A lot of the market never goes online.

How a place is actually offered

• Word of mouth. A cousin, a neighbor, a owner who will sell if the right person asks. This is still how many houses move.
• Se vende signs. Painted on a wall, with a phone number. Often stale. Often real. Worth a call and a visit, not a wire.
• Local brokers. Useful when they know the block. They are not your lawyer, and a commission conversation is theirs and yours to settle. I do not publish a commission policy of my own here.
• Urbania and Adondevivir. The main listing sites. Good for a picture of asking prices in cities. Incomplete, and the asking price is not a sale.
• Facebook groups. Fast, messy, full of reposts, intermediaries, and prices aimed at foreigners. I treat them as a tip line.

There is a longer version in why listings are incomplete.

What you can buy

• Titled urban lots. The cleanest small purchase when the registry, the municipality, and the ground agree. An 8×20 meter lot in a provincial town is the kind of entry people mean by a few thousand dollars. The same dimensions in a prime Lima district are a different country.
• Apartments and houses. Ask whether the building is on the title (declaratoria de fábrica) or only the land is. A finished-looking house can be invisible to the registry.
• Agricultural and forest land. This is the large end, on the order of many hectares up to about a hundred. Access, water, zoning, and who may own it come before the view.
• Possession-only land. A constancia de posesión says someone is there. It is not a registered title. Common in rural areas and the jungle. The risks, and the slow paths toward formal title, are on the legal page.
• Comunidad campesina or comunidad nativa land. This is collective land. A person who offers you a piece of it may not have the right to sell it. Sales can be void. It is complicated on purpose. It is usually the wrong purchase if what you want is a private, registered lot. Your lawyer has to say whether a specific file is even a file.

Price, and gringo pricing

I compare a property with what similar places are asking and, when I can learn it, what they actually sold for. I have bought and sold using that habit. I will not print a price table that expires, and I will not invent a profit.

Gringo pricing is an asking price that jumped because the buyer is foreign, or because the ad is in English. It shows up in Cusco, on beach towns, and in Facebook groups. The counter is boring: Spanish listings, local conversations, and a person who knows the range. That is the sourcing work. I look for off-market places that match what you said you wanted, and I tell you when the price is a performance.

Holding land to build later can make sense. Selling later can make sense. I have done the second by paying a price that fit the local range. Values can also fall. Nothing on this page is an investment recommendation.

Next: walk it