Tulum's real estate oversupply now has a number attached to it. Housing units under construction rose from 1,466 in 2017 to 13,266 in 2023, an increase of 1,028 percent.
Over the same stretch, tourism stopped growing and never returned to its pre-pandemic level. The buildings kept going up anyway.
That mismatch is the subject of an analysis by InfoHabitat, built with data from Softec and the federal Tourism Ministry and published this week by El Economista. It lands on anyone holding a preconstruction contract in Tulum, anyone counting on rental income to cover a note, and anyone working in a construction sector that has been the town's steadiest employer for a decade.
A 10 percent promise built the Tulum real estate oversupply
The boom answered expectations of profitability tied to vacation rentals and appreciation rather than to a growing need for housing, according to the analysis, signed by InfoHabitat director Eduardo Moya.
Housing stopped being measured by its use and started being measured by its expected return as an investment asset.
InfoHabitat lists what fed the expectation. Tulum's international standing as a destination, the arrival of Tulum International Airport and the Maya Train, and marketing that advertised annual returns close to 10 percent in some short-term rental projects.
Both the airport and the train are now running. The analysis does not argue that either one failed. It argues that the construction pipeline was sized against what they were expected to deliver rather than against demand anyone had counted.
The fast rebound after the pandemic hardened the belief that visitor numbers would keep climbing. More projects launched, most of them aimed at buyers who never intended to live in them.
Sales halved in two years
Inventory for sale across the region reached 6,340 homes in 2023, close to double the 3,243 counted in 2019.
Sales moved the other way. Annual transactions fell from 3,487 units in 2023 to 1,711 in 2025, a drop of roughly 51 percent in two years.
Monthly absorption tells the same story at the level of a single project. A development sold 1.4 homes a month on average in 2022. By 2025 it sold 0.9. Every project takes longer to clear, and the ones launched behind it wait longer still.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. At the 2025 pace, the 6,340 homes already listed in 2023 represent close to four years of inventory, before a single unit still under construction is added to the count.
Construction costs outran prices, so the apartments shrank
Between 2021 and 2025, sale prices rose 39 percent. Construction costs rose 47 percent. Developers absorbed the gap by cutting square footage, holding the price per square meter steady while the apartment behind it got smaller.
It is the adjustment a market makes when it can no longer raise the sticker price. The buyer sees a familiar number and less floor.
Smaller units also change who the buyer is. A studio priced off a yield calculation is not a family home, and it competes for the same guest as every other studio on the same block.
Cancun sits at 89 percent occupancy, Tulum at 21
The sharpest figure in the report has nothing to do with construction. Of the housing stock in Cancun, 89 percent is occupied. In Playa del Carmen the figure is 82 percent. In Tulum it is 21 percent.
Four out of five homes here sit empty, waiting on a guest or a buyer instead of housing a resident.
A resident population absorbs a downturn, InfoHabitat argues. People who live somewhere keep spending there when visitor numbers fall. A market where most units are empty most of the year has no such cushion, and it rises and falls with the tourism figures.
The dependence runs both ways. Restaurants, schools, clinics, and shops need customers through September as much as through February, and a housing stock built around two high seasons does not produce them.
InfoHabitat wants permits tied to real demand
El Economista reported in June that Tulum had already become a reference point for other vertical housing markets in Mexico, a case study in what happens when supply is planned against a forecast rather than against demand that can be counted.
The new report closes on a line aimed well past this municipality.
The lesson applies to any tourist destination in expansion. Densifying before planning does not advance development, it advances oversupply.
For a recovery, InfoHabitat lists legal certainty over land tenure, basic infrastructure, statistical data specific to the municipality, and closer coordination between authorities and the private sector. The last item is the one with a lever attached. The firm wants new construction permits checked against effective housing demand before they are issued.
No municipal authority has said whether that check will be applied. Until it is, the 13,266 units already under construction keep arriving into a market that sold 1,711 homes last year.
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