Cost of a finca

Many people ask me “how much does a finca cost”? This is not the right question to ask. If you’re in the market for a finca, you’re best to set a budget range and work backwards into location, size of lot, presence/quality of house/construction, and other factors/priorities. Generally speaking, larger fincas will have (all else equal) lower values per square meter, and a nicely built house can add $1,000,000 COP per square meter to the price.

If you’ve spent any amount of time visiting or living in Medellin it’s just a matter of time before you’ll be invited to someone’s finca.  The word finca literally translates to “farm” in English but practically speaking we are talking here about recreational farms, weekend getaways, ranches, cottages, cabins, or however you’d like to call them.  And just like the Hamptons is to New York, Martha’s Vineyard to Boston, Lake Tahoe to San Francisco, or Lake Muskoka to Toronto, the area East of Medellin in and around the Rionegro Airport is collectively called “El Oriente,” or The East.

The Oriente is where if you have the extra money, you buy yourself an acre or two (or 10!) to call home on the weekends within 60-90 minutes out of Medellin. And I can speak from personal experience, there’s nothing more rewarding than finishing a long week in the city of Medellin with a weekend getaway in the mountains.

The Oriente, however, is not the only place where the Paisas maintain their fincas.  To the North you have Girardota and Barbosa, to the West you have San Pedro, San Jeronimo and Santa Fe. To the South La Estrella, Caldas, and further beyond into citrus and coffee country, there’s the “coffee axis” or eje cafetero.  Guatape is another popular destination for fincas but can lead you into 2-4 hour traffic jams on the weekends.

Regardless of location, the finca lifestyle can be a perfect balance to the sometimes hectic and stressful life in the city of Medellin.  It is one of the great opportunities to invest in Medellin. As soon as you get up and over the Aburra Valley of Medellin, the air is much cleaner, the extra elevation makes the temperature a few degrees cooler, and life just tends to slow down as you mix with the locals in the dozens of villages or pueblos that dot the region of Antioquia.

As the people of Medellin have become wealthier, so too has the land become more expensive within a 1-2 hour drive.  The Las Palmas corridor between Medellin and the airport has some of the most expensive $/meter or $/hectare rural land in Colombia, where prices can fetch up to $500k USD per hectare and more in some parts.