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The Rising Floor | Mercala
Aruba · July 2026
The Rising Floor
July brought the dearest month of new listings on record — not because houses got dearer, but because the cheap ones stopped coming
ORANJESTAD | Based on Mercala data, July 2026
Angelo J. Willems MSc. FI
Founder, Mercala
ORANJESTAD — In July, the median asking price of a newly listed house on Aruba reached $799,000 — the highest monthly figure Mercala has recorded, up 39% on July last year. The average ask stayed above a million dollars for the second month running. And yet nothing about July suggests a market suddenly bidding prices up: the number of houses coming to market was almost exactly what it was a year ago, 41 against 43.
What changed is not what houses cost. It is which houses are for sale. Seven months into 2026, new supply is down 21% on last year — and the contraction is not spread evenly across the market. It is concentrated, overwhelmingly, at the bottom.
The market in brief
Metric
Jan–Jul 2025
Jan–Jul 2026
New listings (year to date)
273
216 (−21%)
Median ask, year to date (USD)
$575,000
$599,500 (+4.3%)
New listings (July)
43
41
Median ask, July (USD)
$575,000
$799,000 (+39%)
Average ask, July (USD)
$868,959
$1,050,835 (+21%)
New listings under $400,000 (year to date)
87
50 (−43%)
New listings above $1.5m (year to date)
28
30 (+7%)
The last two rows are the story. In a market that shrank by a fifth, the supply of houses asking less than $400,000 nearly halved — from one listing in three last year to fewer than one in four now. Every other tier gave ground too, except one: listings above $1.5m, the only segment to grow in absolute terms. One new listing in seven now arrives above that mark, against one in ten a year ago. The market's floor is not holding; it is rising.
July was this pattern at its starkest. A luxury-heavy book of new instructions — much of it in Noord, where the month's new listings carried a median ask of $1.35m — met an entry-level pipeline that has largely gone quiet. The result was a record median that no individual seller set.
A map of the market
↓ The dear coast — record asks on thin supply
Palm Beach and Malmok
Noord
↑ Growing and affordable — interior and east
Santa Cruz
Oranjestad East
→ Thinning and slow — the west
Oranjestad West
Paradera
↓ The quiet south
Savaneta
San Nicolas
Region
Jan–Jul 2025
Jan–Jul 2026
Median 2025
Median 2026
Noord/Tanki Leendert
107
69
$755,000
$790,000
Santa Cruz
27
33
$399,000
$421,348
Oranjestad East
18
31
$735,000
$650,000
Oranjestad West
43
23
$645,000
$595,000
Paradera
28
18
$587,000
$529,350
Savaneta
18
14
$357,416
—†
San Nicolas (north & south)
13
7
—*
—*
\Too few listings to quote a reliable median.†Savaneta's 2026 sample is dominated by a cluster of new luxury developments marketed in multiple units; a median would describe the developments, not the district.*
The north keeps charging more for less. Noord/Tanki Leendert remains a third of the island's market and its centre of gravity, but supply there has fallen by more than a third — and what arrives asks more each month. The region's year-to-date median edged up to $790,000; its July intake alone carried a median of $1.35m. The belt behind the hotel strip is steadily leaving the ordinary buyer behind.
The east and the interior are the affordable market now. Santa Cruz and Oranjestad East are the only regions adding supply — up 22% and 72% respectively — and both did it while staying within reach: Santa Cruz at a median of $421,000, the cheapest sizeable market on the island, and Oranjestad East pulling back from $735,000 to $650,000 as volume arrived. Together they now account for three in ten new listings, up from a sixth last year. Where the bottom of the market still exists, this is where it lives.
The west is thinning without repricing. Oranjestad West nearly halved its new supply, and — unusually for this market — asked less for it, the median easing to $595,000. As the figures below show, it remains the slowest region on the island to sell. Fewer houses, softer asks and the longest waits: a market cooling from within. Paradera's is a similar story in miniature, though it clears far faster.
The south is quiet, with two exceptions. Savaneta's headline numbers this year are best read with care: its small sample is dominated by a cluster of newly built luxury units on the coast, asking prices between $1.45m and $3m — the southeast coast's conversion into second-home territory, now visible within a single district. At the island's far end, San Nicolas has been nearly dormant all year — but July brought it three new listings, two of them asking under $200,000 — a bracket that has supplied just eight of the island's 216 new listings this year.
The waiting game
Aruba's houses take a long time to sell, and the wait is lengthening in the places supply has thinned.
Region (2025 cohort)
Listings
Median days on market
P25
P75
Paradera
75
337
260
469
Santa Cruz
53
351
220
469
Noord/Tanki Leendert
242
376
255
469
San Nicolas South
11
387
282
454
Oranjestad East
53
413
237
492
San Nicolas North
9
424
242
500
Savaneta
38
426
328
495
Oranjestad West
70
448
374
469
The interior clears fastest. Paradera and Santa Cruz — the island's two cheapest sizeable markets — turn over in eleven to twelve months, and Santa Cruz does it while absorbing more supply than last year. Noord, the priciest large market, still ranks third: expensive, but deep. Demand there is real enough to meet the asks in reasonable time.
The slow end of the table is the west and south. Oranjestad West pairs the island's longest wait — 448 days, some fifteen months at the median — with supply that has halved and asks that have softened: sellers there are not being met, and the newest ones appear to know it. Savaneta sits nearly as long. The pattern that held in the first half of the year holds through July: what separates the quick markets from the slow ones is not price but depth of demand, and the deep markets are the interior's affordable ones and the north's expensive one.
Streets that tell stories
Neighbourhood
Jan–Jul 2025
Jan–Jul 2026
Median 2025
Median 2026
Palm Beach/Malmok
55
28
$850,000
$1,450,000
Alto Vista
19
18
$645,000
$752,500
Sabana Blanco/Mahuma
5
14
$945,000
$510,000
Papilon
8
11
$434,014
$346,369
Pos Abou/Cunucu Abou
6
10
$1,035,556
$850,000
Washington
18
10
$797,500
$577,800
Moco/Tanki Flip
6
9
$479,500
$389,500
Cashero
9
8
$295,000
$417,500
Palm Beach/Malmok remains the market's ceiling and keeps raising it. New supply on the luxury strip halved, to 28 listings, while the median ask climbed to $1.45m — 71% above last year. The corridor that pushed June's island-wide average through a million dollars did the same work in July. The Eagle Beach corridor beside it has barely reopened: five new listings all year, against 28 by this point in 2025, and those five asked a median above a million.
The counterweight sits inland. Sabana Blanco/Mahuma, on Oranjestad's edge, nearly tripled its new supply — 5 listings to 14 — at a median of $510,000, roughly half last year's figure: genuine mid-market volume arriving where there was little. Papilon ($346,000) and Moco/Tanki Flip ($390,000) remain the entry level's last reliable addresses, both cheaper than a year ago. Cashero continues to move the other way, its median up from $295,000 to $417,500 as its cheapest stock cleared. And Alto Vista held its volume — eighteen new listings against last year's nineteen — while its median ask climbed 17% to $752,500.
What the numbers do not say
These are asking prices, not transactions. The gap between what sellers ask and what buyers pay is not observable in listing data, and in a thin island market it can be wide.
Regional samples are small, and a single large listing can move a district's median — which is why Savaneta's figures are footnoted rather than quoted this month: its 2026 intake is dominated by one cluster of luxury developments, and a median drawn from it would describe those developments rather than the district around them. The direction of regional movements is more reliable than their magnitude.
Geography is derived from each listing's location data; roughly one listing in ten cannot be placed in a region and is included in island-wide figures only.
The view from here
For two years the running story of this market has been scarcity: less coming up for sale, and firmer prices on what does. Seven months into 2026 the scarcity has acquired a shape. It is not houses in general that are disappearing from the market — it is cheap ones. The supply of new listings under $400,000 has nearly halved in a year; the only segment growing is the one above $1.5m; and the record set in July was set not by any seller raising a price but by the market's composition sliding upward beneath the totals.
For buyers of ordinary means, the practical map is now well drawn: the interior and the east — Santa Cruz above all, with Oranjestad East, Papilon and Moco/Tanki Flip behind it — hold most of what remains affordable, and those markets are liquid enough to function. For sellers elsewhere, the lesson of the west is worth weighing: thin supply alone does not firm a market. And for the island, the question that July sharpens is the one a rising floor always poses — what happens to the buyers who used to come in under it.
Questions about the data or the analysis? Write to info@mercala.org.
Based on Mercala data covering active Aruban brokerages. Analysis measures new house listings (first observed within the analysis window), sale contracts only, priced at $50,000 or above in USD equivalent. All prices normalised to USD via Mercala's price history function, which applies exchange rates prevailing at the time of observation. Year-on-year comparisons use Mercala's proprietary coverage function to normalise market activity and mitigate distortions: comparisons are restricted to brokerages with verified continuous coverage in both compared periods; brokerages failing either test are reported separately and excluded from comparative statistics. Days on market measured on the 2025 listing cohort. Regions and neighbourhoods derived from listing location data. Real Estate Aruba merged into JZ Realty (rebrand). Data current as of 1 August 2026.
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