Notas desde el istmo.
Mercado, zonas, inversión y vida cotidiana en Panamá. Sin postales: datos verificados, voces honestas y la lentitud necesaria para entender un país.
Costa del Este at thirty: what Panama's planned-suburb experiment actually delivered
Presented to the public in 1995 as a 310-hectare privately masterplanned district carved out of canal fill and mangrove, Costa del Este is now Panama City's benchmark for vertical living. Three decades on, the tradeoffs are visible.
Panama's four residency pathways for foreign property buyers, ranked by what each one demands
Friendly Nations, Pensionado, Qualified Investor, Reforestation: each pathway puts a different floor under the real estate decision in metropolitan Panama City.
Panama's construction permits rebounded 43.5% in early 2026. Housing registrations tell a different story
Permit values climbed to $417.2M through April. But housing registrations are down 46% on a two-year basis. The tension behind the headline recovery, and what it means for metropolitan supply.
Panama's mortgage credit contracted 23.5% in early 2026. What the Superintendency's data signals
Banks operating in Panama originated 23.5% fewer mortgages between January and April than in the same window last year. The headline aggregate hides the story.
Vetting a Panama real estate broker: credentials, registries, and red flags
Panama's broker licensing is uneven and the gap between a credentialed professional and a business card is often invisible to a foreign buyer.
How a 17th-century building becomes a 2026 apartment: the restoration grammar of Casco Antiguo
In Casco Antiguo, a restored colonial facade often fronts a building barely a decade old. That is not a failure of preservation; it is a four-order code working exactly as written.
Costa del Este or Casco Antiguo: what a week in each actually feels like
Both neighborhoods draw foreign residents, but they encode opposite ideas of how a city should work. A practical, unromantic comparison of daily life in each.
Costa del Este, thirty years on: the planned suburb Panama City built on a landfill
Three decades after its master plan was unveiled, Costa del Este is one of Panama City's most valuable addresses — and a case study in what planned development buys, and what it quietly costs.
The dollar question: what Panama's currency system means for non-USD buyers
Every apartment in metropolitan Panama City is priced, financed, and titled in US dollars. For buyers who earn in euros, pounds, or pesos, that single fact reshapes the deal — and the risk.
Buying property in Panama City, end to end: the process and the real costs
A foreign buyer's deal in metro Panama rarely fails on price. It fails on title, tax clearance and a deposit wired to the wrong account. The full sequence, and who pays what.
How property is held in Panama: personal name, corporation, foundation, or trust
Before a foreign buyer in Costa del Este or Punta Pacífica agrees on a price, one decision is already waiting: whose name goes on the title. The four ways to hold Panama City property, and what each one really costs after a decade of transparency reform.
The four ways foreigners get Panama residency in 2026, ranked by tradeoffs
Panama still runs four practical residency routes for foreigners: Friendly Nations, Pensionado, Qualified Investor and Reforestation. The minimums, timelines and one looming deadline matter most once you map them onto Panama City property.