The average Miami condo sold for just over $880,000 in the first quarter of this year. One condo in six now closes above $1 million, and anything with a view of the water is a seven-figure conversation even before parking is discussed.
The seven homes below all come in under that Miami average, but are many times bigger. What the same money buys further south is a different proposition altogether: more house, more garden, a slower clock, and a great deal more sky.
The life these places sell is not the one on the postcard. It is the Tuesday version: the market where the fruit costs what fruit should cost, the kids’ football match that runs past dark because it never gets cold, the doctor who gives you her mobile number, the grandmother across the road who is somehow already part of the family. Medellín and Panama City have grown up around this rhythm and added the good hospitals and the good schools without losing it, and the coast is never far enough to feel like a trip. Nobody moves here to escape something. They move here because the days are longer, the table is fuller, and the same money buys a bigger life.
The list starts on a riverbank outside Asunción and ends a few kilometers away at a house with a wine cellar, passing through Medellín, two Pacific beaches, and the Colombian Caribbean on the way.
1. A Furnished Apartment on the Paraguay River
Pueblo del Rio is a gated condominium on the Paraguay River, northwest of central Asunción, with a pool, a gym, a riverside beach, a football pitch, and a padel court. It is built for families who want the river without the upkeep.
The apartment is 205 square meters, three bedrooms plus a service bedroom, sold furnished with two parking spaces and a balcony with a barbecue and a river view. At $300,000 it is the least expensive home on the list and the only one that needs nothing but a suitcase.
- Location: Pueblo del Rio, Mariano Roque Alonso, Paraguay
- Size: 205 m², three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms
- Price: $300,000
- Pool: Shared, in the complex
- Comes with: Permanent residency
- Program: Paraguay Investor Permanent Residency
2. Three Balconies Above Medellín
El Poblado is Medellín’s established hillside district and El Tesoro is its upper reach, a short drive from the restaurants of Provenza and Parque Lleras. The city’s year-round spring is the reason people come; the price per square meter is the reason they stay.
This three-bedroom apartment, built in 2023, has three balconies facing three directions, a maid’s quarters, and a building with a pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna, a squash court, and a coworking floor. At $570,521 it is the only entry without a body of water in sight, and the one most likely to be lived in year-round.
- Location: El Tesoro, El Poblado, Medellín, Colombia
- Size: 156 m², three bedrooms, four bathrooms
- Price: $570,521
- Pool: Shared, in the building
- Comes with: Residency
- Program: Colombia Investor Visa
3. A Beachfront Condo on Panama’s Surf Coast
Playa Venao is a crescent bay on the Azuero Peninsula, about 310 kilometers southwest of Panama City, and it is the beach Panama’s surfers talk about. Over the past decade it has grown a small crop of boutique hotels and beach houses without turning into anywhere else.
Vervana is the newest of them: two-bedroom residences with floor-to-ceiling glass facing the Pacific, a wide terrace, a pool, and a gym. It completes in 2028, so this is a purchase for the patient, and at $655,000 it is the only entry here still being built.
- Location: Playa Venao, Los Santos, Panama
- Size: 131 m², two bedrooms, two bathrooms
- Price: $655,000
- Pool: Shared, in the complex
- Completion: 2028
- Comes with: Permanent residency
- Program: Panama Qualified Investor Visa
4. A Hillside Villa Above Dominical, Costa Rica
Escaleras is the hillside above Dominical on Costa Rica’s South Pacific coast, roughly 40 kilometers south of Manuel Antonio and a long way from its crowds. The Dominical-to-Uvita stretch is where the jungle runs straight into the ocean, and the view from up here takes in all of it.
The villa is a two-level, three-bedroom house with a private pool, an open kitchen, and a terrace pointed at the Pacific, inside a gated community with 24-hour security, a concierge, and a turnkey rental program for the months you’re elsewhere. Built in 2019, it is $699,000.
- Location: Escaleras, Dominical, Costa Rica
- Size: 272 m², three bedrooms, four bathrooms
- Price: $699,000
- Pool: Private
- Comes with: Residency
- Program: Costa Rica Investor Visa
5. Golf, Beach, and the Caribbean, North of Cartagena
Karibana sits about 20 kilometers north of Cartagena’s walled Old City, close enough for dinner in the Centro Histórico and far enough to have its own kilometer of private beach. There is an 18-hole Nicklaus Design course, tennis courts, a pool, a gym, and a gate.
The apartment is a four-bedroom, built in 2025, with the Caribbean on one side and forest on the other. At $787,863 it is priced to the dollar, which is how Colombian listings tend to arrive, and Cartagena’s airport flies direct to Miami for anyone who wants to check the comparison in person.
- Location: Karibana Golf & Beach, Cartagena, Colombia
- Size: 220 m², four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms
- Price: $787,863
- Pool: Shared, in the resort
- Comes with: Residency
- Program: Colombia Investor Visa
6. A Caribbean Beach House in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
Costa Rica’s Caribbean side moves to a different rhythm than the Pacific coast most buyers know: Afro-Caribbean cooking, reggae from the beach bars, surf that shows up on schedule, and the Gandoca-Manzanillo wildlife refuge at the end of the road. Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is its capital, about 200 kilometers from San José, and Playa Negra is its dark-sand beach.
This three-bedroom house, finished in 2026, sits on a 1,099-square-meter plot with a private pool, a terrace, high ceilings, and European finishes, and it was built with the vacation-rental market in mind. Live in it or let it; at $798,000 it does either.
- Location: Playa Negra, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Limón, Costa Rica
- Size: 288 m² on a 1,099 m² plot, three bedrooms, two bathrooms
- Price: $798,000
- Pool: Private
- Comes with: Residency
- Program: Costa Rica Investor Visa
7. A House With a Wine Cellar Outside Asunción
Club de Campo Surubi’i is a gated community in Mariano Roque Alonso, just outside Asunción, the kind of address the capital’s own money moves to when it wants trees. The city is a short drive away and, for a growing number of relocating families, the point.
The house is 700 square meters on a 1,394-square-meter lot: four bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a wine cellar, a games room, a covered barbecue gallery, a gourmet kitchen and a second one for staff, a pool under mature trees, and a covered garage for three cars. At $880,000 it is the most expensive home on the list and, by the square meter, the cheapest.
- Location: Club de Campo Surubi’i, Mariano Roque Alonso, Paraguay
- Size: 700 m² on a 1,394 m² lot, four bedrooms, seven bathrooms
- Price: $880,000
- Pool: Private
- Comes with: Permanent residency
- Program: Paraguay Investor Permanent Residency
IMI Real Estate is updated constantly with homes from every corner of the map, from beach houses like these to island estates several zeros up, and every one of them qualifies its buyer for residency or citizenship in the country it stands in.
