Latinos Are Driving Household Growth In The United States, But Buying A Home Keeps Getting Harder
Originally published by News Americas Now Read the original
News Americas Now, Armenia, Colombia, Mon. October 26, 2026: Latino households have become one of the biggest engines of population growth in the United States. According to NAHREP’s State of Hispanic Homeownership report, they accounted for 92.6% of the country’s net household formation growth in 2025.
It is one of the fastest growing communities in the country, the one forming the most new households, and one whose economic weight keeps rising. And yet owning a home, one of the main goals for so many of these families, keeps getting harder to achieve.
The average mortgage rate held at 7.40% in the week of October 15, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey, its highest level since November 2023. And the median price of a home nationwide stood at US$417,500 in September, according to the National Association of Realtors, which also warns that fewer and fewer buyers are able to qualify for a loan. The very people driving the market’s growth are also facing the highest barriers to entering it.
This picture is leading many families to reconsider where to build their wealth. And for millions of Latinos, that search has a natural answer: investing in their country of origin.
The Colombian diaspora is one of the cases where this trend can be measured clearly. Between January and August 2026, Colombia received US$8,897 million in remittances, a figure that, according to Banco de la República, the country’s central bank, surpassed foreign direct investment. In addition, one third of those who send remittances do so, in part, to buy or improve a home, according to Asobancaria, Colombia’s banking association.
That interest is already showing up in the market. One in ten new homes sold in the country is bought by Colombians living abroad, according to Camacol, the Colombian construction chamber, a sign that for the diaspora, remittances are moving from everyday spending toward building wealth.
And Quindío leads that phenomenon, as the department with the highest share of Colombian buyers living abroad, at 22% of sales. The United States is the main origin of those buyers, at 57.9%, according to Asobancaria.
Quindío does not top that list by chance. Alongside sustained appreciation in recent years, it offers quality of life, the weight of the Coffee Cultural Landscape, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and air connectivity that keeps growing. It is a region long associated mainly with tourism that is now consolidating as one of the country’s most attractive investment destinations.
People working on the ground confirm the shift. According to CAMU’s records, a homebuilder with more than 40 years operating in Quindío, nearly half of its sales in recent years at its Brassia Campestre and Armoniko Living projects went to buyers who live outside the country, and most do not buy to move back but to invest, since seven in ten already own a home.”
A few years ago, a buyer from abroad was the exception, and today it is almost half of what we sell,” says Clarena Mejía Giraldo, CAMU’s general manager.
For Clarena, much of the change comes down to distance no longer being an obstacle. “We get calls from families in New York, New Jersey or Florida who decide on the purchase without ever having set foot in the project. They do not decide lightly: they check the builder’s track record, that a fiducia, an escrow trust, protects their money, and that the support is real. When there is that backing, distance stops weighing on the decision,” she explains. Today the purchase can be completed remotely, with legal powers of attorney and on the same terms as any buyer inside the country.
Behind each individual decision there is one shared underlying movement. As long as access to homeownership keeps moving further out of reach for Latinos in the United States, the diaspora will keep looking for ways to build its wealth and make the dream of owning a home real, and increasingly it is achieving that in its country of origin. If the trend holds, the Eje Cafetero, Colombia’s coffee region, with Quindío at the head, will keep gaining ground as the destination where that dream comes true.
