•Losses of stiffer buildings resulted higher because of their higher seismic hazard.•Losses for the studied buildings are less than estimated for RC frame buildings.•Losses are mainly due to the cases of non-collapse.•Repair costs of partitions contributed the most to the total loss of the buildings. This research paper evaluates the effect of lateral stiffness on expected economic losses in reinforced concrete shear wall buildings designed following current Chilean standards, including DS60 and DS61. Economic losses were evaluated for a group of four 20-story archetype buildings located in Santiago, Chile. The methodology developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center was considered to estimate economic losses. The expected annual loss (EAL) and the present value (PV) of the losses in 50 years were used as measures of economic loss. A probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, which considered the seismicity of central Chile, was performed to estimate both metrics. The results show that when the lateral stiffness of the building increases, the EAL also increases. This implies that stiffer buildings are more vulnerable from an economic point of view. This counter-intuitive finding results from the higher seismic hazard of stiffer buildings and the minimum design base shear required by DS61 that governed the design of the studied buildings. Additionally, it was found that the EAL and the PV of losses in 50 years for the four archetypes do not exceed 0.3% and 7.8% of the total construction cost of the buildings, respectively. These monetary losses are relatively low, which is consistent with the outstanding seismic performance of reinforced concrete shear wall buildings.