Puerto Vallarta Real Estate Market 2026: Two Markets, One Bay

In May we published a six-year review of the Puerto Vallarta real estate market and closed it with a question. Closed sales in the first four months of 2026 were running well below 2025, and we wrote that the next two quarters would tell us whether that was a soft landing, the front end of a deeper correction, or a seasonal blip. Those months have now passed, and the answer is more specific than any of the three.

Through the end of August, closed sales across Puerto Vallarta and the Riviera Nayarit were 16% below the same eight months of 2025, and dollar volume was 11% lower. Read as a single number, that looks like a market cooling across the board. It is not. The decline sits almost entirely in one segment: pre-construction condos, whose recorded sales fell by half. Resale condos sold more in 2026 than in 2025. The bay is now two markets that happen to share a coastline, and anyone buying, selling or building here needs to know which one they are in.

This edition is wider and deeper than the first. It counts every condo, house and land sale recorded in Puerto Vallarta and the Riviera Nayarit since 2017, not only the fourteen most active zones, so the totals are larger than the ones we printed in May; the shape of the story is the same. And it adds what our first review could not measure: prices per square metre, homes that sold twice, how often asking prices are cut, how listings end, and how long the inventory on the market today would take to sell.

The long view, 2017 to 2025

Before the pandemic, the bay was a market of roughly a thousand closed sales a year. We count 973 in 2017, 1,128 in 2018 and 1,165 in 2019, with dollar volume climbing from $283 million to $415 million as prices and the share of higher-priced sales grew.

2020 was a dip, not a collapse. Sales fell 14% to 1,004 and volume fell 19% to $337 million. International travel stopped for months and the peso swung sharply that spring, so the striking thing about 2020 is how much of the market kept working.

Then came the surge. In 2021 sales rose 90%, to 1,910, and volume more than doubled, to $702 million. In 2022 the bay recorded 2,175 closed sales and $850 million in volume, the highest totals in the history we hold. Remote work, low North American mortgage rates in 2021, strong home equity in the buyers' home markets and a wave of new condo projects arrived together, and the projects mattered most: two of every three condos sold in 2022 were pre-construction units.

The correction followed. With North American interest rates rising through 2022 and 2023, sales fell 35% in 2023, to 1,404, and another 7% in 2024, to 1,300. Dollar volume fell less: $632.5 million in 2023 and $633.9 million in 2024. Fewer homes changed hands, but the ones that did sold for more.

2025 was the second wave. Sales rose 24%, to 1,610, and volume rose 30%, to $821.8 million, within 4% of the 2022 record. Compared with 2019, the last year before the pandemic, the bay now closes 38% more sales a year and twice the dollar volume.

Condos, houses and land in Puerto Vallarta and the Riviera Nayarit. The median sale price is the middle sale of the year, so a handful of very large sales cannot move it the way they move an average.

2026 so far: a gap that narrowed

From January to August 2026, the bay recorded 960 closed sales and $511.2 million in volume, against 1,140 sales and $574.2 million in the same months of 2025. That is 16% fewer sales and 11% less dollar volume.

The month-by-month view changes how that reads. The first four months of 2026 ran 20% behind 2025, which is the softening we described in May. From May to August the gap was 12%, and in July and August together it was 4%, with dollar volume in those two months 22% higher than a year earlier. April 2025 was an unusually strong month, with 191 sales, the busiest of that year, which makes April 2026 look weaker than it was.

Volume falling less than the count of sales has a simple cause: the average sale got bigger. The average sale from January to August 2026 was about $532,000, against about $504,000 a year earlier. As the next section shows, that is mostly a change in what sold rather than a rise in prices.

One note on timing. Sales from September are still arriving in the records as we write, because closings are often reported weeks after they happen, so this review stops at August. A month needs about thirty days before its count can be trusted.

Two markets: resale and pre-construction

Split the 2026 numbers by whether a home was sold before or after it was built, and the slowdown almost disappears from one side of the ledger.

From January to August, resale condos recorded 486 sales against 426 a year earlier, a rise of 14%, and their dollar volume rose 13%, to $261.6 million. Resale houses were close to level, at 203 against 212. Pre-construction condos recorded 213 sales against 440, a fall of 52%, and their volume fell from $189.1 million to $100.4 million.

Put together, the bay sold 180 fewer homes and lots in those eight months. Pre-construction condos and houses account for 225 fewer sales; resale condos and houses added 51; land was down six. Without pre-construction, 2026 is running ahead of 2025.

This reverses how the market was built during the boom. In 2020 a little over half of the condos sold in the bay were pre-construction. By 2022 it was two in three, 1,121 pre-construction condo sales in a single year. The share fell to 44.6% in 2024, recovered to 48.9% in 2025, and through August 2026 it is 30.5%.

Three things are happening in pre-construction at once, and the records show each of them.

• Fewer new units are being listed. In the twelve months to August 2026, 1,054 new pre-construction listings appeared, against 2,028 in the twelve months before. The records cannot tell us how much of that is fewer project launches and how much is developers selling their inventory without listing it for the wider broker community.
• The units that are listed take longer to sell. The median pre-construction sale of the last twelve months took 336 days from listing to contract, against 210 days in the twelve months before.
• Many do not sell at all. In the same twelve months, 1,136 pre-construction listings left the market without a sale, against 381 that sold.

What the records do not show is a price collapse. The median pre-construction condo sold for $4,122 per square metre from January to August 2026, against $4,178 in the same months of 2025, a difference of about 1%. The price per square metre has held while the number of units sold has halved. New projects still sell at a premium to resale, about $4,100 per square metre against $3,800 this year, which is the price of a new building, its amenities and its finishes, paid before delivery.

Why did resale gain? A finished home can be seen, used and rented this season; a delivery date cannot. Buyers who grew more careful about construction timelines found a resale market with room to negotiate and no wait.

Where the decline sits: price and place

The pre-construction slowdown has a price range and an address.

By price, the decline is concentrated between $250,000 and $500,000, the range where most new condos in the bay are sold. Sales in that band fell 29%, from 532 to 379, which is 153 of the 180 fewer sales. Below $250,000 the count fell 7%. From $500,000 to $1 million it fell 2%, and between $1 million and $2 million it was unchanged, at 80 sales in each year. Above $2 million, where a handful of sales decides the count, there were 16 against 19. Above $500,000 the market barely slowed in 2026; the middle did.

By place, three areas that absorbed much of the boom's new construction account for most of the drop. Marina Vallarta recorded 58 sales from January to August against 109 a year earlier, the Hotel Zone 56 against 93, and Francisco Villa West 65 against 121. Together they sold 144 fewer homes, four of every five fewer sales in the bay.

Among the other large areas the picture is steadier. South Shore matched its 2025 count exactly, at 81 sales, while its dollar volume rose from $70.8 million to $81.3 million. Nuevo Vallarta West rose from 93 sales to 100. Centro North was nearly level, at 87 against 90, and Centro South, home of the Romantic Zone, eased from 129 to 120. Bucerias (105 to 92) and La Cruz de Huanacaxtle (59 to 50) fell by 12% and 15%, and among the smaller areas Aramara fell from 39 to 27.

For the full year 2025, South Shore led the bay in dollar volume, at $100.0 million from 114 sales, followed by Centro South at $95.1 million and Nuevo Vallarta West at $86.4 million. Centro South also recorded more sales than any other area, 179. The fourteen areas of our first review accounted for 1,394 of the bay's 1,610 sales in 2025 and 93% of its dollar volume.

Areas as the listing records name them. Median price is the middle sale of the year in the area.

What prices did

Our first review measured price with the average sale and noted that the average can flatter a market: when cheaper homes stop selling, the average rises even if no home is worth more. This time we can do better on two counts.

The first is price per square metre, which corrects for size in a market where a studio and a four-bedroom penthouse can share a building. The median condo sold for $2,397 per square metre in 2020 and $3,972 in 2025, a rise of 66%. The steepest gains came in 2022, up 25%, at the peak of sales, and in 2023, up 19%, the year sales fell 35%. Houses moved from $1,170 to $2,009 per square metre of construction over the same years.

The correction of 2023 and 2024 was a correction in how many homes sold, not in what they sold for.

2026 is the first year since 2021 in which the condo figure did not rise: $3,929 per square metre through August, against $3,972 for 2025. Part of that is the mix, since fewer pre-construction units, which sell at a premium, are in the count. Resale condos alone rose 3%, from $3,714 to $3,828 per square metre, January to August each year. Houses held level, at about $2,000.

The second measure compares a home with itself. Some homes in the records sold twice, and for each of them we can compute the yearly change in price between the two sales. We count only homes held at least six months, set aside those whose first sale was pre-construction (their gains include the pre-sale discount), and set aside pairs where the price halved or tripled (a data error or a major renovation, not a market move).

By that measure, owners who resold in 2020 had seen a median gain of 4.8% a year over a typical hold of three to four years. The figure rose with the boom, to 10.5% a year for resales in 2022 and 12.6% in 2023, and has eased since: 11.9% in 2024, 8.8% in 2025 and 6.9% for resales from January to August 2026, with a typical hold now close to five years. Gains are still positive, but they are slowing, which is what the square-metre figures show as well.

These figures are history, not a forecast. They rest on 53 to 101 resales a year, and owners within any one year saw a wide range: in 2026 the middle half of them gained between 3.9% and 9.5% a year. Past price changes in the bay say nothing certain about future ones.

How homes sell now: time, price cuts and listings that do not sell

If prices held, where did the softer market show? In time, and in negotiation.

The median home sold from January to August 2026 had spent 226 days on the market, against 193 in the same months of 2025. Over full years the median was 165 days in 2023, 182 in 2024 and 206 in 2025: it has lengthened every year since 2023, the last year in which buyers were still competing for a smaller pool of listings.

Asking prices are cut far more often. In 2022, 7% of condo sales followed a reduction in the asking price. In 2023 it was one in eight; in 2025 and 2026, about one in three, for condos and houses alike. The cut matters: condos that sold after a reduction in 2026 had spent a median 382 days on the market, against 160 for those that sold at their first price. The median reduction on those condos was 7.9%.

The gap between the final asking price and the sale price, by contrast, has barely moved. The median sale in 2026 closed at 96.8% of the final asking price, against 97.7% in 2023. Measured against the first asking price, it closed at 95.0%. Sellers are negotiating in public, by lowering the price on the listing, more than at the closing table.

The clearest sign of a buyer's market is what happens to the listings that do not sell. Of the resale listings that left the market from January to August 2026, 41% left with a sale; the rest expired or were taken down by their owners. In 2024 the share that sold was 47%. Across all listings, pre-construction included, only 31% of the listings that ended this year ended in a sale.

Supply: how long today's inventory would last

On 9 October 2026 there were 3,767 active listings of condos, houses and land in the bay, plus 504 under contract. To put that number in context we divide it by the pace of sales over the twelve months to August. The result is how many months the current inventory would take to sell if nothing new were listed.

For the market as a whole the answer is 31.6 months. Split it again and the two markets reappear. The 1,731 resale listings would take about 21 months to sell. The 1,596 pre-construction listings would take about 50 months, more than four years at this year's pace, and 78% of them have been on the market for more than six months.

Resort markets carry more inventory than the city markets that produced the usual rule of thumb, six months as the line between a buyer's and a seller's market, so these figures read best against each other and against time. Read that way, pre-construction holds more than twice the supply of resale, and it is the segment where buyers today have the most choice and the most leverage.

What this means

For buyers

Resale is where the activity is, and resale condo prices are rising slowly, about 3% per square metre this year, rather than at the double-digit pace of 2022 and 2023. Expect competition for well-priced homes in established areas such as South Shore, Nuevo Vallarta West and Centro North, and real room to negotiate on listings that have sat for months. One sale in three follows a price cut, so a listing's history is part of your negotiation.

In pre-construction, the buyer holds the leverage this year. With roughly four years of supply at the current pace, developers have every reason to compete on payment plans, delivery commitments and finishes, even while prices per square metre hold. Before you weigh a discount, ask for the developer's record of past deliveries, the status of the permits and the legal structure of the purchase.

For sellers

Price for the market that exists. The records are plain about what happens otherwise: listings that start too high get cut later and wait more than twice as long. Four in ten resale listings that left the market this year sold; the others expired or were withdrawn. The homes that sell are, more and more, the ones priced right on the first day. A market valuation built on recent sales in your building or street is the place to start.

For developers and investors

Pre-construction is not broken; it is oversupplied and slower. Projects that sell in 2026 do it on product, location and certainty of delivery, and the decline concentrated between $250,000 and $500,000 shows where competition for buyers is hardest. For investors buying to rent, resale now offers finished homes at prices that have stopped racing ahead, with a rental history that can be checked rather than projected.

Conclusion

In May we asked whether 2026 was a soft landing, the start of a deeper correction or a seasonal anomaly. The answer is a split. The resale market is having a better year than 2025 by count, with condo prices still rising, more slowly. The pre-construction market, which carried the boom of 2021 and 2022, is in a correction of its own: half the sales, longer waits and about four years of supply at the current pace, so far with the price per square metre close to level.

Over the longer arc, the bay is a larger and more liquid market than it was before 2020: 38% more sales a year than in 2019, twice the dollar volume, and condo prices per square metre about two thirds higher than in 2020. The next chapter of Puerto Vallarta real estate depends on how the pre-construction surplus clears, through time, through better terms or eventually through price. We will keep counting, and we will publish what we find.

If you are weighing a purchase or a sale in the bay, tell us your situation: the area, the budget and how you plan to use the property. We will give you a read built on these numbers rather than on a headline. You can search homes for sale across the bay or ask for a valuation of your home.