Resale inventory has fallen by double digits year over year in several close-in Panama City neighborhoods. The segment above roughly $800,000 tells the opposite story. If you already own here, which channel you sell through now matters as much as when.
For most of the last decade, an owner deciding whether to sell in Panama City faced a fairly uniform market: plenty of comparable listings, patient buyers, and little urgency either way. That's no longer true everywhere. Resale inventory has contracted sharply in several established neighborhoods over the past year, while the top of the new-construction market is still working through a backlog of finished, unsold units. The practical question for an owner today isn't just "is this a good market" — it's which part of the market your specific asset sits in, and which sales channel actually fits it.
According to Panama Equity's Q1 2026 market report, published resale listings fell year over year across every major neighborhood it tracks — but by very different margins:
| Neighborhood | Avg. resale price/m² | 12-month inventory change |
|---|---|---|
| Casco Viejo | $3,800 | -59.4% |
| Santa María | $2,900 | -52.4% |
| Costa del Este | $2,500 | -40.2% |
| San Francisco | $1,900 | -38.0% |
| Punta Pacífica | $2,200 | -31.0% |
| Avenida Balboa | $2,400 | -29.5% |
| El Cangrejo | $1,770 | -43.2% |
A market losing a third to nearly two-thirds of its published comparables in a single year is a market where a well-priced, well-positioned unit has real pricing power — there's simply less for a buyer to compare it against.
These are neighborhood averages from third-party market reporting and can vary meaningfully by building, floor, finish level and view. Treat the table above as directional context, not an appraisal — confirm actual comparable sales for your specific unit before setting an asking price.
That inventory squeeze doesn't extend to every price band. In the segment above roughly $800,000, industry reporting suggests approximately a third of available pre-construction inventory consists of completed units that have sat unsold for 12 months or more. If your asset sits at that end of the market, you're not competing against a shrinking comparable pool — you're competing against a backlog of brand-new, amenity-rich completed product with motivated developers behind it.
A tightening market at the middle doesn't automatically mean pricing power at the top. Right now, Panama City's resale market is really behaving like two different cycles at once.
Which channel fits depends on where your asset sits in that split picture, and what you're actually optimizing for:
Fits best in neighborhoods where comparable inventory is genuinely scarce and recent sales support your target price — the tightening mid-market segments in the table above are the clearest case.
Fits when privacy matters, the asset is unusual enough that public comparables undersell it, or you'd rather reach a small, pre-qualified buyer pool than field lowball inquiries from a broad listing.
Fits when the asset's real value is in a redevelopment or repositioning you don't want to fund alone — you contribute the asset, a partner contributes capital, and you share in a better-executed outcome instead of selling at today's as-is value.
We work directly with private owners on all three paths — listing exclusively when the neighborhood data supports it, structuring a discreet off-market process when it doesn't, or arranging a joint-venture partner when an asset needs capital more than it needs a buyer, as with Clayton 601. If you're weighing your options on a Panama property you already own, we're glad to walk through where it sits in this split market before you commit to a channel.