REAL NOW Index
How much residential asking prices move across Latin America, month by month. Open methodology, published sample size, and an honest warning about what this number cannot tell you.
Last updated: 2026-09-25 The index is recalculated automatically with every daily pipeline run.
| Country | Index | Monthly change | Zones in panel | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belice | 99.7 | -0.3% | 17 | preliminar |
| Costa Rica | 99.6 | 0.0% | 36 | solida |
| República Dominicana | 100.5 | +0.6% | 91 | solida |
| Guatemala | 96.7 | +1.1% | 24 | solida |
| Honduras | 104.8 | +0.5% | 7 | preliminar |
| Panamá | 99.3 | -0.7% | 23 | solida |
| El Salvador | 113.1 | +5.3% | 11 | preliminar |
Base 100 = each country's first month with a sufficient panel. An index of 95 means asking prices are 5% below that base month. "Preliminary" means the panel is still small (between 6 and 19 zones) and the number may shift.
How it is calculated
- The unit is the zone, not the country. Only zones with at least 20 active listings in the month qualify.
- The monthly change is measured only across zones present in both months, weighted by activity.
- Those changes are chained from a base of 100.
- The first 45 days of each country's coverage are discarded, because inventory is still arriving when a market opens.
- If a month does not reach 6 comparable zones, it is not published. It is not estimated.
Taking the median of every listing in a month blends two different things: how much the market moved, and which zones our coverage reached. Under that method, our own data showed a 91% drop in Belize between May and June 2026 — when what actually happened is that we started out measuring six luxury properties and the real inventory arrived afterwards. On a matched panel, that same month was +3.2%.
How much is actually negotiated
Price reductions observed listing by listing. For a buyer, this is the real negotiation margin in each market.
| Country | Median cut | Inventory with cuts | Cuts observed | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brasil | 6.3% | 4.4% | 240 | solida |
| Belice | 18.5% | 5.3% | 156 | solida |
| Costa Rica | 6.9% | 12.2% | 827 | solida |
| República Dominicana | 6.2% | 3.0% | 235 | solida |
| Guatemala | 14.6% | 8.8% | 400 | solida |
| Honduras | 7.1% | 5.3% | 43 | preliminar |
| Panamá | 5.9% | 15.1% | 364 | solida |
| El Salvador | 6.2% | 14.5% | 166 | solida |
On a $250,000 property, a median reduction of 7% is $17,500 in margin. The breakdown by area — your area — is part of PRO.
What this index is NOT
These are ASKING prices from the visible market: what sellers request in published listings. They are not closed-transaction prices. Latin America has no public register of sale prices, so nobody — ourselves included — can publish an index of actual transactions.
Asking prices tend to be sticky: a seller can hold their price for months without selling. That is why this index should be read alongside time on market and effective discount, not on its own.
The national index is free and will stay free. The zone-level breakdown, the USD/m² level and cross-market comparison are part of PRO.