Quote: (04-30-2019 12:59 PM)BBinger Wrote:
Quote: (04-30-2019 10:38 AM)Going strong Wrote:
Quote: (04-30-2019 09:33 AM)911 Wrote:
True, you'd be buying at the ground floor, with the caveat that you have to check the legal landscape, especially as a foreigner.
In Venezuela, prices have been at rock-bottom but have already gone up because speculators think regime change is coming.
Not really buying at the ground floor, as far as Buenos Aires is concerned. Owners of apartments in BsAs stand their ground quite well, so local prices have only lost say 10% (in dollars, all properties are quoted in USD), but hey, it's something (a 10%-gain for the foreign buyer) - and prices will climb at some point, probably once the engineer Macri is re-elected.
As to the legal landscape, no particular problem there. Argentina respects the usual laws of property, and titles of property have full and sufficient value. Only difficulty would be to bring the foreign money into an Argentinian bank account, and for that you would need local help (and come to think of legal aid on the ground, well, our local expert Mekorig certainly would know about this).
I wouldn't buy anything in Argentina or Uruguay that I wasn't interested in living in. In light of the culture its hard to tell if the prices aren't moving for because buyers are still buying, or if its the Argentine cultural overvaluation of what they have. A number of property types over here in Uruguay have seen slow downwards price movement since I started looking last year.
There's two big reasons I wouldn't want to hold property in this region as an investment:
Buying property for my own use, enjoyment, or business is a stretch goal on the 5-year plan that may carry over to the next 5 year plan. I have substantial reservations about classing such a purchase an an investment.
- The laws around squaters would make evicting any that capture an unattended property a costly matter
- Units in my new construction apartment building are listed for sale around 100,000 to 120,000 USD. I've been paying 450-400 USD a month in peso demoninated rent (since I'm in Uruguay it will go up a set percent on the lease anniversary). Mortgage rates here are quite a bit above those in the US and require quite a bit down. The math just doesn't seem to support holding property for rental income when so many other things in the world offer better rates of return.
If I have learned one thing over the years is that the globalists know how to make properties cheap, then buy everything up, driving squatters and existing tenants out via organized crime enforcers and making a killing while keeping supply tight via political allies and organized hoarding of building permits and existing apartment buildings (on which greatly increased rents are collected to make some cash before they are released onto the market).
Look at major European cities to see this squeeze in action that turns people against each other.
What doesn't economically make sense today might sound like a steal in 10 years if you can hold onto it as a non connected non globalist.
Just look at Berlin, which is a net drain on the German economy to see what I mean. Prices quadruppled over a decade and every underhanded tactic in the book was used to achieve this and make a killing from it.