Casa Clara: We Built Colombia's First Transparent Housing Layer

Colombia's housing market is one of the most opaque in Latin America. There's no central place to see what a Laureles apartment actually sold for last month. No way to check whether the rent you're being quoted is 25% above neighborhood average. No public record of which listings spent six months on the market before the seller quietly dropped the price by 30 million pesos. Buyers and renters navigate the market essentially blind, and foreigners moving to Colombia get the worst of it — they're the only ones who can't call a cousin with three friends in real estate.

In the US that problem was solved decades ago by the MLS — the Multiple Listing Service — plus the public layers built on top of it like Zillow and Redfin. Colombia never got one. Finca Raíz and Metrocuadrado have listings, but no historical prices, no sold data, no transparency layer. We decided to fix that, starting with the data we already have.

Today we're rolling out Casa Clara — a transparent housing layer built directly into Colombia Move. Price history on every listing. A "mark as sold" flow that turns real transactions into public market data. Housing-specific filters like stratum, admin fees, parking and amenities. No paywall, no commissions, no dealer-only walled gardens. Free for everyone.

Why we built Casa Clara

Every week people message us on Colombia Move asking the same three questions: is this price fair, how long has this listing been up, and did the seller already negotiate with someone else. These are questions any American house-hunter takes for granted — Zillow answers them in a single glance. In Colombia, there was nowhere to look.

The underlying problem isn't that the data doesn't exist. Sellers know what their apartments are worth. Agents know the comparable sales from last month. Banks know the appraisals. The problem is that none of this information is public or shared across platforms, which means every new buyer has to rediscover the market from scratch. Foreign buyers get doubly penalized: they can't even ask their grandmother's friend because they don't have one.

The quiet result is a market where everyone assumes they're being overpriced by at least 15% — and so they are, because sellers price defensively for that haggle. Transparency collapses the margin on both sides. When the last five sold prices in a neighborhood are public, the seller can't inflate, and the buyer can't lowball. Everyone negotiates on the same facts, and deals close faster. That's the world we're building toward.

What Casa Clara actually does

Five concrete features went live today, all on the existing housing section. You don't need to sign up for anything new, install anything, or pay anything — this is a free layer on top of the marketplace you already use.

1. Price history on every listing

Every time a seller edits a listing's price, we record the change with a timestamp. The listing detail page now renders a live line chart showing the full price journey — green when the price went down, red when it went up, with the exact percentage change. Hover any data point for the precise amount and date. It's the same thing Zillow shows for American homes, except we're doing it from day one with real Colombian listings.

2. Mark as sold — the data linchpin

When a seller closes a deal, they can now click one button on their listing to mark it sold. Optionally, they can share the final price (or tick a box to confirm the sale without revealing the price — both options feed the dataset). A green SOLD banner takes over the listing, visible to everyone who visits that URL later. The sale date and price become part of the permanent record. Nothing gets deleted. The listing transitions from "active inventory" to "market comparable" and stays forever.

3. Pending state for in-negotiation deals

Sellers with a serious buyer but an unclosed deal can flip their listing to "pending" instead of marking it sold. The listing stays live and searchable, but a yellow "Venta en negociación" banner tells new buyers to hold off unless the current deal falls through. If the negotiation collapses, one click flips it back to active. No deal-limbo, no ghost-listings.

4. Colombia-specific filters: stratum, amenities, parking

The most important filter in Colombian real estate — estrato — has never existed in any international property platform, because nobody outside Colombia even knows what it is. Casa Clara has it. Plus parking filters, an amenity checkbox grid (pool, gym, elevator, 24-hour doorman, BBQ terrace, coworking, pet-friendly, playground), and the existing bedroom/bathroom/area filters. A buyer searching for "Estrato 5 apartments in Medellín with pool and parking" now gets an actual answer in one click.

5. Completeness score that rewards transparency

Every housing listing owner now sees a quality score on their own listing page. The score breaks out exactly which optional fields are still missing — estrato, admin fee, parking, amenities — and next to each one is a short reason: "appears in stratum-filtered searches", "the #1 buyer question, saves five WhatsApp threads", "2x more messages". Filling in all five bumps the score meaningfully and flips the badge from yellow to green. Transparency becomes a game with visible rewards instead of a chore.

Who this is for

Casa Clara is for three groups who've been underserved forever. Foreign buyers and renters moving to Colombia who have no local network to sanity-check prices. You can now see what a Laureles two-bedroom has actually been fluctuating at over the last few months, not just what the current listing claims. If you're one of them, our guide to buying property in Colombia as a foreigner pairs perfectly with this.

It's also for Colombian sellers and landlords who are tired of negotiating from zero every single listing. When the price history is public, you don't have to spend two weeks convincing a buyer that your price is fair — the data is on the page. Legitimate sellers have everything to gain from transparency; the only people hurt by it are the ones trying to price 25% above comparables and hope a foreign buyer doesn't notice.

And it's for real estate agents and brokers who actually want to win on service and expertise, not on information asymmetry. If you know Laureles inside out, a transparent market lets you prove it. Post your listings, mark them sold when they close, and the "verified sold" track record becomes a real credential. Your competition is still selling hope; you're selling evidence.

How to actually use it today

If you're a buyer or renter, just open the housing section and start filtering. The new filters appear on any housing search. Try combining "Estrato 5 + Pool + Parking" for Medellín and see what comes back. Open any listing — if the seller has edited the price, you'll see the history chart. If they marked it sold, the SOLD banner shows the final price (when they chose to disclose it).

If you're a seller or landlord, go to publicar and pick a housing category. The new property details block will appear below the bedrooms/bathrooms/area row. Fill in as many fields as you can — estrato, monthly admin fee, built year, parking, amenity checkboxes. Each field has a one-line help tooltip explaining what buyers do with it. Already have a listing up? Click "editar" and add the missing fields there. And when your listing closes, please click "Marcar como vendido" — even if you hide the price, you're feeding the dataset for the next person.

Why Casa Clara beats what you're using now

Finca Raíz and Metrocuadrado are the existing incumbents. Both are Spanish-only, agent-dominated, and charge sellers to list. Neither shows price history. Neither has a "sold for" field, much less a public one. Neither filters by stratum in any useful way. Both bury half their inventory behind agent contact gates.

Airbnb and Facebook Marketplace are the other habitual destinations. Airbnb is short-term only, and the data is locked inside Airbnb. Facebook Marketplace has no filters, no verification, no price history, and — as we've written about in our guide to avoiding scams in Colombia — is where most of the bait-and-switch listings live.

Casa Clara is bilingual (Spanish and English), free for sellers and buyers, no commissions, no agent gates, direct messaging from buyer to seller, with price history and sold data baked in. You keep your phone number, your photos, your terms. We just add the transparency layer on top.

Where this goes next

The short-term goal is boring but necessary: collect enough sold-price and amenity data to make the next features meaningful. Once we have a few hundred verified sold listings, we're turning on neighborhood market-stats pages — median price per square meter in Laureles, average days on market in El Poblado, year-over-year price trend in Envigado. These pages will be the first time Colombia has had a public, free, bilingual source for real estate market data.

After that comes a comparable-sales engine: open any listing and see the five most similar recently-sold properties in the same neighborhood + price band + amenity mix. This is the piece that turns Casa Clara from a listing site into a real valuation tool — the kind of thing your buyer's agent should have been telling you, except now it's free and transparent.

And the part we're most excited about is that every single feature gets stronger the more listings get posted. Casa Clara compounds. Each listing is a data point; each sale closes a loop; each neighborhood that hits critical mass becomes a permanent public resource. It's the opposite of a paywalled walled garden. The more people use it, the better it gets for everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Do I have to disclose my sale price if I mark a listing sold?

No. When you click "Marcar como vendido" there's a checkbox to confirm the sale without revealing the price. Your listing still becomes a market comparable for time-on-market and volume data, but the price stays private. We'd love the price, but we respect that not every seller wants it public — and half a data point is still better than zero.

❓ Is Casa Clara free? What's the catch?

It's free. No commissions, no listing fees, no "featured placement" you're forced to buy. The whole thing is free because the data layer is the value, and the data only works if everyone participates. There's an optional paid feature to boost a listing to the top of search for a few days, but that's entirely opt-in and unrelated to the MLS layer itself.

❓ I already have listings on Finca Raíz. Should I switch?

You don't have to switch — you can post on both. But the moment a buyer sees your Colombia Move listing with price history, stratum, amenities, and a transparent sold-price track record, and your Finca Raíz listing with none of that, you'll see which one generates the better leads. Most sellers who try us end up treating Finca Raíz as the fallback.

❓ Does this work for rentals too, or only sales?

Both. The mark-as-sold flow works for "rented" too — the UI copy adapts to the listing type. Price history works for rent changes. The new filters (stratum, parking, amenities) apply to rentals. Long-term furnished, unfurnished, temporada, rooms — all welcome.

❓ What about houses outside Medellín and Bogotá?

Casa Clara works for every city in Colombia. Villavicencio, Pereira, Armenia, Bucaramanga, Santa Marta, Cali, Cartagena — all the same features, all free. The smaller the city, the more valuable transparency becomes, because there are fewer listings to compare against and every data point matters more.

Try it

Head to colombiamove.com/seccion/vivienda and start filtering. If you have a listing already, click editar and fill in the new fields — it takes two minutes and genuinely helps everyone else hunting in your neighborhood. If you're brand new, post a listing for free. And if you have thoughts on what Casa Clara should do next, drop them in our community — we're building this in the open and real user feedback shapes what ships next.