You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2007.
When we first left Florida for Buenos Aires the real estate bubble had just burst… or, maybe it had popped months earlier, but people were only then realizing it… Now it continues to slide. Many of the bright red ‘for sale’ signs have faded to a pink in the Florida sun…
Most people we know are pretty savvy real estate investors (or savvy enough not to be real estate investors at that time). They weren’t really effected too much by this, but we’ve heard of some people in serious trouble… who bought way more than they could possibly afford. When the market went south, these people were caught with massive mortgage payments and negative equity.
The Buenos Aires market is humming with little or no credit. That was the problem with much of the US boom is that it was funded by creative and risky mortgages. So, there’s a theory among real estate speculators in BA, that when the Argentine banks do offer mortgages (and they’re supposed to in the near future) that BA real estate will really take off.
The BA market is still cheap relative to other major world cities… It’s this perceived value that’s driving the market. However, as prices continue to rise, they’ll reach a point when this value no longer exists in the eyes of buyers (other than the speculators) then price increases will slow, stop, or fall… As we expats and Portenos enjoy this boom, we need to keep our eyes out for that time. It may well be a long way off, but you never know…
We’re still in Florida where it’s warm… But reports from back home in Argentina say that it’s gotten damn cold, in the 20’s and 30’s. It’s late fall in BA, so, this extra cold wave comes as a surprise.
There’s been a spike in electrical and gas usage: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=latin_america&sid=av0tvGQPKLKU which has caused Argentina to withhold some gas exports from Chile.
The cold is the only thing we’re not looking forward to on our return trip to BA…
We like to think of the US as an efficient capitalistic business-friendly free-market sort of place. But the fact is that the US is a hot-bed of bureaucratic monkey-business just like so many other countries.
There’s plenty of red-tape here. Everywhere you go you need a permit or permission for this or that. We came back to deal with our taxes… get a new vehicle title, and other sorts of personal business issues… What an incredible waste of time and resources!
It’s infuriating when you think about it. You spend the first four months of the year working to pay your government masters. (Even if you don’t live in the US or use any government services…) Then you spend dozens of hours navigating their labyrinth of a system just to give them the damn money!
If you don’t think it’s a system of coercion, then just try not paying your taxes and see what happens… You’ll be harassed, threatened, robbed, kidnapped, and held hostage… all because you didn’t pay them tribute. It’s amazing that people tolerate this…
And where does the money go? We shiver at the thought. The waste. The pork. The wars. Ughhh. Our vote in ‘08 will be for the constitutionalist Dr. Ron Paul: http://GoRonPaul.com
His chances of winning are about as good as those of hogs taking flight and the nether-regions icing over. But sometimes a man has to draw his line in the sand and stand for something.
We’re back in the ol’ USA, visiting family and friends, handling personal business… doing maintenance on our ‘American lives’.
How does it strike us being back after an extended stint at our new home in Latin America? Well, life is easy… we speak the language and there are no surprises. It’s for the most part relaxing and familiar, but of course, we haven’t been gone long…
We’re not from Florida, it’s another one of our adopted homes, we’re hardly ‘from’ anywhere, or so we think…
In BA when people ask us where we’re from we have different answers every time… We name different locations in the US, where we’ve lived, whatever strikes our fancy at the time.
But, we can’t shake our ‘Americanness’ and that’s something we’ve reflected on during our time in Argentina. Having spent the majority of our lives in the US, it has shaped who we are, more so than we realize…
Sure, we’ve lived in other countries too. We hold other passports. Our fore-family came from other countries, of course, some more recently than others…
But we fell out of a birth-canal somewhere off of the Chesapeake Bay. Our nationality and an entire set of life parameters were selected for us… just like everyone else.
That’s one thing we don’t like about the US or Argentina, or anywhere else for that matter, is nationalism. It’s so emotional… Of course, that’s what people like about it. It gets the blood flowing and makes you proud. But it can make you sad too.
Until next time…
We covered a lot of ground this weekend, visiting touristy and not-so-touristy sights.
This is what a “strip-mall” looks like in San Telmo…
The other side of Puerto Madera, where locals come on Sunday to relax with their families.
Street performers draw crowds along the banks of where the Puerto Madera land reserve begins…
The tall and modern buildings are springing up like weeds…
The stairway of the Decorative Arts museum.
A walk through Plaza de Mayo past the Casa Rosada…
A corner of the famous Cafe Tortoni.
We have a friend who’s buying an apartment here in BA. He let us tag along throughout the process… which allows us to give you a simplified overview of how it works…
We learned about the three main stages in the buying process… the Reserva, the Boleto, and the Title Deed.
The Reserva is pretty much like going under contract in the US. It’s making an offer and putting a token amount down to engage the seller.
Next is the Boleto, which is typically a few weeks after the Reserva is signed. At this stage the buyer forks over around 30% of the purchase price. And the Seller hands over all the title documents to the buyer’s Notary.
Now, there really isn’t any title insurance here in Argentina, like we have in the US. The Notary is your title insurance, so, you want someone with a great reputation.
The Boleto itself is a bill of sale, that outlines the specific terms of the transaction. Once signed it binds the buyer legally to the property. The seller can’t back-out at this point.
Then, at the Title Deed stage, the buyer pays the balance of the sale price and the seller signs the deed over to the buyer…
Now, as a foreign buyer, the trickiest part is getting the money for each of these stages.
As we understand it, there are three main ways of doing this and many variations… You can:
- Make a wire transfer from your bank to a bank in Argentina (or sometimes via Uruguay) then the bank gives you cash, that you give to the seller. This is done in a secure location, and you basically push the cash across the table and the seller counts it… (costs about 2.5%)
- Buy Argentine bonds and then turn them into cash, or transfer ownership to the seller. (costs about 1%)
- Transfer money from your account in the US, to the seller’s account in the US. (costs about 1%)
The first method is the most common. The last two are more sophisticated and require a more sophisticated and cooperative seller. Also, these methods are not necessarily recognized by the Argentine government.
Tax-avoidance is much more commonplace here than what we’re used to. When you buy, there’s typically a difference between the actual sale price and the reported sale price, so that the seller can avoid some tax. And as the buyer you can avoid some too.
There’s some ‘black money’ in the transaction when this is the case, which complicates matters slightly. This practice, while still common, is being increasingly scrutinzed by Argentine tax authorities…
Above all, the most important thing is to have good people helping you through this. A good lawyer to represent you and help you get the money together, and a good real estate agent to deal with the seller.
We’ve glossed over a lot, but hopefully have given you a some-what accurate overview of the buying process. But we’ll probably have some actual experts on this topic write in to tell us, that we are mis-representing the process entirely. If they do, we’ll be sure and share that and whatever else we learn with you dear reader…
With friends in town we’ve been going out to eat a lot lately… Visiting these restaurants has really affirmed something we’ve thought since we got here… Argentines know food and how to cook!
The ingredients, the execution, and presentation are of very high-quality in most of the better restaurants. The steak goes with out saying, but we’ve been impressed with so many other dishes as well…
We’re going to go way out on a limb, and venture that, unless you’re a multi-millionaire who can afford the outrageous prices of nicer establishments in New York or Paris, Buenos Aires offers some of the best options for great cuisine anywhere in the world.
The salmon, in the salmon sushi is amazing… We’ve heard it comes from Barlioche, near the border with Chile, and from Chile itself…
And the vino, oh the vino… so many great whites and reds, you can hardly ever go wrong…
We’re going to put together a list for you, dear reader, of restaurants we’ve enjoyed, and recommendations from some trusted sources…
“Everyday in Buenos Aires is a relentless battle for cambio.” That was what an acquaintance told us when we were newly arrived in the city… It struck us as silly then.
But, oh how true it is… The conspicuous $100 peso note ($30USD) inspires fear and loathing in the hearts of cab-drivers and cashiers across the city… The reason for this is partially because of all the counterfeit currency in circulation. But it boarders on the ridiculous as you’re driven to desperate lengths in search of small bills…
Yet again, upon arriving at our destination with nothing but one of these dreaded hundreds we had to run around in the night, like a chicken with our head cut-off, in search of the coveted cambio.
Yes, we were prepared earlier in the night. We had cambio. But cambio has a way of disappearing like you wouldn’t believe…
We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Last night’s taxi ride brought us from our first tango show, the ultimate Buenos Aires tourist event… With a visitor in town we figured we might as well take the plunge. So we signed ourselves up for a dinner and show at Esquina Homero Manzi in Boedo. Manzi apparently was a famous tango lyrics writer in the 40’s. He wrote his first show when he was 14 years-old…
The ambiance seemed authentic. The music and the dancing were very nice. We weren’t bowled-over by it. But it was memorable. The food, however, not so much…
It’s inspired us to check out some more tango shows in San Telmo. We bought the musicians’ CD at the show. And we’ll probably listening to more tango music… All and all a good experience, just next time, we’re bringing more cambio…
We’ve found a nifty software to create social networks a la facebook… So, we’ve created The Buenos Aires Social Club.
The membership ranks are a bit thin at the moment, ie. my wife and I are the only members… and she’s a member by default… Anyway, I’ve put the word out, so, hopefully that will change in the near future.
We feel like english-speaking BA’ers will appreciate this, as many of the current online social options are archaic and not very fun…
Take look and let me know what you think: http://basocial.ning.com/
People have asked us, how much it costs to have a maid in Argentina… they’ve heard that it’s affordable here… Well, that’s very true.
The common price of a maid here is about 6 pesos per hour, or two dollars an hour, plus a tip. That’s for a part-time maid. It would cost less per hour if you were to have some one full-time…
We felt funny about the whole idea at first and still do. But, when you can afford it, it’s not a terrible thing… We only have some one come once a week for a few hours, and that works well…
We still do a fair amount of chores, but, a lot of things can get done that are otherwise a hassle and time-consuming. And you have to look at the cost/benefit ratio. When your time could be better spent doing other things, it’s almost irresponsible not to have some one else take care of those things around the house… at least we tell ourselves that, so as not to feel guilty about having such a luxury as a maid for our small household…
In the Buenos Aires Herald we find this tidbit… about a drunk British cameraman who stole a taxi outside Cordoba city and drove himself to his hotel to take a nap…
Evidently, the journalist, who was supposed to be covering some kind of Argentine rally for a major English TV station (BBC?) went looking for a cab to take him back to his hotel. Unable to find a taxi with an actual taxi driver, this gonzo journalist, took matters into his own hands… Finding a taxi with the keys in it he stole away with it back to his hotel…
The article didn’t say what happened to this intrepid newsman other than that he was arrested. Quite a Hunter Thompson moment… and that’ll be quite a hang-over in Cordoba prison, ouch…
Yesterday we made the expatriate pilgrimage to renew our visas… a one hour fast-ferry ride across the Rio Plata to the pretty historic coastal village of Colonia, Uruguay.
Unfortunately it was a bit overcast, but we still have some nice pictures to show you (almost all of which were taken by our better, more talented, half)…
We wrote an article recently for a very good (and free) email newsletter, called Early To Rise (ETR), about blogging: http://www.earlytorise.com/2007/04/28/blogging-for-fun-and-profit.html
Your editor used to work with ETR and still does sometimes… Michael Masterson, the man behind it, is a mentor of ours. There are many smart and successful people involved with the publication.
Anyway, the reason we bring it up is because readers have asked us about blogging, how to get people to read etc. We offer some modest information in the article about this topic.
One problem we have with blogging though is that it is so temporal, so fleeting… You rack your brain for something interesting, something fresh and real, then boom… it’s dated… it’s over with.
Please, dear reader, if you haven’t read them before go back and read our ‘old’ posts… our naive first murmurings from Buenos Aires. We don’t ask you for much. Just because they’re a couple weeks old doesn’t mean they aren’t good…
We never liked participating in the temporal arts, like live music or drama. “Who will know that we were so brilliant that day?” we thought…
We liked writing and painting where our craft can be put on display for at least a few hundred years… But, we do take solace in the fact that the great Russian writer Dostoevsky wrote one of his novels, Brothers K or Crime and Punishment, not sure which, as a weekly column in a Moscow newspaper. (That’s sort of like blogging.)
He did this to pay his gambling debts. They’d pay him each week to cover his debts enough so his creditors wouldn’t take a final payment on his hide… It’s amazing that such genius resulted, in a way, from such baseness…
Our blog pays our gambling debts too since we don’t have any… Cheers!
Last night we attended our first ‘expat’ event here in BA… held by the ‘Young Expatriates Society of Buenos Aires’… YesBA.
We’ve met assorted (and sometimes sordid) expats in assorted places over the years. They’re an interesting breed. But not always in the way that you’d expect…. Sometimes they’re surprisingly regular people who hold the same views about most things as the majority of people do in your hometown USA, or UK. They seemed to have been beamed into their new environment and remain wholly untouched or effected by it.
Other times though, they’re totally off the wall and original.
We met one such character last night. Actually we had arranged to meet him there… the infamous, Yanqui Mike an American blogger who married an Argentine and has lived here for 4 years.
Because of his marital ties Mike is immersed, and committed to Argentina, on a much higher-level than most expats. We got some interesting insights about the country from him as we hoped we would…
Before he arrived we were trying to guess which of the guys there could be this Yanqui Mike character. Was it the guy in the bright red shirt long hair and suspicious goatee? Or what about that one drifting aimlessly around the bar looking at the ceiling? No. It must be the guy who just came in with the purple beret… “Hey Mike!?” “Oh, sorry!” Nope, not him either…
He, of course, found us immediately from our picture. And he looked everything and nothing like we expected…
Many Americans move overseas to reinvent themselves. And they do obtain an instant exoticness when doing so and a whole world of new stimuli to make things interesting… But all of this quickly fades. Things become regular and normal, ho hum. It still depends on who they are inside as to whether they’ll be happy in a new place or not.
Well, that’s enough obnoxious philosophising for the day… Till tomorrow…
Part of the reason we’ve been lamenting our productivity lately is because we came across this website and blog: http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
This guy, Tim Ferriss, is a sort of Anthony Robbins 2.0… He lived in Buenos Aires and actually competed in the world championships of tango. He’s also done a whole lot of other things that we are jealous of…
An interesting guy. We’ll probably read his book. If we get around to it… 
We’ve really done it now… When we arrived in Buenos Aires, we were so excited about our new life here, so full of piss and vinegar… We signed ourselves up for so many projects with our business contacts, that now we can barely keep track of what it is we’re supposed to be doing at any given moment.
Your editor looked at his ‘to do’ list this morning and was so confused and afraid his only respite was to go to his email box and hope there were some personal issues that needed to be attended to…
Yes, we’re frazzled into a near state of inertia. This is not a new phenomenon. We tend to do this to ourselves every couple months… After the inertia takes over for a few days, your editor gets very afraid at how unproductive he’s become… how he’s letting down those who are depending on him for one thing or another.
It’s this fear that rips him out of his slump… at least we hope so…
Hasta manana.
Yesterday, was a holiday here in Argentina, Labor Day, as it is in most of Europe… We still had to work, but we allowed ourselves an extra long lunch… An Argentine friend invited us to a Yacht Club in San Isidro suburb just north of the city.
The San Isidro area was a nice break from downtown and the weather was great when we got there.
We sat out on a shaded patio overlooking a grassy expanse that ran right into the Rio Plata. Argentine families were at play along the riverbanks. The sailboats glided in and out of the harbour…
But the rains came and put a little damper on everyone’s picturesque afternoon…
As the rain let up we had a tour by car of the club. Our friend grew up at this club, and used to sail competitively.
What we liked about the place was that it wasn’t a snooty ‘Yacht Club’ in name only, but had multiple harbours and a large boat repair yard. It was a real boater’s club and it made for a wonderful long lunch trip.
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