The median rose a third in a year
290,000 dollars for a house, on an island losing residents
The advertised rent and the one actually paid.
The median sale price reached 290,000 dollars in the first quarter of 2025, 32% higher than a year earlier. A studio in San Juan starts around 1,000 dollars a month, and around 306 has to be added for water, power and internet, which are almost never included.
What makes this figure strange is putting it next to the census. A market losing 17,686 residents a year should be loosening, not tightening by a third. That it does the opposite means what moves the price is not how many people live here, but who is buying.
The Center for a New Economy measured the connection: for every 10% rents rise in an area, the median sale price in that area rises 23%. Short-term rental is not one more use of housing; it is the one that sets the price of the rest.