Tulum Home Sales Fall by Half as Market Pivots to Retirees and Remote Workers

Tulum, Quintana Roo — Home sales in this Riviera Maya resort town have fallen by half in two years, and real estate analysts say any recovery may depend on a buyer the construction boom largely overlooked: the full-time resident.

Sales dropped from 3,487 units in 2023 to 1,711 in 2025, a 50.9% contraction, according to the real estate analysis firm InfoHabitat. The firm counted 6,340 homes on the market in 2023. At last year’s sales pace, that inventory alone represents nearly four years of supply.

The visitors those homes were built for are arriving in smaller numbers. Tulum received 879,229 tourists between January and July 2026, 8.6% fewer than in the same period of 2025, according to state Tourism Department figures. Passenger traffic at Tulum’s international airport, officially named Felipe Carrillo Puerto, fell 35% over the same months to 92,283.

How Tulum ended up with a home for every five residents

Investment flowed in on the strength of the Maya Train railway and the airport. InfoHabitat data shows homes under construction in Tulum rising from 1,466 in 2017 to 13,266 in 2023.

Eduardo Moya Vallejo, InfoHabitat’s managing partner, attributes the current slowdown to a mix of real estate speculation, costly services, excessive permitting and a lack of urban planning.

Unlike other destinations on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, much of Tulum’s housing stock was developed to capture tourists, with little attention to the needs of people who live in the municipality. Moya said the result leaves the local economy exposed whenever tourism slows.

“In Cancún, 89% of homes are occupied by local residents. That is not the case in Tulum, where an estimated 21% of the housing inventory is occupied by residents. It is a very stark disparity, and when tourism is missing, the economy collapses,” Moya said.

Airbnb revenue down 14% with about 3,600 listings left

The drop in visitors has hit the short-term rental units that thousands of new apartments were built to supply. Average revenue for Airbnb properties in Tulum fell 14% in 2026 compared with 2025, according to AirDNA, which tracks short-term rental data. Active listings shrank 27% to roughly 3,600.

Juan Vega, chief executive of the real estate firm Habitaria, said the trouble began when developers and buyers assumed tourism growth would be permanent.

“You have to understand that housing was built to be lived in. Real estate is not a financial vehicle. Expecting an apartment to be a long-term financial instrument is a mistake when real demand has not been validated,” Vega said.

A 14% price adjustment that has yet to revive sales

Prices have moved. Habitaria estimates property prices in Tulum fell about 14% over the past year, a decline that has not been enough to bring sales back.

Moya said the cost of land, labor, materials and financing leaves developers little room for deeper discounts. Some companies may turn to flexible payment terms instead, he said, while others have already begun halting projects.

The pipeline remains large. Vega counts roughly 7,000 homes in stages ranging from planning to construction, and warned that some announced projects may never be built.

Promised returns of 8% to 14% that were never guaranteed

Investor confidence has also suffered from sales practices that, according to Vega, ranged from unrealistic profit promises to projects that were never delivered.

“Unrealistic returns of between 8% and 14% were promised, which is not the same as a guaranteed net return. There was a lot of speculation around profitability, and Tulum became one of the destinations with the most real estate fraud,” Vega said.

Vega did not identify specific developments or cases.

Retirees and remote workers as the next wave of buyers

Both specialists see an opportunity for Tulum to depend less on vacation rentals and to build permanent residential demand.

Vega said interest is coming from retirees, adults between 50 and 70, and professionals who work remotely. Those buyers, he said, could absorb part of the housing now on the market.

Moya places the emphasis elsewhere. He considers it essential to restore the conditions that draw tourists to Tulum and to fix the municipality’s land-use planning problems.

He described Tulum as an example of a recurring weakness in Mexico — the lack of municipal planning — and said reversing course will require a long-term vision for urban growth.

The test for that shift sits in the roughly 7,000 homes still in the pipeline. Each one that reaches the market without a resident buyer adds to an inventory that, at the 2025 sales pace, already covers almost four years of sales.