Monthly Archive

We are going to be back out on the real estate hunt sooner than we expected. Our offer on behalf of our clients for office space was passed up in favor of another one…

“Was it something we said?”

We waded through the real estate drama I told you about in a previous post… Of course everything is negotiable, so the commission issue was resolved relatively easily… But it was all for naught anyway.

“Could we have done something differently?” we thought. Though we know we did what we could within the best interest of our client…

 The seller: “It’s not you, it’s me… I’ve changed. And this other buyer, well, he’s willing to come up to the price we want. I’m sorry. It’s just not going to work between you and me…”

Sniff, sniff… Well, we’re on the rebound now, and back into the market…

So, if you like architecture and real estate, then you’re in luck my friend because we are going to be looking at some exciting new, well actually old, places for your viewing pleasure…

That is if we’re allowed to show you. We were scolded for posting pictures of non-public listings. Some sellers like their privacy… Anyway, we’ll show you what we can…

Here are two properties that we found interesting, but because both of them were located a little further out from downtown than we wanted to go, we decided not to pursue them (on behalf of our clients, of course)…

This one (I’ve shown the exterior before in this blog), in a sort of Venetian style, is in Belgrano on a historic street, where all the houses look like this or a colonial style…

Here’s the street, which doesn’t really do it justice as you can’t see how nice the houses are…

The one next door is for sale too a mirror image of this one… It’s priced a little cheaper than this one at $360k…

The next house I’d like to show you is a large, former mansion that is currently being used as a church mission house for boys… This is in an up-and-coming area northwest of Palermo Viejo, which is starting to be called Palermo Queen.

Honestly, we’re not crazy about the Tudor style, but this one had enough details to make it worthwhile…

There’s a lot of potential and a lot of space to work with, but a lot of work too… And it would have to come down quite a bit from the list price of $500k to make it work out with all the renovation needed to get the place where it should be…

Anyway, I don’t know if you’d want to rush down and buy these… but thought they might be interesting to look at. I always enjoy all the period details, details that would cost you mucho dinero to replicate in the US…

It’s rainy again today… After weeks of sunshine, it’s starting to feel like London around here, London in the summertime at least…

I haven’t spoken about one of the big advantages of living overseas where you don’t understand the language well… no TV!

Yes, we could turn the thing on and watch BBC or CNN, but we can get all that on the internet. Would it help our spanish to watch Argentine TV, maybe, but I don’t think I could stand it…

I realize the advantage of not watching TV when I’m on the internet… at certain mainstream websites I see little tidbits of the things that come on American TV… news about ‘Dancing with the Stars’, the latest in ‘American Idol’ gossip… and I thank goodness I don’t have that crap foisted on me like you do with TV, where it seems more invasive than the internet.

Sometimes you find yourself on a channel because of inertia, or you’re not paying attention, and before you know it you’ve consumed precious minutes of your life-span on some worthless rubbish…

In the US I bought a large flat-screen TV just because I thought we should have one. And we could watch a movie every now and again on it… Of course I ended up turning it on way too often and wasting countless hours that I’ll never get back.

I sold the flat-screen about a month after buying it… I’m just not responsible enough to own one…

But then in the US I would feel like I was ‘missing out’ on something… Even though I knew darn well that I wasn’t.

Here we are TV free.

While I wouldn’t recommend moving overseas to get away from the boob tube… It’s a little fringe benefit of doing so…

Welcome friends and new readers from American Writers & Artists Institute!

Today is a rare rainy day here in Buenos Aires, a good day to reflect on what we’ve been doing and to bring you AWAI’ers up to speed…

We’ve been here two months and we’ve gotten pretty comfortable with things. Our business down here is starting to come together. Speaking of writers, we just hired one the other day, an unusual woman… unusual in that she’s been a longtime reader of our company’s publications… which gives her more understanding than most about who we are and what we do… and it also probably means that she’s one of those semi-nutty, introverted, odd-ball people who are always difficult to work with, but we’re used to that…

Her job will be to write a daily email newsletter in spanish about world markets and issues that interest the Latin American investor.

The big problem with this whole endeavor is that your editor, to his embarrassment, does not speak, read, or write competently in spanish… And during our two months here, to our greater embarrassement, we’ve made very little progress in our Castellano (Argentine spanish) skills. (We had to get rid of our spanish teacher when she couldn’t jive her schedule with ours…)

We’ve been preoccupied with the nitty-gritty of getting things started here… But the validity of that excuse may be fading.

Some of our family will be visiting soon and I’m sure they’ll expect us to be somewhat immersed in BA society… but they’ll find that we’re generally clueless as to what’s going on… Of course, the same was probably true in the US too…

Anyway, we’ll have to change our schedule and our priorities to make real progress in the adopted-tongue. But that’s something we’re determined, sooner or later, to do.

In the meantime we look forward to writing to you in the mother-tongue about the whole process… and keeping you updated on the goings on way south of the border…

 I’m posting this picture that we took at the park the other day of a man teaching his daughter to ride a bike, running along side her…

There’s nothing really notable about this scene, which is the point… Judging by some of the emails and comments we occasionally receive though this blog, I feel it necessary to explain that life is very ‘normal’ here.

Argentina is not a ‘third-world country’ by any means. The vast majority of people you see in the street are regular, well-dressed individuals, like anyone you’d see anywhere. The scenes that you see throughout the day are normal everyday activity like you’d see anywhere. Most people who read this blog I’m sure understand this…

And once you figure out how to navigate a few irregularities, and things you’re not used to, you can live as free and as happily here as you can anywhere.

We managed to get ourselves in a sort of real estate drama situation… partly because we are ignorant of local customs in the property trade and partly because everyone wants to keep their hand in the pot…

Here’s what happened… we were scouting for office space on behalf of our employer, we went to the property in question just to have a look at the outside. An agent was there waiting for another client and he obliged us to have a quick look around. He opened the door, we went in and had a look for less than 5 minutes…

We’ve since expressed interest in this property. And now the agent who opened the door for us on that occasion, he turned out to be the seller’s agent, thinks he’s entitled to the full commission including the buyer’s agent’s commission… which cuts out our agent who has shown us loads of properties… who we want to represent us in the transaction…

Our agent for some reason seems to have relented to this, which we don’t understand… We haven’t made a fuss about it. But I think we will because we won’t pay extra to compensate our agent so this guy gets double commission for doing basically nothing…

His argument is that he showed us the place first… But we told him then that we already had an agent going in… He doesn’t speak English, so, our poor Spanish skills are partly to blame here.

We are loyal to our agent because that’s the way we feel we should conduct ourselves. I think we can get this guy, the seller’s agent, to relinquish his silly claim on our agent’s commission. But we’ll see what happens… Anyone, Argentine or otherwise have opinions on this?

Saludos!

My hard-working wife rarely treats herself to a trip to the salon, but she returned from one the other day looking and feeling like a million bucks… She had her hair washed, cut, and styled. She had her nails and toes done.

She couldn’t have been more pleased… and the price… $40 for everything. And that’s at an upscale place in a touristy area…

You know what they say… ‘happy wife, happy life’… Here everyone’s happy including the wallet…

Note from a reader who knows way more about the city than we do… 

“… Here are a few more ideas regarding areas to look at that you haven’t mentioned in your blog: 1) At some point, it would definitely be worth your while to explore the northern suburban municipalities. One can still find really good value for houses in this area. San Isidro (B.A.’s answer to Bronxville, Brookline, or Evanston) is the nicest and wealthiest of these towns but Vicente Lopez, Olivos and Tigre have nice sections as well.

“A good little day trip is to take the Tren de la Costa (which had just opened in 96) from Olivos up to Tigre. Another interesting area to look into is what the portenos call “countrys”. These are the country clubs that wealthy portenos go to in droves on the weekend to work on their golf and tennis games. I’ve found really good value for houses in various countrys (and there are a multitude of them, typically located north of the
city).

“As for other urban neighborhoods to look into: Congreso, though it can be a bit down and out, is still cheap and it’s obviously a great, central location. A nice little corner of Congreso is a side street called pasaje rivarola, between Bartolome Mitre and Peron - head for the Cemeterio de los Relojes (a watch repair shop) if you go. I’d look for apartments directly around this area of Congreso. The closer you get to Constitucion in Congreso the worse it gets.

“Another intriguing and still cheap although again a bit down and area is Once, which is traditionally a Jewish neighborhood and the old garmet district - it’s where the Iranian/Hezbollah backed bombing of the Jewish community center (AMIA) happened back in the mid 90s. Another little area with good value is Facultad Medicina, which is kind of an outlying chunk of Barrio Norte. It has remained pretty affordable because it’s where a lot of U.B.A. students live.

“Villa Crespo, just to the north of Palermo Viejo, is a solidly middle class neighborhood that’s now gentryfing because of its proximity to P.V., so the closer to Av. Cordoba, the pricier it gets. Chacarita has some real nice sections too and has a lot of charm - it’s one of B.A.’s most traditional neighborhoods, and it’s still almost completely untouched.

“I hope all this was helpful and not too long-winded or redundant vis a vis
what you already know.”…

My email reponse to this person bounced, so I hope he doesn’t mind me posting this… I’m sure others will find it useful as we did…

We had our first encounter with Argentine bureaucracy over at the customs department… We naively ordered contact lenses from the US to be delivered by Fedex with the idea that, you know, they would be delivered to us…

We were living in a fantasy world.

Unfortunately, contact lenses are designated as for ‘human consumption’ by Argentine customs, which means that unless you’re willing to go out to the airport, spend at least a day of your time, hire a customs broker, fill out endless forms, and spend an arm and a leg to get the damn things… You’re better off calling it a loss and moving on with your life, which is what we’ve decided to do…

You can indeed live here without speaking spanish, you can do it through the contacts listed in the Argentina Owner’s Manual and at International Living… That’s pretty much what we’ve done. There are services that can take care of any hassles, like setting up a phone line, internet, and utilities. Then there’s an entire English-speaking network of Argentine professionals, lawyers, consultants, real estate agents etc. The upper-class mostly speak English, it’s sort of a status thing…

While I think it’s ridiculous not to learn Spanish… It’s not like it’s Japanese… It takes time to learn, but you can get by just fine in the meantime. Plus, there’s a large and growing expat community here… While I don’t recommend it you could pretty much live in an English-speaking world in the middle of Latin America if you wanted to…

One of my business mentors, Porter Stansberry, had this to say about my ‘Rolling With the Punches’ post. And I think he couldn’t be more right… 

“Will,

“Had to reply to this comment: “From our limited experience, being successful in business is as much about rolling with the punches as it is anything else…”

“Not true.

“Success in business is driven by a knowledge of what to sell, how to sell it and how to produce it cheaply. The guys who are geniuses at business are all marketers at heart — they know what people want. How they come to know this doesn’t matter. Maybe they guessed. Maybe they just got lucky. From experience I’ve found that really great marketers are all in denial about what they do…they’ll tell you, “No…I never got in to this business to get rich. I just knew if I wanted this (product/service) I guessed others would want it too…”

“They’ll tell you that after their 12th product has sold a million units.

“Now…if you’ve got a head for marketing, there’s only one more hard part:  Finding a way to efficiently sell your idea. The key here is to figure out how to be capital efficient. Let’s say, for example, you’ve got a great new idea for a restaurant - like hey, why not deliver pizza to people’s homes? I’m sure lots of folks who owned pizza restaurants thought about this, but only one guy (Dominoes) figured out how to franchise the idea and how to market it nationally (through the movie, E.T.). No matter what your idea is, if you can’t get 1,000 people to pay you at one time for your product, you’ll never get rich doing it. That’s why seminar businesses are so tough - it’s hard to get more than 1,000 folks to a meeting.

“Last — producing stuff cheaply. Here’s where your quote comes into the story.

“Producing anything is all about rolling with the punches and being persistent. Just like getting an education. You’ve kinda have to let it happen to you. Fortunately 99% of people in the world think producing something is succeeding in business. That’s why all you’ve got to do is roll with the punches to get this part done — an army of people are happy to follow your lead.

“That’s my daily unrequested advice column. Hope you enjoyed it –”

–

Porter is one of the most successful people I know. And of course he’s right… I was taking the most important part of the equation for granted, that I’d figure out exactly what and how to sell here in Argentina… (I don’t want to lead you astray dear reader, which is why I’m publishing this follow-up post…)

In my case, this means financial publications that Latin American investors would be willing to pay for. I have to understand what their wants and needs are specifically. What keeps them up at night… This research is being done. But, it is the most important thing we’re doing right now because if we get that wrong all the other production work will be for nothing…

We took a needed break from looking at real estate today… and instead focused on what we’re really supposed to be doing here… building a spanish-language publishing business before our employer decides to give-up on us…

The business has a lot of moving parts, so there’s much to think about and strategize, especially when the country you’re working in is Argentina. And especially when you can barely speak any Castellano (what they call spanish round these parts)…

So, we have plenty of work ahead of us. But we think we’ve found a talented writer (completely by accident) who can help us with our editorial needs. And Buenos Aires is sort of a Silicone Valley of Latin America. There are tons of cheap web designers and coders available… so our website is coming along nicely.

Things have a way of coming together when you’re relaxed and persistent…

From our limited experience, being successful in business is as much about rolling with the punches as it is anything else…

We’ve recently been scouting out some property in the hot, hip area of Palermo Soho… We like the bohemian flavor of the Soho neighborhood, the shops, the restaurants, the attractive classical buildings… but those buildings are deceiving…

The problem has something to do with meat (as many things do in Argentina)… casas de chorizo…

Palermo Soho used to be a poor neighborhood, filled with large low-income families. So, as the families grew they would further divide up the house to make room for the new family members. They just keep adding walls, like sausage links and viola… sausage houses…

You wouldn’t know it when you look at these houses from the outside, but they can be troublesome inside (I didn’t see inside all these particular ones, so I don’t know)…

It’s certainly not true of all. But many we’ve found have very poor interior layouts… Of course, you can renovate and it can be done cheaply here… but that takes time and money.

Anyway, in the competitive Soho real estate market you’ve got to pay attention and be quick on the draw to find that special property…

By the way, another expat blogger at http://movingtoargentina.typepad.com/ pointed out a segment on NPR’s ‘Marketplace’ radio program today about Soho called Soho on the Cheap.

‘Twas the day after St. Patrick’s Day, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse
Clothes from last night flung around the room without care
And a splitting headache, the legacy of St. Patrick, was there
—

Okay, that’s enough of that…

In the Retiro neighborhood where we live there are a number of Irish pubs on Reconquista street. They had closed off the streets and a conspicuous number of English-speakers began to gather…

We met up with a friend and found a less busy, but not empty pub (called John John) in which to partake in the revelry… The music shifted back and forth between traditional Irish, 80’s pop, and thumping techno. After a while we decided to look for something more authentic which we found… I forget the name of this other pub, but they had a great Argentine band playing live Irish folk music. They were very good… and the Kilkenny and Guiness flowed…

Before too long the streets were getting packed with teeny boppers, drunken Anglos, and assorted party-goers. We decided to make a graceful rather than less graceful exit. We were back home by around 1am… but our tolerance is low these days and we suffered the next morning.

But the weather was so nice we were lured outside by the early afternoon… We had a wonderful walk around the city and went to see a house that was on my interesting property ’watch list’…

We had lunch at a surprisingly good French restaurant called Croque Madame (a gourmet lunch for two with coffee and dessert was $25), which is actually part of a museum, but we didn’t bother to see what the museum was…

We strolled through some of the Palermo parks and on a nice day like today we strolled slowly…

 Then when we reached Recoleta, at the Sunday open-air market, they were having a music festival with a couple bands playing. Hippy Argentines were lounging in the grass, throwing frisbees, doing hippy things…

It was very pleasant. And I’m almost always impressed with Argentine musicians. They have some great talents here…

It got off to a rough start, but it ended up being one of those special Sundays…

A Day in Buenos Aires

Nicely done video tour of various sights in Buenos Aires…

A recent Economist poll named Buenos Aires as among the cheapest of the world’s major cities. Tourism and GDP growth are both at record levels. For the 4th straight year the economy grew by more than 9%…

I could live anywhere in the world. But I choose to live here because I love value… getting a good quality of life for my money… And I enjoy being in the midst of so much opportunity and potential…

Even if you aren’t considering moving here. If you might invest in Argentine stocks, real estate, or business, you’ll want to review this crucial report about a country that undoubtedly holds the world’s best values: Argentina: The Owner’s Manual

The peso will only stay devalued against the dollar for so long. Don’t kick yourself after this window of opportunity closes… Check out the Owner’s Manual and see what this country has to offer while the time is still right.

My wife pointed out that many of our recent posts are about mansions, social clubs, fine dining and other hoitey-toitey stuff…

The fact is that we live in a bubble here in Buenos Aires. We are isolated from the vast majority of real Argentines. We read the paper in Spanish as best we can, but many complicated local social and political topics are over our heads…

You can tip someone the equivalent of $1 or $2 and they’re excited… It’s difficult for us to grasp the reality for so many who have so much less. We take a lot for granted…

The local grocery store delivers. They’ve got guys who push the groceries down the street in a stack of bins on wheels. They deliver right to your kitchen. We asked how much we should tip them and we were told 1 peso which is the equivalent of 35 cents… I’m sure they make most of their money in tips, like a pizza delivery person. But they do a hell of a lot of work for so little.

I tipped one of them 10 pesos, the equivalent of $3.50 for delivering 5 bins by hand, uphill, 5 blocks away… He couldn’t stop smiling after that. And I felt good.

But I feel guilty for not doing much more for so many others out there sweating for pennies to get by… The cartoneros (the people who collect cardboard from the trash for recycling), the dirty kids who juggle and do other tricks in front of cars stopped at traffic lights, the guys selling umbrellas out on the streets on rainy days… all hustling to make a living. It’s sometimes difficult to watch. But just because you don’t see it doesn’t make it go away…

Their day is coming though. The emerging markets, China, Brazil, Argentina, India, Vietnam, these will be the success stories of this century. And, I for one, am rooting for them all the way…

According to the Buenos Aires Herald, US film director Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter Sofia shelled out $900,000 for a Petit Hotel in the hip Palermo Soho neighborhood… They plan to stay there when they work on an upcoming film here in Argentina.

The picture below is of a street just a few blocks away from the Coppola’s new digs, where we went for a walk today. I’d like to see what they bought because I’m sure it’s nice… (Maybe we’ll post the picture when we find it…)

UPDATE: Here’s the Coppola’s new home in Palermo, not a great photo, but it gives you a feel for the place (we found it online, an Argentine blog…).

Above is a picture of the street we live on. The majority of the streets in Buenos Aires are treelined, which is very attractive… We take it for granted now, but especially in some areas where the trees are mature you notice how nice they are…

We love looking at these old Petit Hotels for sale… But we have a hard time justifying, to our clients, the real expenses of buying and owning one.  They cost a pretty penny to start with, then the renovation would realistically cost mucho dinero too… But they sure look good… (Unfortunately, we aren’t allowed to show pictures of the interior. Some of them are breathtaking, but some have breathtaking amounts of work to do…)

Today we met with an Argentine lawyer, an Alliance member of Stansberry Investment Research, who had contacted us through this blog. We wanted to discuss with him the issues affecting the Latin American investor. But we found ourselves completely distracted by our surroundings… the Buenos Aires Jockey Club, of which he’s a member, one of the oldest social clubs in Buenos Aires, founded in 1882. The club was stunning. 

We had met at a local coffee shop, but we obliged his invitation to see the Club that was just a few blocks away. Of course we were under-dressed for this establishment and had to be given a jacket and tie to enter. We put on the jacket with the gold buttons and Jockey Club logo, which felt funny at first, but became quite comfortable as we toured the vast library and halls… It was reminicent of other clubs that we’ve been to in Maryland and Virginia, but on a much grander scale…

I don’t think we’re going to be invited to be a member any time soon… our money is too new, so new we haven’t even made it yet :-) [I stole that line from a friend]… But it was fun to visit.

The city wasn’t named Buenos Aires for nothing… The weather is great. It’s summer, but not super hot. Most of the time we’ve been here it’s been clear, sunny, in the low to mid-70s. People tend to think that it’s going to be steamy jungle weather down here, but that’s not at all the case. It’s very mild. The year round average is 69F…

We spent most of this weekend hunting for properties. We were directed to the neighborhood of Belgrano where we were told we could get more for our money… And sure enough there are some good deals to be had. This 2,900 sq ft classical spanish-style house is on a quiet tree-lined street…

They’re asking $320k for this. It’s been renovated,  but the interior still has many classic details…

and a new kitchen…

Belgrano is a little off the beaten trail, a 10 to 15 minute cab ride from downtown. It’s not as posh as the other areas, but in terms of value it has a lot going for it. Also, it’s more residential and quiet than many other areas…

We’ve read that violent crime is now surging in many American cities after over a decade of declines. Most of this is gun violence between gang-bangers and other disaffected youth… In the US we know what to look out for in terms of crime, where not to go, and what to do…

Here in BA we’re not so sure. We were cautious when we first got here, but as we’ve become more familiar with the city, we may be getting over-confident and setting ourselves up for trouble. We’ve been walking around here at night more so than we would do in Baltimore….

We don’t really know what to look out for here. We first kept an eye on the poor-people collecting the card-board, but now we realize that these are hard working guys doing what they can to make an honest buck. They’re polite and don’t seem to be at all a threat. We’ve given them some money, even though they don’t ask for it…

What I think you have to watch out for, like in most places, are the angry young men. The ones that don’t want to work for a living… the lay-abouts looking for an opportunity to make a fast buck with a little crime. My wife and I walked past a group of young grungy looking guys the other day… and they tried to make contact with a little “hola amigo…”. We flashed a look that hopefully came across as, “I’m going to ignore you now, but if you want to push it I’m going deal out some punishment no matter what happens…” We’re pacificsts at heart, but every once in a while our Irish blood pumps hot… Anyway, nothing at all came of it…

While we are enjoying the city to the fullest we do need to keep our guard up. We read in the paper of robberies and an occasional murder, (you don’t know what’s not reported) but for a city of this size (12 million) it seems pretty darn safe in comparison to many places. (Much safer in comparison to Brazil. We’ll address Brazil in a future post…) That’s all for now, but we’ll keep you updated, dear reader, on the safety situation over time.

Hugo Chavez led an “anti-imperialist” rally at a soccer stadium here in Buenos Aires to counter Dubya Bush’s visit to neighboring Brazil. Comically, Chavez will say anything to contradict and spite the Bush administration. Most Latin Americans and sane people in the world generally do enjoy a bit of Bush bashing (of course Bush is an imperialist). But Chavez is obviously a low-life opportunist politician and everyone knows it… who just like Bush is spending his constituents money to win friends and influence people in the region. What Americans don’t realize is that his approval ratings in Latin America are as low as Bush’s are in the US.

North and South Americans both realize that these two are a pair of power hungry idiots who should be tossed out of power as soon as possible.

Our American acquaintance told us about how an Argentine friend once asked him, “Why do all the Americans want to buy the old houses? Don’t they know you have to spend a fortune to fix those places up?”

His answer was probably the right one… Americans want what they can’t have. Nice historic houses are rare in the US, and when you can find one, they’re expensive… So when we see classical mansions for reasonable prices we can barely contain ourselves.

Today we looked at four Petit Hotels, on the behalf of some clients… They were all impressive. But it’s hard to tell where the value is… These things were not cheap. By American or European standards they are, but this isn’t the US or London. Would it be wise for our clients to make such a significant investment right now in BA? We think so, but at the same time Argentina has a long history of booms and busts… Is another bust coming in the near future? We don’t know… I guess you just have to love a place and the investment aspect should be secondary, then if the market goes south you’ll still appreciate what you have (in theory anyway…).

This Petit Hotel is in the more middle class part of Recoleta… But the asking price for this beauty… $125k! I’ll be seeing this one very soon… More pictures below, of course it needs a little renovation.

To try to reproduce the iron and woodwork of this place in the States alone would cost you $125k! 

[Correction: Call it irrational exuberance... What's actually for sale is only a portion of the building you see, not the whole thing... So, really not that exciting. Sorry for the screw-up...]

We tried to stay on the straight and narrow… to focus on building the business that we came here to setup. But the fact is that we love international real estate… We can tell you what’s going on in the property markets in Venice, Italy, as well as Amsterdam and the Croatian coast… So being here in the midst of this property boom we’re like a pig in filth…

And we also have a good many contacts here, nearly all of whom know about some hidden super-value property deal… “Are they friends with the owner?” we wonder… “Is it a good idea to buy a national landmark?” “Is this a great value, or a completely over-inflated price?” “Will it cost $50k to fix up this place or $500k?” These are the questions we try to answer everyday. The problem with real estate “investing” is that it’s really all about spending. We need to concentrate on bringing cash in the door to support our “habit”…

 In Argentina they don’t have the same sensitivities of political correctness that we do in the US… For instance, what’s the only dark skinned person on this tissue box doing? And the lazy looking character in the sombrero… Click to get a better look… 

This charming little townhouse in Palermo Viejo, just came on the market a few days ago. It’s small, at 900 sq ft with a 250 sq ft terrace, but at only $82k (definitely in our price range) and a good location… it’s tough to beat… We were supposed to see it tomorrow. But the agent just emailed to inform me that the place is already under contract…

“Palermo Soho, Palermo Viejo, that’s all you hear from the Americans moving down here. They don’t seem to realize that the rest of the city exists.”

That was the complaint of an Argentine woman we interviewed for a writing job.

“The Palermos are nice… but they don’t have the charm nor the architecture that Recoleta has…”

We thought it was funny how she was offended by the foreigners’ obsession with one area of her city.

We also met today with an American, an International Living reader, who moved to Buenos Aires two and a half years ago. He’s in real estate in various capacities, and had this to say, “I love living here and have met some wonderful people, but there are some who just want to get whatever they can out of you while they have the chance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, they don’t think they’ll get another chance, so they stick it to you… And of course you won’t do business with them again!

“They have a mindset that wealth is limited. They don’t want money. They want your money! Some people get involved with an Argentine who speaks good English and assume that they also have the same values… that’s not a good assumption to make. But there are a lot of foreigners in the marketplace demanding smooth, secure, and ethical transactions. And I think they’ll be rewarded for their investments.

“Argentine real estate has another doubling to go, at least. The cat’s out of the bag on Argentina. Yes, there’s a deduction for the fact that they speak Spanish and not French or English, and for the distance from Europe and USA. I’d call that 20%-30%. That means $6,000-$8,000 per sq meter, nearly three and four times what places are currently fetching… I want to ride that wave don’t you?!”

We left our new acquaintance feeling a bit woozy… “Triple? Quadruple?” we thought. “Hmmm…” This reminded us of Florida a couple years ago… That could be trouble. But we too want to make hay while the sun is shining…

Today we looked at this Petit Hotel for sale in Palermo Chico for a client… (way out of our price range unfortunately) This is a 7,000 sq ft converted mansion with three floors, a tiny back yard, two large terraces, and a guest house. It can be used for offices and/or residential which is one of the advantages. It had beautiful parque floors, crown mouldings, and doors.

However, it’s currently being used as an assisted living facility, so, our tour was fairly short and gloomy… and we couldn’t take pictures because the residents don’t know that the place is for sale… It’s a little pricey for the work that needs to be done, but this is one of the most expensive areas of BA, and in a major US or European city this place could fetch an easy $3M… I thought it could be a very nice property for someone who can afford it and is bullish on Argentine real estate.

You can still get a nice apartment in a nice part of town for around $250k-$300k here in BA. But, there’s a boom underway and prices have more than doubled since the financial crisis in 2001. That doesn’t mean it’s too late… Let’s take a quick look at some of the different neighborhoods and what they offer…

Palermo- This is the largest area of BA and it breaks down into a number of sub-areas such as Palermo Viejo, Palermo Chico, Palermo Soho etc. all with different flavors of their own. Palermo is where the large parcs of Buenos Aires are (the largest urban parks I’ve seen, like Central Park…). Palermo Chico is an old money area where you’ll find many Embassies. Palermo Soho is redhot with expat money right now. It’s nice, young, hip, and very appealing. But it could be getting maxed out… just too hot…

Recoleta and Retiro- The old money neighborhoods of BA. Safe, but kind of loud depending on where you are. There are still good values to be had here… in old classical buildings that wealthier Argentines are not so interested in…

Puerto Madera- Modern converted port area of BA with new luxury condos. This is just like in an American city. It’s nice and quiet, but doesn’t really appeal to me… Also, it’s expensive. The wealthier Argentines are pouring in here. A good apartment will cost about $400k…

San Telmo- Very touristy area during the day. Not super safe apparently. But you can get better bargains here.

Nunez- Far north part of the city. We haven’t been here yet. But it’s supposed to be similar to Palermo Soho, but cheaper, a new expat hotspot… The drawback is the distance from the goings-on downtown, probably need a car. (I haven’t talked about Argentine driving yet… but I will, in a few words, “be a afraid, be very afraid”)

Of course, it’s a huge city. And there’s still tons for us to see. But I wanted to set the ground work for a real estate search…

The best online tool for BA properties is this one mentioned in my links as a Realtor.com for Argentina: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/ It’s in spanish, but you can figure it out… Of course, http://craigslist.org for BA is good too.

We live in the Retiro area of BA, near the border with Recoleta. Most of the time we’ve been here we would usually head into Recoleta for dinner and drinks. But recently we’ve found that Retiro also has a lot to offer. There’s a nice strip of bars and restaurants on San Martin street, behind the Marriott and San Martin Plaza. 

The Dada Bar, pictured above, http://www.whatsupbuenosaires.com/tourism/goingout_view.php?id=141 is a nice quirky little bar/restaurant. We haven’t tried the food yet. But it’s supposed to be good. San Martin street runs parallel with the main tourist drag Florida which is closed off from cars. Both streets begin at San Martin Plaza which is a very nice park (pictures to come).

As we rushed out of the Ezeiza airport after 20 hours of travelling the warm Argentine air never felt so good… for a moment we even smiled at the taxi hustlers who accost you coming out of the airport… then we snarled at them to take a hike… (BTW: a trip from the airport to downtown should cost about $50-60 pesos, about $20-25USD)

We ran into a traffic jam as our driver pulled onto 9 de Julio, caused by some kind of street protest, one that blocked a couple lanes on the other side of the avenue… They were also setting off some very loud fireworks and protesting aggressively. This was a little different than the protest we saw in Bonn, Germany where protesters strolled along the sidewalk as if it were a charity walk.

In Argentina they do things differently than in Alemania. German efficiency and logic versus Latino chaos and passion. It’s an old cliche, that’s usually more on the mark than off. But it’s also a gross generalization…

We were surprised by all the smoking that the Germans do. They must have some of the most lax smoking laws of anywhere we’ve been in a while. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I like personal freedoms. But as a former smoker, I don’t like having to breathe it so often…

When you come into Buenos Aires from the airport, to me it’s one of the more attractive rides from most any airport in the world, it’s so lush and green, and the roads are surprisingly good. Also, there’s just not much graffiti in BA in comparison to many European cities. Punk kids here simply can’t afford the spray paint!

In Germany it’s ultra-safe almost everywhere. Nearly everyone you pass looks respectable. The same is not true for BA. It’s not really true of the US either…

We reflected on these things as our taxi pulled up to our apartment building this morning… But when we saw our lovely wife after being deprived of her for a week none of that mattered anyway…

Our conference hosts flew us from Bonn in central Germany to the port city of Hamburg in the north to have a look at another part of their business. After arriving we were scheduled for a tour and dinner. As we were headed out the door we took the lining out of our jacket because it didn’t fit well over our suit jacket, this proved to be a bad decision as we had forgotten about the walking tour we were supposed to go on…

So we had a tour of the port wearing the equivalent of a wind-breaker… And on the bus ride there we sweated a little bit with our suit and tie on the warm bus, so little we usually wouldn’t notice. But we did notice when this perspiration practically froze after about 15 minutes out in the icy wind swept docks of Hamburg. The tour went on for almost an hour and a nice little drizzle developed about half-way through.

Everyone was cold. But your editor who lived in Florida for 5 years before moving to Argentina was particularly ill-prepared for the Nordic winds coming down on the Elba river from the North Sea. The port was interesting, a kind of Amersterdam on steroids… (the newer part is similar to Puerto Madera, except not as nice) But by the time we reached the restaurant we were frozen solid… So, now we have a nice little head-cold to take with us back to BA. We can’t wait to feel the warmth of the Argentine summer! But of course we have a nice long flight ahead of us before we do…