If you've read anything about foreign buyers in Panama's real estate market over the last couple of years, you've probably seen the stat: Colombia is the #1 foreign buyer nationality. It was true — it showed up in La Prensa's coverage of H1 2023 data (19% of foreign transactions, $73 million) and again in 2024 Qualified Investor Visa filings. It's also, as of the most recent quarter with real data behind it, no longer the full picture. We build ad campaigns and content around claims like this one, so before repeating it again, we checked it — and the ranking has moved.
What actually happened in Q1 2026
According to Indesa Analytics — the firm that's been tracking this market closest — the United States became Panama's leading source of foreign real estate demand in the first quarter of 2026, the first time on record it has overtaken both Colombia and Venezuela. US buyers put $33.6 million into Panamanian real estate that quarter, a 53% increase year-over-year. That happened inside a market that was itself growing fast: total foreign acquisitions reached $205 million in Q1 2026, up 17% from Q1 2025, and foreign buyers made up 57% of the residential segment above $120,000 — the highest share Indesa has recorded in the series.
The before-and-after, side by side
| Metric | H1 2023 | Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| #1 foreign buyer nationality | Colombia — 19% ($73M) | United States — $33.6M, +53% YoY |
| #2 foreign buyer nationality | Venezuela — 14% ($56M) | Colombia / Venezuela (order not itemized by Indesa for this period) |
| Total foreign transaction volume | $386.3M (H1) | $205M (Q1) — 2025 full-year total: $841M |
| Foreign share of $120k+ segment | 40% | 57% (series high) |
Two things are true at once here, and it's worth holding both: the Colombia figure wasn't wrong when it was published, and it's also not the current picture. Average sale prices back this up on the buyer-quality side too — in the 2023 data, Colombian buyers averaged $324,778 per unit and Americans $315,919; by Q1 2026, the median US sale price sat at $259,000, with European buyers higher still at $310,000. The market didn't just re-rank by nationality — it kept growing underneath the ranking.
Why the old number is still everywhere
This is the same pattern we see with most Panama market claims: a true, well-reported stat gets repeated in decks, ads and articles long after a newer data point exists, because updating a talking point takes more effort than repeating it. "Colombia is #1" made it into enough marketing material and enough conversations that it became the default answer to "who's buying in Panama" — and a single quarter of newer, narrower data from one analytics firm doesn't automatically dislodge that. It will, eventually. Right now it hasn't yet, which is exactly the gap worth knowing about if you're the one deciding where to point a campaign or a conversation.
What this doesn't mean
It doesn't mean Colombian demand dried up. Colombia and Venezuela remain major, active buyer nationalities in this market — this is one quarter of one analytics firm's series showing the US moving into first, not a claim that the other two stopped buying. It also doesn't mean the "why Panama" pitch to a Colombian client changes; the asset-protection and Plan B motivations that drove Colombian buying in 2023 haven't gone anywhere. What changes is which nationality currently has the strongest, freshest momentum behind it — and that's a genuinely different question from which one has historically bought the most.
Why we're publishing this instead of just using the old number
We were about to build outreach around the "Colombia is #1" framing ourselves — it's a good, punchy stat, and it's the one everyone already believes. Checking it first meant catching that it needed a caveat before it went into anything public. That's the standard we hold every number to here, whether the answer is convenient or not: a client doing their own homework will eventually find the same Indesa data we did, and it's a better position for us — and for them — if they hear the current picture from Proper first.
