Laureles, you say the commercial as actually located between the first and the second park. This is where you find all the restaurants. Here around us, we’ll see when we walk through. You maybe have above 60, 70 restaurants just around this area here. And then it’s also very conveniently located close to La Setenta, which is the party area. So yeah, location-wise, if the whole Laureles area, this is the center epic of Laureles.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so extremely walkable, restaurants everywhere.

MAURICIO: Super green.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, I remember when I came here a few years ago, you could you could sense it, the place was coming up. There were a few restaurants that were starting to pop up. Yeah. Uh, there are already quite a few, but now it’s just it’s really, like there’s a good food scene.

MAURICIO: Yeah, in a lot of the smaller houses, two level, they turn them into restaurants.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What about the prices here?

MAURICIO: This will be the equivalent of Provinza in Poblado, so the price per square meter is the highest around first and second park. And then it goes out slowly depending on, yeah, if there is streets and noise and stuff.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What about occupancy rates?

MAURICIO: Yeah, around this area, like 85% for monthly rentals.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. So, really easy to find tenants.

MAURICIO: Yeah, yeah, if you price it right.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What’s interesting to to note is that when people first come to Medellin, they’ll hear about El Poblado first, they’ll go there, but then typically people that choose to do rentals in Laureles are second-time visitors, third-time visitors, people who want to stay a bit longer term. So, the profile of people moving here is quite different from the profile of people moving to Poblado.

MAURICIO: Yeah, a little bit more experienced.

La Setenta Party Street in Laureles, Medellin

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. And now we are going to go check out the La Setenta, which is the the party street.

MAURICIO: Yeah, four blocks down there.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, Mauricio, tell us about this place here.

MAURICIO: Yeah, we’re here by the university Lobe here in Laureles, which is the biggest university here in Laureles. It’s the 30,000 students, studies here. You find classes like, uh, law, English, uh, architectural and so on.

LADISLAS MAURICE: You you tend to hang out here a lot, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah, I do a lot of the geography classes here at nighttime. Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, essentially, there’s the university here, and it’s a private university?

MAURICIO: Yes, the biggest one.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. So, higher income students. And then La Setenta, the party street is right here. So, how many blocks?

MAURICIO: 10, 12. It goes all the way down to the Estadio Metro station.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And it’s all bars, night clubs.

MAURICIO: Yeah, on both side of the ways, you find bars, restaurants, yeah, local tiendas.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, it’s a very different uh party vibe from El Poblado. It’s a lot more local in many ways.

MAURICIO: But you start to see a little bit more high-end upscaled uh discotheques as well, but very local. So, if you’re tired of the of the gringos in Poblado, then you can come here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What’s your biggest warning about investing here? Because obviously this is a big draw.

MAURICIO: I think you would like to be very close to this area, but also because uh there is a lot of discos, there’s a lot of sound, you hear all the traffic. The noise level is very high. So, you rather want to be one, two blocks away from the main street, and maybe even more. Monthly rental probably further away from the main street and daily like one block away at least.

LADISLAS MAURICE: This brand new building here is a case study in terms of uh noise issues, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah, this factory loft has been there for some years, but a lot of the complaints of the reviews are about the sound level. Because you also see here, you have the light, the cars stops, and then they start there and it’s a lot of noise.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, this street is a big draw. Um, it’s very close to Segunde Parque and Primera Parque. So, good, but noise is a problem. So, when you invest here, essentially, be careful, look at windows and just make sure that it’s essentially soundproof.

MAURICIO: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And now we are going to go to Santiteresita.

MAURICIO: Santa Teresita.

Santa Teresita, Laureles overview

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, fantastic. Let’s go check it out. All right, so Mauricio, tell us about Santa Teresita here.

MAURICIO: Yeah, so we’re in Laureles, Santa Teresita, which is also very close to the second park right behind us. And here we have Santa Teresita Church, which is the main spot here in the area. And also being that close to the park, it’s very well located for a lot of locals. So it’s so you can find a lot of older generation homes in this areas. So, potentially a lot of square meter, if you buy from an older person, you maybe could get a good deal here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, it’s a lot of older people here, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah. As you can see, as we pass by, there’s a lot of people out walking the dog, talking to their old neighbors, maybe like friends back from school who lives close by and live there all their life. If you get a lot of that feeling like passing by coffee shop, you see old people talking to each other, so it’s very nice and familiar.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s quite different from obviously La Setenta right before, which was more the party area, student area, Segunde Parque, Primero Parque, the first one we looked at, which is where all the restaurants and the activity and a lot of the digital nomads are. Here it’s very Colombian,

MAURICIO: Very residential.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Conservative as well, very conservative, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah, a lot of people like to be that close to the church and also have their park just walk down the street and you’re still like two minutes walk to the second park with all the restaurants and then down to first park, maybe yeah, an additional five minutes.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Is this an area you recommend people to invest in?

MAURICIO: Everything depends if you find a right deal. It’s not really where we are focused, we’ve been focusing further down the street close to the commercial. Also because it tends to be that big of units and it’s still high-end local, so it’s not fairly cheap per se that you would like to find it. So it doesn’t make sense a lot of times.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I remember hunting around here because again, I wanted to target people that just want to work from home or families, etc. I like this area, but I was having a harder time finding deals in this area.

MAURICIO: Because it’s still not cheap, like it’s high-end residential Colombians and yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And the buildings are all a bit old?

MAURICIO: Yeah, there’s a lot of generation homes, so like 240, 280, 300 square meter apartments. So also to buy them, it won’t be cheap, and then who’s going to rent that in the end? It’s just doesn’t make sense mathematically a lot of times. Obviously, there’s always exceptions from the rule, but general speaking, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, when you look on the map, it looks great, but then you once you understand the actual dynamics, it’s hard to make it work here.

MAURICIO: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, now we are going to go to San Joaquin, the little micro-neighborhood where I invested myself. All right, cool. Let’s go.

MAURICIO: Yeah.

San Joaquin, Laureles overview

LADISLAS MAURICE: Great. So, tell us about San Joaquin.

MAURICIO: San Joaquin is located between the first and second park and Conquistadores. And it’s uh also very close located to uh Unicentro, which is a big shopping mall here in the city. And we’re also surrounded by a lot of nice green parks, as you can see here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. A lot of these people hang out, families, there are events.

MAURICIO: Just behind the camera guy we have a soccer field here, which a lot of people can come out with their kids. It’s it’s very familiar and it’s a nice nice area. It is up and coming though, because you see, it’s not very commercial. It’s a lot of older residential buildings or one, two level floors. And the first floor, they have garage instead of commercial.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, that would be on on this side. So, you’ve got two sides, one of the little homes like this. But you can see, I mean, down there you can’t see, but there’s like a little pet shop. Uh down there there’s like a tattoo parlor.

MAURICIO: And this is the same kind of houses they see in Provencia, but it’s turned into big Airbnbs, commercial, discotecas, build a little bit up. So, I mean, long term, who knows what happens here, but it’s just in between really two really good neighborhoods. And it’s a good neighborhood as well, but I think it has a lot of potential to grow.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And I find it younger in terms of crowd than the previous one Santa.

MAURICIO: Yes, much, uh, I mean that will also reflect because the price is lower here. So, it’s more older money, closer to the park and Santa Teresita over here. And then here I’d say it’s middle class, but it’s growing upwards.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And the advantage here is that the uh one of the reasons I bought as well is the HOA, the administration is lower because it’s estrato four. The other one is five or six?

MAURICIO: Yeah. Also a lot of uh here what happens is the buildings don’t have a door guy. So, if you prefer to have a door guy, you need to be very specific which building you take.

LADISLAS MAURICE: However, one big negative, uh that must be highlighted.

MAURICIO: Yeah, it’s the airplanes that pass by here. So, well, the downside is that you’re very close to the local airport here in Belen. So, the air airplanes that come into the city, they pass by uh this area.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And uh from that because barely anyone uses, really talks about that airport that’s in the middle of Medellin. Where are their flights to?

MAURICIO: Uh, you can go to Cali, you can go to Barranquilla, you can go to Cucuta, a little bit like uh only international airport, like uh small trips around Colombia.

LADISLAS MAURICE: You know, that would be one of the downsides of the penthouse that I bought here. I mean, it’s literally a penthouse, so top floor and the planes just come right over. Um and it’s on a regular basis every

MAURICIO: Yeah, during daytime, I’d say maybe one time an hour or something like this.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, I think it’s even more. I think it’s like once every half hour. So, for some tenants, it’s an issue. For most, it’s not. But again, there are no night flights or anything.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, now we’re going to go to your neighborhood, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah, Conquistadores, where I bought, so three blocks down here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, fantastic. Let’s go.

Overview of Conquistadores, Medellin

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, Mauricio, this is your uh your neighborhood here, right?

MAURICIO: Yeah, this is Conquistadores, this is where I lived uh two years, uh one year ago now. So, a really nice neighborhood, located very close here to the center of the city, as you can see. So, when you come down the valley from the airport and pass by the center, this is the first area that you come to. Location-wise, it’s a very strategic part of Laureles. And the price here is still pretty affordable.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, it’s lower than Santa Teresita or something?

MAURICIO: Yes, it’s lower. Yeah, I would say about 1 million, like 200 USD lower per square meter.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. And it’s closer to Poblado, which is cool for

MAURICIO: Much closer to Poblado. It’s also much closer to the highway. So, you have access out of the street to the south, to the north, up to the airport, just you continue down the road of the 33rd Street. And also during the Christmas season, this is a really, really nice part of the city. They deck out the whole park and the whole the river with Christmas lighting. So, people bring their family, they go around, look at the Christmas lights uh during the nights, a lot of this street vendors out in the city and a lot of happenings here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I think what’s really interesting is to your point, it’s more affordable than many parts of Laureles, yet it’s a lot closer to Poblado. So, when you target foreign tenants, the ones that bring you the the higher ROI, um they don’t quite understand this area yet, but they will eventually. And just being able to live in Laureles, but not have to deal with all the traffic of getting through Laureles is a big advantage. And I I think the sunbathing gringo right here behind, um that’s probably what he’s doing.

MAURICIO: Yeah, yeah. No, but I mean, this park is really nice and that is one thing that uh really like make Conquistadores unique. There is so many like parks all around Conquistadores. You were probably if you walk up the street there, find five, six different parks within a five-minute walk.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, you didn’t just used to live here, you also invested here, right?

MAURICIO: I started to rent here because I wanted to try out the neighborhood. I rented for one year, got an amazing rental deal and then I offered to buy the apartment from the seller and we negotiated a good deal. And I paid one part with a property I bought in the center and we made that happen. But one thing I would say here to have in mind is like, if you want to buy something, go for something unique. Over a really good price per square meter. Because if you have something unique on Conquistadores, you will get a good rental payment as well. But if you have something like very normal, then it’s not really standing out in the competition. So, penthouse, hopefully, like with a terrace, a nice balcony, or like a unique apartment.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. So, you would say, for example, on a Segunde Parque, Premiere Parque, it’s you can get.

MAURICIO: You can go a little bit more generic, yeah, you could because there’s a lot of rental demand. But here to stand out, that’s what I will go for. Or, as always, a daily rental and if you buy in a good price per square meter. But that’s not really to live in, that’s pure investment. But you see those coming up as well, so there’s a lot of people who believe in the area also for the short term.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. Because of all the…

MAURICIO: Exactly. And then you have the center close by and just and right down here behind the the river, we have Plaza Mayor, they had a lot of uh events and convention center. So, uh there’s a lot of people who comes here like Fitsburg event and these kinds of things and you can rent for them daily as well. And then with a big concerts down by Estadio, it’s uh it’s very well and centrally located. So, you’re like two Laureles, first and second park, maybe like 15 minutes if it’s not too bad traffic. And Poblado in the mornings uh like 25, 35 minutes depending on traffic.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. So, but like in the evening it’s like 8 minutes.

MAURICIO: After peak hour, it’s like 10 minutes, I’d say. Yeah. Cruising down slowly.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, if you want to take an Uber at night to go for drinks in Poblado, go party, go to restaurants, all that, it’s just…

MAURICIO: After peak season 8:00 p.m., then no issue at all.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Then it’s like a two and a half dollar ride.

MAURICIO: Like in the extreme of Poblado, closer to Envegardo, it’s the same distance to Provensa almost, so it’s like time-wise, it’s it’s very, yeah, it’s good.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, fantastic. And now we’re going to go check out one last area and that’s for slightly more adventurous investors. You call that area for…

MAURICIO: The Pioneer area of the city. It’s for the little bit more explorers.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. So, be very careful when a real estate agent says this. It’s a dark orange flag, but let’s go check it out. Yeah, let’s go.

MAURICIO: Yeah, let’s go.

Gentrifying areas of Laureles Estadio

LADISLAS MAURICE: Great. So, Mauricio, tell us about the the Pioneer area.

MAURICIO: Yeah, so the Pioneer area, as you can see in the map, as further you come out from the first and second park, it’s becomes less commercial and touristy per se. So, we’re now out here in Laureles Estadio. So, one block down, we’re by the uh the biggest stadium here in the city. That has a lot of uh concerts, a lot of soccer games. And where you have the two home uh soccer teams, Nacional and Medellin, they’re playing. So, that tends to bring a lot of crowd here to the area and make it popping.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, as you can see, I mean, you see, it’s not particularly high-end. You have a lot of like these homes, kind of like run down things like this. Then you have new construction. I see they’re building another one, or I don’t know if that construction went bankrupt. Um kind of like lower-end stores. And there’s a, you know, something for sale here if you want something nice. So, so it’s a bit it’s all over the show, right? It’s like very very…

MAURICIO: Yeah, what it has going for it though, is that as we spoke about, the big stadium just behind, it’s still in the Laureles area, so it’s considered to be in a good, nice area. So, I think the play here would be to buy something that is really good price per square meter and then make sure that you know who you’re going to rent it out to so you can count your yields a little bit before you buy and make the offer on the project that you’re looking at. The buying price here is essential, like you need to be way below market.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so you’re when you’re targeting foreigners here, you’re you’re targeting the cheaper crowd.

MAURICIO: Yes.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Look, the issue targeting the cheaper crowd is that there’s always someone doing cheaper. That’s kind of the problem.

MAURICIO: And you don’t want to go too high-end, so it’s fairly it should be easy to manage, but there wouldn’t be like high-end or anything. It would be more like backpackers, maybe local Colombians who have a fairly good job, but don’t want to spend like gringo prices in closer to Laureles first and second park and don’t mind to take like bicycle to work or like just the metros around the corner. Maybe a family live close by and they want to keep here, then you can rent for them for cheap.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And this is valid for the the whole kind of blue area we highlighted on the map.

MAURICIO: Yeah, yeah, I’d say so. What I do like more with this area is that it’s closer to the highway, and also you have the stadium here, which is more commercial. And I think from here to Laureles, you have a lot of industrial like two-floor level houses. So, that can potentially be built into bigger apartment projects in the future. So, I think it’s more upside long-term in this area than by La Castellana.

LADISLAS MAURICE: But you don’t have many of your investors buying here.

MAURICIO: No, not yet. We still see good investments in Poblado, Laureles, closer to the commercial, so it’s not really where we focus. But if you’re a pioneer, you want to see something you see something nobody else sees, and you think that’s sexy, yeah, that’s we can help you to to find something here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Here’s a nice little apartment here, so vende.

MAURICIO: Sexy and maybe it’s the wrong word, but you have something lucrative.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, how many apartments do you manage in total?

MAURICIO: North of 100 units right now. And uh every month we’re adding three, four units, so yeah, we’re growing steadily.

How to contact Mauricio

LADISLAS MAURICE: So, we did a bunch of actual case studies of apartments that your investors bought. So, all the ROI numbers, but the net ROI numbers, like actuals of his own customers. Um so, I think that is very helpful information. So, there’s the full article with all that information. There’s a link below. And if you want to get in touch with Mauricio, uh there’s also a link below. You can help people find properties, manage them, etc.

MAURICIO: And and when you reach out to come into the office, have a meeting, we will show you all these numbers in the office, exactly like we did with Ladislas. So, we can just go into their Airbnb account, see how much people are renting for or if it’s an external contract, we can show you everything like, yeah, very transparent.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. So, you can do your uh your own audits and this is very valuable in this industry.

MAURICIO: All right, fantastic. Mauricio, always a pleasure. Thank you. See you.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Make sure to download my free ebook 12 mistakes to avoid when investing in international real estate, which you can find on my website, link below, and feel free to follow me on Instagram @thewanderinginvestor. I look forward to hearing from you.

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