Blauwgrond and the Area Around It: What the Rent Data Says

The headline on this page used to promise an answer to the question of who ends up living in Blauwgrond. We have taken that answer out, because nobody publishes it. There is no census of a Paramaribo neighborhood by occupation, origin or income that we can read, and writing one from impression is how a page about a real place where real people live becomes something they would not recognize. What follows is narrower and, we think, more useful: exactly what the published rent figures say, what they do not cover, and the questions that decide whether a specific house suits you.

What we removed, and why

The earlier version of this page carried a population density for the neighborhood, a list of the ethnic groups said to live here, a description of the jobs expatriates here supposedly hold, a judgment about how safe the streets are, a rent range in US dollars, a taxi fare, a weekly grocery total, a utilities range and a doctor's consultation fee. Not one of those had a source we could trace. The density figure in particular is the kind of number that reads as hard data and is not: no statistical office we could read publishes a density for Blauwgrond. All of it is gone.

We are also not describing what the neighborhood feels like, or who fits in here. That is not a gap in our research; it is a claim about other people's homes that no source supports.

There is no rent figure measured for Blauwgrond

Our approved reference data measures advertised rents on four zones: Paramaribo-Noord, Paramaribo-Zuid, Paramaribo-Overig and Wanica. Blauwgrond is not one of them. So there is no rent figure measured for Blauwgrond in anything we can cite, and we are not going to hand you another zone's number as if it were this neighborhood's. A figure measured somewhere else, carrying a real source and a real sample size, is more misleading than no figure at all, because it looks checkable.

What the three rent numbers actually are

This matters more than the amounts. The three figures per zone are often presented as market segments — a basic home, a comfortable home, an expatriate home. They are not. They are the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile of one and the same collection of listings. The same adverts produce all three numbers; nothing in the data separates a "basic" property from an "expatriate" one.

And they are asking prices from estate agency adverts, not signed rents. The reference note says it plainly: ASKING PRICES from the agency segment, not transaction prices and not a national average — they skew high, and they skew the way our audience shops. So these are not a market average, and they are not what a Surinamese household pays for a home. They describe what agencies advertise to the segment that shops in euros.

The measured zones, in full

Aggregated from the listings of five Surinamese agencies, held in our reference data with the source given as SuriHousing. Each line is the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile of the same set, in euros per month:

• Paramaribo-Noord: EUR 706 / EUR 1,250 / EUR 2,250. The percentiles were measured on 16 October 2026 from 83 priced listings; the median on 5 October 2026 from 81. Three listings were excluded as outliers by a Tukey 1.5×IQR fence.
• Paramaribo-Zuid: EUR 789 / EUR 1,417 / EUR 2,224. Sixty priced listings; the 25th percentile measured on 11 October 2026, the other two on 16 October 2026. No listings excluded.
• Paramaribo-Overig: EUR 950 / EUR 1,250 / EUR 2,500. Seventy-seven priced listings for the 25th percentile, measured 16 October 2026; 79 for the median and the 75th percentile, measured 5 October 2026. Two listings excluded.
• Wanica: EUR 654 / EUR 975 / EUR 1,734. Twenty-two priced listings — a small sample, and worth remembering before reading anything into the gap with the city zones. Measured between 8 and 16 October 2026. One listing excluded.

Read the sample sizes as part of the figure. Twenty-two adverts is a thin basis for three percentiles, and the measurement dates differ within a single zone, which means the three numbers on one line were not all taken from the same week's adverts.

Utilities are not one number

The old version of this page offered a single monthly range for electricity, water and internet. That range was invented. Here is what is actually published, and why it does not collapse into one figure.

• Electricity: SRD 211.78 per month as a standing charge for a single-phase domestic connection, payable before you use anything, plus a stepped consumption tariff: SRD 1.9710 per kWh up to 400 kWh a month, SRD 2.8500 from 401 to 900 kWh, SRD 3.3300 from 901 to 1,500 kWh and SRD 4.6800 above that. Published by N.V. Energiebedrijven Suriname, tariff recorded as in force on 1 December 2024. Because the tariff steps, a heavy user pays more per unit and not merely more units — which is why air conditioning changes the bill more than a flat range suggests.
• Internet: SRD 1,124.96 per month excluding BTW for Telesur's basic fiber package, up to 400 Mbps, on a 24-month contract; the streaming package is SRD 1,899.95 excluding BTW for up to 1 Gbps. Read from Telesur's own pricing page on 5 October 2026. We have not added tax to these, because the correct rate is a separate published fact and a plausible percentage is how a figure loses its provenance. Your bill will be higher than the number above.
• Water: no published tariff sits in our reference data. We are not estimating one. Ask the supplier what the connection at a specific address costs, and ask the landlord whose name the meter is in.

Whether a fiber package is even available at a given address is not something the price page answers. That is an address-level question for the provider.

Groceries and getting around, without invented totals

A weekly shopping total was removed for the same reason as the rest: it needs quantities nobody publishes. What is published are shelf prices at one online supermarket, read on 5 October 2026, one item per line: white rice SRD 46.20 a kilo, wheat flour SRD 55.30 a kilo, white sugar SRD 45.60 a kilo, table salt SRD 22.22 a kilo, sunflower oil SRD 82.83 for 800 ml and bottled water SRD 29.43 for 1.5 liters. One shop, one product each — that describes that shop's shelf, not the Surinamese market.

The same logic applies to the taxi fare we deleted. The one published price that touches getting around is fuel: SRD 48.32 per liter for gasoline and SRD 53.27 per liter for diesel at one retailer, last changed on 25 March 2026. A monthly transport cost is that price times a distance nobody publishes, so we are not giving you one.

The questions that actually decide a house

Instead of telling you what kind of person lives where, these are the things worth settling before you sign, at the address itself:

• Is the rent stated in euros, US dollars or Surinamese dollars, and in which currency is it payable? The published figures are in euros, which tells you something about who the adverts are aimed at.
• What is the term, the notice period and the deposit, and what triggers an increase?
• Which utilities are included, whose name is on each meter, and are there arrears attached to the connection?
• What happens when the power goes off — is there a back-up, and who pays for its fuel?
• How is water supplied, and is there storage?
• Travel time from this exact address to your work and your school, measured by you, at the hour you would actually travel.
• Is fiber available at this address, confirmed by the provider rather than by the advert?
• Who maintains what, in writing.

Where to check, and what we could not source

The rent percentiles are aggregated agency listings held in our own reference data, sourced to SuriHousing, with the measurement dates and sample sizes given above. The electricity tariff is N.V. Energiebedrijven Suriname; the internet prices are Telesur; the fuel prices are GOw2 Energy Suriname; the shelf prices are Avoda. All of our reference reading was confirmed on 24 October 2026.

What we could not source, and therefore do not state: any population, density or demographic figure for Blauwgrond; any description of who lives there or what they earn; any judgment about the neighborhood's safety; a rent level for the neighborhood itself; a water tariff; a taxi fare; a weekly grocery total; and a doctor's consultation fee. For the first three, we do not expect to find a source, because that kind of claim about a residential neighborhood is not published anywhere we would trust.

AI-Generated Content: This article was created with AI assistance and may contain inaccuracies. Please verify important information with official sources.