Yes, it can still be worth it, but not on the projections that circulated during the post-pandemic boom. From January to July 2026, Tulum’s hotels were 63.7% full on average, against 75.9% in the same months of 2024, according to Quintana Roo’s tourism ministry. The fall is concentrated in the low season: in June 2026 Tulum’s hotels were 47.5% full, against 71.7% in June 2024, while February still reached 81.8%. No official index publishes Tulum sale prices, so the “crash” you read about is mostly measured in demand and occupancy, not in prices. We are Villas Ambar, a property manager in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and this is what the 2026 correction means for an owner who rents out a villa here.
If you own a house in Tulum, you have probably seen the headlines, the YouTube videos and the threads asking whether the Tulum real estate crash has arrived. Most of them are written to sell property, and few show where their numbers come from. Here we use the monthly bulletins of Quintana Roo’s tourism ministry (SEDETUR), the federal mortgage agency’s price index, the airport statistics we published last week, and the rental figures we already published for Tulum villas. Nothing here is investment advice: it is the data an owner needs to decide what to do with a house that is already built.
Is Tulum’s Real Estate Market Crashing in 2026?
Buyer demand has fallen by an estimated 40% since the post-pandemic boom, but no public body measures Tulum’s sale prices, so talk of a crash or a bursting bubble rests on estimates. The official index of the Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal (SHF), Mexico’s federal mortgage agency, shows Quintana Roo house prices up 9.8% in the second quarter of 2026 against a year earlier, according to the summary of the SHF index published on August 13, 2026. That index is built from the appraisals of homes bought with mortgage credit, across the whole state. It does not isolate Tulum, and it does not describe the dollar-priced condos sold to foreign buyers.
What the local market itself says is different. In May 2025, the new president of the Tulum chapter of AMPI, the Mexican association of real estate professionals, estimated a 40% drop in buyer interest since the post-pandemic boom. He blamed an oversupply of one- and two-bedroom apartments, built especially since 2024, and the same report described many units sitting vacant or renting at low occupancy. That is an estimate from an association, not a measurement. But it tells you where the correction sits: in small apartments, many of them built to be rented.
For an owner who intends to keep renting, the sale price matters less than the number of guests. That number is measured, every month.
How Far Has Tulum’s Hotel Occupancy Fallen?
By about 12 points in two years. Tulum’s hotels averaged 75.9% occupancy from January to July 2024, 72.7% in the same months of 2025, and 63.7% in 2026. SEDETUR’s “¿Cómo vamos?” monthly bulletins, compiled from the hotel associations and the municipal tourism offices, give the full series. The 2026 figures are marked preliminary.
| Tulum, official figures | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hotel occupancy, full year | 74.9% | 75.3% | 69.1% | — |
| Hotel occupancy, January–July | 75.6% | 75.9% | 72.7% | 63.7% |
| Tourists, full year | 1,805,341 | 1,773,767 | 1,679,190 | — |
| Tourists, January–July | 998,229 | 1,009,303 | 961,562 | 879,229 |
| Hotel rooms, December (July for 2026) | 10,985 | 11,875 | 11,993 | 11,993 |
Three things stand out. Tulum has been losing tourists for three years, slowly at first (−1.7% in 2024, −5.3% in 2025) and faster in 2026 (−8.6% from January to July). SEDETUR counts tourists staying in hotels and in other types of lodging, not hotels alone. Meanwhile, the hotel stock kept growing: 1,008 more rooms between December 2023 and December 2025, up 9.2%, before counting the apartments built for short-term rental. And the figures you may have read in the press are not always these: one national outlet reported in early October that Tulum had lost 33.5% of its tourists, but that percentage is the drop in passengers at Tulum’s airport in the same bulletin, not the drop in tourists.
The bulletins after July were not out when we wrote this, and the statements made since then point lower. On August 14, Quintana Roo’s tourism secretary put Tulum’s hotel occupancy at barely 15%, “the lowest in its history”, and cited sargassum and fewer flights. In mid-September, the president of the Tulum hotel association reported coastal hotels below 20% and all-inclusive resorts below 30%. Those are statements, not the monthly series, and we will not add them to the table until the bulletin confirms them.
Where Has the Drop Hit Hardest?
In the low season: compared with 2024, Tulum lost 24.2 points of hotel occupancy in June 2026, and only 6.2 points in February. The high season still fills most hotel rooms; the months after it are where the income goes.
| Tulum hotel occupancy | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 2026 vs 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 80.5% | 78.8% | 73.2% | −7.3 pts |
| February | 88.0% | 84.0% | 81.8% | −6.2 pts |
| March | 80.1% | 78.7% | 71.9% | −8.2 pts |
| April | 77.5% | 75.9% | 66.5% | −11.0 pts |
| May | 73.8% | 66.9% | 56.0% | −17.8 pts |
| June | 71.7% | 61.6% | 47.5% | −24.2 pts |
| July | 67.9% | 62.8% | 48.7% | −19.2 pts |
| September (2026 not yet published) | 66.7% | 53.4% | — | — |
Read the table as an owner. From January to March 2026, Tulum’s hotels were still more than 70% full. From May, a villa competes with hotels that were about half full in June and July, and with the apartments built for short-term rental, all chasing the same guests. Last year’s September already ran at 53.4%. The low season is now where a villa’s year is won or lost.
Access has shrunk too. Tulum’s own airport lost 45% of its international passengers from January to August 2026, and 98 out of every 100 international passengers who used the Cancún or Tulum airports landed in Cancún. The figures, airline by airline, are in what the 2026 flight numbers mean for villa owners.
Are Villas Holding Up Better Than Condos?
No official statistic answers that: the 63.7% above counts hotels only. SEDETUR measures hotels, AMPI describes sales, and no public series separates a four-bedroom villa from a studio. What you will read is an argument: the oversupply is in small apartments, so a large house with a pool, booked by a family or a group, is not fighting the same glut for the same guest. It is a reasonable argument. It is not a measurement, and an owner should not price a decision on it.
What can be measured is the gap between a typical rental and a well-run one. The average Tulum short-term rental runs at about 44% occupancy, according to a manager tracking more than 13,000 listings. The average we publish across the houses we manage is 70%. Both figures, with what each one counts and five other published rates, are in what Tulum villa owners actually earn. We do not use them to claim that villas are immune: our 70% is an average across a small number of houses, and a 44% market average covers every kind of listing in town. What they show is that, in the same market, two rentals can fill very different numbers of nights.
That gap is the question to ask about your own villa. Compare the nights it filled in 2025 with the market median, month by month. The closer it sat to the median, the more the 2026 low season weighs on a year whose fixed costs do not change.
Is It Still Worth Renting Out a Villa in Tulum in 2026?
At the market-average 44% occupancy, a four-bedroom villa keeps about $43,229 a year before property costs; it is worth renting if that covers the costs of the house with a margin. That depends on how many nights you fill, not on the headlines. A Tulum villa costs money every month whether anyone sleeps in it or not: predial, electricity, water, staff, pool, insurance. We listed those bills in what it costs to own a villa in Tulum. Renting is what pays them.
That figure comes from the worked year we published: at 44% the house books 161 nights, grosses about $68,400, and keeps about $43,229 after platform fee, management commission and withheld tax. At 70% it books 256 nights and keeps about $68,762. The calculation, line by line, is in our rental income guide; we do not repeat it here. The point for 2026 is simple: every night lost in June or September comes off the top of that ledger, and the bills underneath do not move.
What an owner can act on, in a market like this one:
- Price the low season separately. A flat nightly rate across the year is too high for June and too low for Christmas. A full seasonal rate card, with lower low-season prices and longer-stay discounts, competes for the nights the hotels are fighting for.
- Protect the high season. February still ran at 81.8% in 2026. Do not block your best weeks for personal use without knowing what they would earn, and set minimum stays for Christmas, New Year and February.
- Do not depend on one platform. A listing on a single platform depends on that platform’s ranking and fees. Direct bookings from returning guests and groups are the nights that do not.
- Keep the house in condition. An empty house in this climate deteriorates faster than an occupied one, and guests who can choose among half-empty hotels read reviews.
- Tell guests the truth about access. Most international guests will land in Cancún and drive about an hour and a half. A guest who expected a 20-minute transfer starts the stay disappointed.
- Decide on selling with numbers, not with fear. If you are weighing a sale, the question is what the house earns against what it would fetch, after tax and costs, in a market where buyer interest is estimated 40% lower. Selling in the low season of a correction means selling at the moment the numbers look worst. That is a calculation for your notary and your accountant, not for a headline.
We will add each new SEDETUR bulletin to the tables above as it is published. If you own a villa in Tulum and want to know how many nights it could fill under management, with the market as it is in 2026, tell us about your villa.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Tulum’s real estate market crashing in 2026?
Demand has fallen sharply, but no official source measures a price crash. No public body publishes a sale-price index for Tulum. The federal mortgage agency’s index shows Quintana Roo house prices up 9.8% in the second quarter of 2026, but it is a statewide figure built from appraisals of mortgage-financed homes, not from the dollar-priced condos sold to foreign buyers. The local real estate association estimated in May 2025 that buyer interest had dropped 40% since the post-pandemic boom, and blamed an oversupply of one- and two-bedroom apartments. On the rental side, the decline is measured: Tulum’s hotel occupancy fell from 75.3% in 2024 to 69.1% in 2025, and averaged 63.7% from January to July 2026, against 75.9% in the same months of 2024, according to Quintana Roo’s tourism ministry. For an owner who rents, occupancy is the number to watch.
What is Tulum’s hotel occupancy in 2026?
Tulum’s hotels averaged 63.7% occupancy from January to July 2026, against 72.7% in the same months of 2025 and 75.9% in 2024, according to the monthly bulletins of SEDETUR, Quintana Roo’s tourism ministry. The 2026 figures are preliminary. The drop is concentrated in the low season: February still reached 81.8%, but June fell to 47.5% and July to 48.7%, against 71.7% and 67.9% in 2024. The bulletins after July had not been published by early October. In August, Quintana Roo’s tourism secretary put Tulum’s occupancy at barely 15%, and in mid-September the Tulum hotel association reported coastal hotels below 20%; those are statements, not the official series. The number of tourists also fell, by 8.6% from January to July 2026, while the hotel stock grew to 11,993 rooms. The bulletin reports Tulum as one destination, with no split between the beach and the town.
Is it still worth renting out a villa in Tulum in 2026?
Yes, if the rent covers the costs of the house with a margin, and that depends on the nights you fill. A villa costs money every month whether it is rented or not: property tax, electricity, water, staff, pool care and insurance. On a worked year for a four-bedroom villa, at the market-average 44% occupancy the house keeps about $43,229 after platform fee, management commission and withheld tax, before property costs; at 70% it keeps about $68,762. In 2026 the nights are being lost in the low season, from May onward, while the high season still fills most hotel rooms. An owner can act on seasonal pricing, minimum stays in the best weeks, direct bookings and the condition of the house. Here is how to choose a property manager if you hand the house over. Whether to keep renting or to sell is a decision to make with a notary and an accountant, on your own numbers.
Why is Tulum so empty right now?
Because fewer tourists are arriving while more rooms keep opening. Tulum received 879,229 tourists, counted in hotels and in other lodging, from January to July 2026, 8.6% fewer than a year earlier, after two smaller annual declines in 2024 and 2025, while its hotel stock grew by 9.2% in two years, to 11,993 rooms. Access has also shrunk: Tulum’s airport lost 45% of its international passengers from January to August 2026, Aeroméxico stopped flying there on September 30, and 98 out of 100 international air passengers to the area now land in Cancún. Quintana Roo’s tourism secretary also cited sargassum. September and October are usually the quietest months of the year, and in 2025 hotel occupancy was 53.4% in September. No one has measured how much each factor weighs, so be wary of any single explanation.
Written by the Villas Ambar team in Tulum. Occupancy, tourist and hotel-room figures come from the “¿Cómo vamos?” monthly bulletins of the Secretaría de Turismo de Quintana Roo (SEDETUR), from July 2023 to July 2026; house prices from the Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal index as summarized on August 13, 2026; the buyer-demand estimate from AMPI Tulum’s president, as reported on May 26, 2025; airport figures from Mexico’s civil aviation agency (AFAC); rental occupancy and the worked year from our rental income guide, compiled on September 4, 2026. Statements made after the last bulletin are attributed to the people who made them. Nothing here is investment, tax or legal advice. If you own a villa in Tulum, our commission and the full list of what it covers are on our property management page.
More in this collection