The Rising Floor

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

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

\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.

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

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.