What's New on Colombia Move: Market Data, Smarter Browse, Open Contact

Five things shipped this week. They're all about making Colombia Move feel less like a listings site and more like a real tool for people trying to live in (or move to) Colombia.

Here's what changed, why, and what I'd love your feedback on.

1. Neighborhood Market Pages

The biggest ship: /mercado/[city]/[barrio] pages that show real housing market data for specific neighborhoods.

Every housing portal in Colombia — Finca Raíz, Metrocuadrado, Ciencuadras — charges for market reports or hides them behind a signup. Colombia Move now publishes the same data free: active listings, rent-vs-sale split, stratum averages, parking prevalence, amenity frequency. No signup, no fees, no commissions.

The first page live is /mercado/medellin/laureles. It shows every active housing listing in Laureles, broken down by type (apartamento, habitación, comercial), with stratum averages and a recent-listings grid. As more sellers post in Laureles, the data density grows and more stats appear.

There's also a city-level hub that aggregates across all neighborhoods in a city, and a root market page that lists every city with housing inventory.

Why it matters: nobody should pay to know the average price per m² in their neighborhood. That information is generated by the market itself — it doesn't belong to any single portal.

Pages only appear for neighborhoods with 3+ active listings and cities with 10+ (honest thresholds to avoid thin-content pages). As supply grows, more pages graduate automatically.

2. Desktop Browse: Filters and Live Messaging, One Screen

On desktop, the homepage now has two sidebars flanking the listing grid:

• Left: housing filters — type, category, city, neighborhood, price, bedrooms, stratum, parking, amenities. Every filter lives where your eye naturally goes first.
• Right: your messaging inbox — active conversations, unread counts, quick reply. Right there while you browse.

The idea: you shouldn't have to bounce between tabs to reply to a seller while comparing listings. Filters on one side, your inbox on the other, listings in the middle. Everything you need without a single context switch.

3. Mobile Filter Bottom-Sheet

The dual-sidebar pattern doesn't fit on a phone. So mobile users get a filter sheet that slides up from the bottom.

Tap the filter icon in the header → sheet opens with every filter → apply or dismiss. Replaces the old floating +Post button, which was overlapping half the page on narrow screens.

4. Open Seller Contact — No More Sign-In Wall

Previously, you had to sign in to see a seller's WhatsApp number or email. That's gone.

Now, anyone — logged in or not — can tap "Contactar por WhatsApp" on any listing and it opens WhatsApp directly with a message pre-filled:

Hola, vi tu anuncio de arriendo en Colombia Move: "Apartamento en Laureles". ¿Sigue disponible?

Same for email, phone, Telegram, Messenger. No signup required.

Why we opened it up: Colombia's housing market moves fast. Gating contact behind signup lost us leads from buyers who wouldn't create an account just to ask a question. If someone's willing to message a seller, we shouldn't be in the way — a marketplace that makes the first message hard is failing at its one job.

The tradeoff we accepted: phone numbers are now visible in page HTML, which means scrapers can harvest them. For email, phone, Telegram, and Messenger we mitigated this with a server-side redirect that rate-limits and keeps contact details out of the rendered HTML. For WhatsApp specifically, we kept the number direct because any redirect chain breaks iOS/Android Universal Links — and a WhatsApp button that opens a browser instead of the app is a bad button.

WhatsApp numbers are semi-public by convention in Colombia (business cards, Instagram bios), and the UX win is worth the scrape risk.

5. Sticky WhatsApp Bar on Mobile Listings

On every listing detail page, mobile viewers now get a sticky green "Contactar por WhatsApp" bar pinned to the bottom of the viewport. Always reachable, zero scroll.

Combined with the open-contact change: you can land on a listing from Google, see the price and photos, and tap to message the seller in under three seconds. No account, no scroll, no friction.

Why We're Building This Way

A few principles behind all of the above:

Supply is the bottleneck. Colombia Move has a small inventory today. Every UX improvement is really about removing friction between buyer interest and seller response — so every listing we do have converts.

Market data belongs to the market. If we have listings, we should publish the aggregates. Portals that hoard price trends and neighborhood stats are extracting from the market, not serving it. We're not doing that.

Real people don't sign up to ask a question. A marketplace is a service. Making users pay (in time, signups, subscriptions) before they know if a listing is real is a failure of service.

SEO should be earned, not manufactured. The neighborhood market pages only exist for neighborhoods with real data density. Empty "coming soon" pages hurt SEO and user trust more than they help.

What We Need Feedback On

A few specific things worth hearing from you on:

• Market pages: is the data actually useful? Which stats would you want that we're not showing? (Median price/m² is coming — we need more sold-price data first.)
• Desktop layout: is the dual-sidebar too busy, or does having filters and messages in one view actually help the browse?
• Mobile contact: does the sticky WhatsApp bar feel intrusive or useful?
• Open contact: too open? Any concerns about exposing WhatsApp numbers? (Sellers can keep WhatsApp off their contact methods.)

Reply in the comments. If you have longer feedback, email me directly. I read everything.

FAQ

❓ Is Colombia Move free to use?

Yes. Posting is free, browsing is free, contacting sellers is free. We make money from optional promoted listings and affiliate links on the blog. No commissions on deals, no subscriptions.

❓ Why can I see phone numbers without signing in now?

Because the sign-in wall was losing more leads than it was preventing spam. Real buyers don't create accounts just to ask "¿sigue disponible?" — and when we looked at the numbers, the gate was doing more harm than good. So we removed it.

❓ Do you have market data for my neighborhood?

Currently only Laureles in Medellín has enough listings to qualify for its own market page. Every neighborhood with 3+ active housing listings gets one automatically. Want yours included? Post your listing.

❓ How do I get notified about new listings?

Turn on WhatsApp or email notifications in your profile settings. Saved-search alerts are coming next — we're building them now.

❓ Can I post a listing without signing up?

Yes. Signup happens automatically when you publish — we email you a magic link. No password to remember.

❓ What's next?

Saved searches with alerts, more detailed seller response-rate badges, a map view on search, and pushing more neighborhoods past the data-density threshold. Listed in roughly that priority order.

If you're thinking "this sounds great but I just want to find an apartment in Medellín," here's the shortcut: /ciudad/medellin/laureles.

If you're thinking "I should list my apartment here," that's publicar. Two taps from cold start to a published ad.

Thanks for being early on this with us.