Renting Property

[El Perro]

I was thinking maybe a cold water flat in Montserrat. Stay home all the time and jack off with a burlap sack.

[Moore]

I should add that if the Paparazzi is an issue for you, avoid central locations (especially Palermo Hollywood). A ranch or "country" in San Isidro is a better option in that case. Lower profile, less fanatics.

[El Perro]

Thanks Dirk! Looks like I got a lotta reading and legwork to do. I'll follow up, and when I get something straightened away I'll post.

The dog

[Rock Harders]

Doggboy-

Although real estate values (to buy) are definetly in US Dollars, the monthly rents that Portenos pay are definetly in Argentine Pesos. Which essentially means that your willingness to pay $800-$1000 USD per month to live in the Recoleta / Barrio Norte area is completely unnecessary since you are willing to commit to a year in the same location. For example, I lived in a place near the corner of Parana and Santa Fe, a killer location in Barrio Norte, and paid $500 USD per month (1 bedroom, all utilities included, maid, etc) and I was in fact getting RIPPED OFF. To get a short term apartment-less than six months- it may be necessary to deal with the services that rent apartments-and rip off- foreigners. Your best bet is to get a copy of the Clarin newspaper, either hard copy or on the web www.clarin.com.ar, and check out the apartment listings, apartments are listed by location, ie, there are say, 10 zonas, so the centro would be one zona, recoleta / b. Norte, a different zona, all clearly explained in the paper itself.

My neighbors in my apartment on Parana told me that I should be paying around $500 AR for my apartment (not including utilities) My guess is that in general, local rents are the same number that the companies that cater to foreigners ask for, except in pesos instead of dollars (a $800 US foreign rent would go for $800 AR if a local rented it on his own. Finding your own apartment will take much more work, including furnishing, paying taxes, utilities, etc, but in after a year time you will have saved so much US $$$ that it will be well worth it.

Suerte,.

Dirk

Hi Dirk Diggler,

Well said. I concur.

Thanks,

Jackson

[El Perro]

Hunt99-sounds wise to me. I'll follow up with Jackson, and think about the brain picking too.

[Hunt99]

I might as well get a place for a year. I'm leery about buying down here, at least for the moment. I checked in with Roxana but one year rentals are out of her area of expertise. I'm looking to spend $800-$1,000 a month in Recoleta, Barrio Norte or Palermo. If anybody has ideas or a good referral source I'm all ears. Thanks in advance!

The dog

DB, as there are at least 10 posters on the board who have done what you're contemplating, I think the best thing you could do is to buy one or more of them out for lunch, and pick their brains. If you just ask here, you're bound to get commentary from the peanut gallery which could be worse than useless. Probably the best thing you could get from one of our resident posters would be a referral to a good real estate agent, though I understand those are few and far between in BsAs. Ask Jackson for a referral to a real estate lawyer to help you with the lease. He has spoken warmly of a particular fellow who speaks fluent English and is not terribly expensive.

[El Perro]

I might as well get a place for a year. I'm leery about buying down here, at least for the moment. I checked in with Roxana but one year rentals are out of her area of expertise. I'm looking to spend $800-$1,000 a month in Recoleta, Barrio Norte or Palermo. If anybody has ideas or a good referral source I'm all ears. Thanks in advance!

The dog

[Goblin]

What you are saying makes a lot of sense but I would worry about Argentina's reluctance to play ball with the international community and the IMF. I believe this is a good thing if the country can sustain itself in the long run.

Traditionally such countries have come under many forms of attack from the outside such as boycotts, attacks on tourism, negative publicity etc.

I would be curious to find out just how profitable business opportunities and real estate investments are from a cash flow perspective and in comparison to what you can expect in the US.

In my region a 50 room hotel will generate a typical net income before debt service and taxes of about 10% to 12% depending on location, age, and quality. Businesses are typically capitalized at about 20% to 30% depending on their capital asset base, management intensity, and income stability.

Goblin.

I haven't posted in a long long time. Been crazy crazy busy and I started traveling again now that things did work out for me as I planned. I've been traveling for the past 7 weeks. I hit 6 countries (including traveling around Australia)

Anyway, I just wanted to post an update. Andres as usual is spot on. I stick by what I originally posted. This is a difficult place to do business in. Take everything Andres said and multiply it by 1000. What you see as an employee and you see as an owner are two different things.

Any honest business person that knows anything will tell you that everything that I mentioned is correct. Again, I love Argentina but there are serious issues here. I think you will find that I have been right over the years. Look at my calls on the exchange rate since the crash (it still remains in the 2.75 - 3.25 range) that I said it would stay in for a few years. I made this call back when so called experts were saying things exactly the opposite. My calls on real estate were spot on as well.

"Corruption" is a relative word. Moore was totally correct when he brought up the Transparency International bit. I think I was one of the first for years that has cited that Transparency International list of the most corrupt countries in the world. - http://ww1.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.html. It is rampant here.

Most companies here are very unefficient, lazy or just don't care about long term relationships. Andres was totally correct when he talked about nepotism. I see that in so many companies where they don't hire the best person for the job. They hire their lazy, out of work brother who knows nothing about marketing, law, accounting, etc.

Still, moving to Argentina was the best decision I have ever made. I'm working double of what I worked in the USA but I'm living my dream of working here and the solid business plan has paid off well. I'm getting involved in bigger projects now like looking to build boutique hotels and buildings.

I know some love my posts and some hate my posts. To me it doesn't matter. My goal has always been to help people. I think you will find if you read my first posts, I literally correctly called the direction of things in an unstable country that people said would never pull themselves out of the gutter. When everyone was moving their money out of Argentina, I was moving it in and so were a lot of other foreigners. Love me or hate me. I was right.

More and more foreigners have moved to BA and more will. The economy is getting stronger, unemployment is getting lower, tourism is booming and I predict this is only the beginning. People are still only discovering Argentina. Those that plan now and start businesses around tourism will take advantage of the inefficiencies of other companies and will thrive and prosper.

Best of luck to all and Happy 2006.

Saint

[Saint]

I haven't posted in a long long time. Been crazy crazy busy and I started traveling again now that things did work out for me as I planned. I've been traveling for the past 7 weeks. I hit 6 countries (including traveling around Australia)

Anyway, I just wanted to post an update. Andres as usual is spot on. I stick by what I originally posted. This is a difficult place to do business in. Take everything Andres said and multiply it by 1000. What you see as an employee and you see as an owner are two different things.

Any honest business person that knows anything will tell you that everything that I mentioned is correct. Again, I love Argentina but there are serious issues here. I think you will find that I have been right over the years. Look at my calls on the exchange rate since the crash (it still remains in the 2.75 - 3.25 range) that I said it would stay in for a few years. I made this call back when so called experts were saying things exactly the opposite. My calls on real estate were spot on as well.

"Corruption" is a relative word. Moore was totally correct when he brought up the Transparency International bit. I think I was one of the first for years that has cited that Transparency International list of the most corrupt countries in the world. - http://ww1.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.html. It is rampant here.

Most companies here are very unefficient, lazy or just don't care about long term relationships. Andres was totally correct when he talked about nepotism. I see that in so many companies where they don't hire the best person for the job. They hire their lazy, out of work brother who knows nothing about marketing, law, accounting, etc.

Still, moving to Argentina was the best decision I have ever made. I'm working double of what I worked in the USA but I'm living my dream of working here and the solid business plan has paid off well. I'm getting involved in bigger projects now like looking to build boutique hotels and buildings.

I know some love my posts and some hate my posts. To me it doesn't matter. My goal has always been to help people. I think you will find if you read my first posts, I literally correctly called the direction of things in an unstable country that people said would never pull themselves out of the gutter. When everyone was moving their money out of Argentina, I was moving it in and so were a lot of other foreigners. Love me or hate me....I was right.

More and more foreigners have moved to BA and more will. The economy is getting stronger, unemployment is getting lower, tourism is booming and I predict this is only the beginning. People are still only discovering Argentina. Those that plan now and start businesses around tourism will take advantage of the inefficiencies of other companies and will thrive and prosper.

Best of luck to all and Happy 2006.

Saint

[Andres]

I wasnt here, but I heard that you did have to bribe a Telefonica employee and / or wait up to a year to get a new line installed until the earlymid 90s when the Menem adminisitration privatized industries and "fucked up" the country. I had never made a bribe before moving here but have made many since. Also have personally witnessed several cases of blatant theft / embezzlement in local business here. Corruption happens everywhere and there are places like Bangladesh that are worse than Argentina, but I think there are more countries that are better than worse. Argentina, along with many African nations, is pretty far down on the transparency. Org list, for instance. Saying you're less corrupt than Bangladesh is like saying you're richer than Haiti.

To me, challenging the total corruption concept in Argentina is a way to set this issue in its proper place. You may have to deal with corrupt practices, but not necessarily everyday as in other places.

Before 1991, you had to bribe ENTel personnel to set you a line, although that situation was getting far less common by the mid 80s when the MEGATEL plan was implemented.

Andres

[Moore]

I wasnt here, but I heard that you did have to bribe a Telefonica employee and / or wait up to a year to get a new line installed until the earlymid 90s when the Menem adminisitration privatized industries and "fucked up" the country. I had never made a bribe before moving here but have made many since. Also have personally witnessed several cases of blatant theft / embezzlement in local business here. Corruption happens everywhere and there are places like Bangladesh that are worse than Argentina, but I think there are more countries that are better than worse. Argentina, along with many African nations, is pretty far down on the transparency. Org list, for instance. Saying you're less corrupt than Bangladesh is like saying you're richer than Haiti.

[Andres]

Well you probably wouldn't really experience the full brunt of it unless you were involved in a large business enterprise or politics.

Goblin

As much as I know from other people, in some countries such as Bangladesh, you have to pay bribes for anything when dealing in a business or in your personal life (such as getting drinking water! That's what I call "total corruption".

I mean, I never had to bribe a Telefonica employee to repair a phone line timely or a DMV-like (RNPA) employee to speed up a document to sell or buy a car, but I heard that running the retirement errand to get your pension may be nightmarish if you don't have a "contact" or getting a DNI as a foreigner is much faster and convenient if you find one of these middlepersons (although not mandatory)

Respect to large businesses and politics, I agree that you would be much more exposed to corruption in those environments, but in those cases corruption applies to every country.

Andres

[Goblin]

I guess that "total corruption" is extreme. There is corruption, of course, and it becomes almost unavoidable when dealing with some public institutions, but nothing really on a daily basis. I may have faced 10 or so situations related to corruption, at least 5 of them from police officers who wanted bribes. Not that many, after all.

Andres

Well you probably wouldn't really experience the full brunt of it unless you were involved in a large business enterprise or politics.

Goblin

[Andres]

Good example; more of a divergence of priorities issue than the outright corruption you find in Russia. The total corruption model is really incompatible with the attitude of the population. Doesn't seem to add up.

I guess that "total corruption" is extreme. There is corruption, of course, and it becomes almost unavoidable when dealing with some public institutions, but nothing really on a daily basis. I may have faced 10 or so situations related to corruption, at least 5 of them from police officers who wanted bribes. Not that many, after all.

Andres

[Rudolph]

I will refer some local practices that I experienced and that I may be the ones Saint refers to.

1) No planning / no scheduling and no commitment of resources: Roughly 10 years ago, I had to launch a new line of business inside a multinational company in BA. Our sales manager sold 4 projects, and I was told to do manage and implement these projects simultaneously (in 4 different cities) BEFORE commiting resources to such division.

The basic procedure was the following: Start working in one project (myself and a couple of temporary assistants) and not paying attention to the next one until either I finished my job there or the client sent a fax / registered letter threatening with legal actions of contract fines. When the latter happened, top management started drawing people from other divisions and throwing them to me praying that I can train them in the new line of business in minutes so that they could hit and run.

Needless to say, the company didn't earn big credibility in that line of business.

I'm talking about a North American multinational company, by that time the most important in Argentina regarding that area.

2) Nepotism: This happens everywhere, but is more pervasive in Latin America. Either in local or multinational companies, you will be flabbergasted of how many couples / brothers / etc work together in the same company and often at the same division. Family / friendship links usually prevail over competence.

3) Bad ethics of lack of ethics: I witnessed several meetings and conversations in which managers / CEOs deny the rights of some customers despite explicitly acknowledging it and try to manipulate that to the limits. Example: A customer that bought an equipment from one of the companies that I worked for claimed for the unavoidable accessory tools that were expected to come with the unit. My boss said that these tools were stripped from the original packages to make a "side business", and that they were released for free only to customers who bought above a certain amount.

When pointing out some remarks, bosses always told me "If the customer is not happy, they should look for providers elsewhere".

It is possible that, in all the previous explanations, you don't see much of a big issue, but what is important is to perceive a common trend: Not caring very much for customer satisfaction or for professionalism.

Hope this helps,

Andres

Good example; more of a divergence of priorities issue than the outright corruption you find in Russia. The total corruption model is really incompatible with the attitude of the population. Doesn't seem to add up.