You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June, 2007.
For those of you readers interested in BA property we decided it would be a good idea to put together a quick reference ‘cheat-sheet’ for how to find properties in the city… so here are some of the best links for doing that…
To orientate yourself, this is great map of the city (you can plug in any address to find the location): http://mapa.buenosaires.gov.ar/sig/index.phtml
This website features the Multi-Listing Service (MLS) of Argentine property: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/
The problem is that many properties are not added to the MLS. So here are some of the top sites and agencies for the more popular areas (most have listings across the city):
Recoleta
http://www.realestate.com.ar (Probably the best agency in BA)
http://www.toribioachaval.com.ar/
Palermo
http://ojopropiedades.com.ar/
http://www.shenk.com.ar/
http://fastpropiedades.com/
http://www.enbuenosaires.com/
San Telmo
http://www.leticiafirpo.com/venta.php?criterio=precio
This is a good list of available ‘casas’ across the city: http://www.leporepropiedades.com.ar/SOM/vta_casas.htm
Buenos Aires Craigslist has many interesting and new listings. If you have some Spanish language knowledge La Nacion classifieds and the Clarin classifieds are good.
A recommended resource is the Argentina: Owner’s Manual from International Living.
Good luck!
Last night we went with some Porteno friends to the Opera Pampa show at La Rural. As usual we had no idea what it was we were going to see, and our assumption that it was an ‘opera’ in the traditional sense was completely faulty…
Instead it was a live action theater production telling the story of Argentine history through song, dance, battle reenactments, and impressive horseback-riding…
La Rural, situated next to the US Embassy in Palermo, is a nicely restored complex that was once a sort of livestock convention arena… It has some stands that surround a rectangular riding rink and stage. From the stands we watched the dancers and horseman act out various stages in the taming of the pampas and the establishment of Argentina.
We had a pretty good general idea of how Argentina was founded and this show confirmed our view of how similar it was to the founding of the US… colonization of a bountiful new world, the purging of the natives, the fight for independence from the colonizing nation, the battle between the federalists and anti-federalists, the settling and taming of the wild west, and the hardwork and prosperity that followed… Of course, the colonizing nation was a different one which made the legal and government structure different, but the similarities are many…
Now back to the show, as we said the horseback-riding was quite good. The horses that they rode were Criollos a very well dispositioned Argentine breed, a decendent of the horses that the Conquistadors brought. In the show they did demonstrations of Argentine equestrian events. They also did tricks, like having the horses all lie-down in unison, and galluping into formations…
All in all it was an enjoyable show that we would recommend to visitors.
We’re going to try and round-up some pictures from someone… unfortunately our new digital camera slipped off an ottoman the other day and is no longer functioning. It was a disappointing loss, before we’d gotten even a fraction of our money’s worth out of the thing… uggghh.
There’s little hope of it being fixed and I don’t know if we can bring ourselves to buy another one in such short order. But for you dear reader we trouble and toil, perhaps we’ll get a cheap little gizmo, so at least you’ll have some pictures to look at to distract from our boring writings…
Today, this little blog was surprisingly included in the London Times Online list of the ‘Top 25 Property Blogs‘, at number 25 no less!
Cheers to the Times Online!
And a warm welcome to Times readers. We don’t always write about property, but here are some of our top more recent posts about the topic:
A Farm Just Outside Buenos Aires
Buying Real Estate in Argentina, The Process
An Italian Palace on the Cheap
Sausage Houses the Problem with Soho
Francis Ford Coppola Buys Petit Hotel in Palermo Soho
Real Estate Hunting, The Neighborhoods
Or, click here to read everything tagged as real estate.
Oh dear reader, we’ve really been letting you down this week…
We used to be involved in a business that sold productivity and time management programs, we need to look back and take some of that advice right now… We are overloaded with projects.
And now we’re semi-involved with two simultaneous real estate transactions, which have kept us distracted from our many projects that all desperately need our attention…
It’s good to be busy no doubt. But why does it have to be so seemingly chaotic and taxing?
Why can’t we have a four hour work week like Tim Ferriss?
Well, because we don’t want to… We need pressure, that’s how we work…
Things are as they should be. But it puts important but not urgent items like our Spanish lessons in the backseat.
We’re jealous of those jerks who come down here on a semi-vacation to learn Spanish and that’s all they do… But in the back of our mind we know we wouldn’t be comfortable doing that anyway.
We’re responsible for our own destiny everyday. And it’s our own damn fault that we’re not making progress in the language department. Any moment, any day now, we’re going to change all that… but just as long as it’s tomorrow…
We’re supposed to go to the opera tonight. We have no idea where it is or what to expect. But we’ll let you know what happens, stay tuned…
Our better half was concerned that our last post might give the impression that we are a raging alcoholic… Since many of our friends, relatives, and business associates may at some point or another read this blog we felt we better set the record straight. But the real story is in some ways more embarrassing than the label of a chronic imbiber…
Last night was our second time going out to a night club the entire time we’ve been here. And it proved to be even more of a disaster than the first time. We realized that we had indeed not been out dancing in ages, so to ward off the moniker of the old married couple that we are we decided to stay up late and go out on the town.
We opted for Opera Bay in Puerto Madera where there are a couple different levels with different music and dance floors where we thought we’d have a greater chance at finding some music that we like. We got there at 12:30 and it was as dead as a door-nail. But this is Buenos Aires, and we figured things don’t get going till the wee hours and we followed another couple in, paying the $10 cover…
But we very quickly realized why the place was dead and that it wasn’t going to get any better… We went up to the bar to order drinks and we were told that because of the election they could not serve alcohol. Thus the ban ruined our little attempted night out… and thus we were irked…
As a reader recently pointed out the mayoral election is very important to us foreigners as it is the mayor who makes the majority of the decisions that affect us… like the laws regarding real estate investment… We are extremely ignorant of Argentine politics. So, please excuse the ignorant ranting of our last post. We’re going to do a little research into the mayoral race and figure out who’s who and what it means…
Hasta la proxima.
We had a bad brush with the Argentine political system last night… we were denied alcohol on a Saturday night because of the Buenos Aires mayoral election.
As typical with political entities they inflate their own self-importance while their silly ideas, and attempts to control people, backfire… In this case, everyone, except for the uninformed (like us) and those who do not have the resources to get out, leaves town (the ban does not affect the rest of the country) during the election weekend and therefore do not participate in the vote. So, essentially the lowest common denominator decides the election… [Actually, we've read that there's another round of voting so that the booze hounds can be included and that voting is mandatory... that being the case, what's the point of the ban?]
We discussed this with a taxi driver and he explained how the entire city suffered from the economic blackout caused by the alcohol ban…
Of course, the justification is that everyone is to be sober when voting, and that they take the election event seriously. We would plead the opposite. Booze should be half price, to wash away the misery of voting… But we digress.
This may well be a long-standing tradition in Argentine politics, but we think it stinks.
Notice how we become more belligerent without our liquor, dear reader? That’s why Prohibition didn’t work…
Today we found ourselves visiting a broker on behalf of a client. This particular broker has penthouse offices in one of the taller buildings in Buenos Aires. When the elevator arrived at the top floor we stepped out onto a glass encased landing with large glass doors with gold handles. No one was around. We looked across the entry way to a fancy conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows and an incredible view of the Puerto Madera harbor and the Rio Plata.
We stood there gawking at the view for a moment then came to our senses… We knew there must be a little call-box around there somewhere. It was hidden off to one corner. “Hola. Senor Bonner para Senor So-and-So”, we said into the box. “Si, Senor” said the box. Then a neatly dressed secretary came and opened the door for us.
The broker came out and we were surprised that he was about our age, about our same stature, with unruly hair like ours, but much better dressed… We had a quick and productive meeting on behalf of our client. He asked us how we were taking to Buenos Aires and we told him how much we liked it… They take pride in their city, so that usually wins some points. Anyway, our business was already done and it was time for us to leave.
They had to practically push us out of the office as we wanted to stay around and take in that view for a while longer… But back down to the busy streets we went. Hustling and bustling, noisy, wonderful streets…
We’re self-conscious about our rate of immersion into Argentine society. We’re not learning Spanish fast enough. We’re not making enough Argentine friends… Blah, blah blah…
Our better half told us to just relax and it will happen of its own accord over time… Sage advice of course…
Your editor likes to put pressure on himself to get things done… And yes we do need to ramp-up our efforts in the Spanish language department. But other than that there’s really not much we can do to enter Argentine society other than what we’ve been doing… which is living, working, and trying to pay attention…
Things are coming along just fine.
We continue to make more business contacts because business is what we do. And we’ve enjoyed meeting and working with Argentine businessmen and women. They’re mostly English speakers, but that doesn’t make them less Argentine…
But we are particularly embarrassed when we meet with an Argentine business person who is about the same age as us (as if that really makes a difference) and we converse in English instead of Castellano… of course, no business would get done if we were speaking Spanish, which is why they choose English. But here we are in Latin America asking them to speak our language, how embarrassing… I don’t know if Castellano is the official language of Argentina or not, but it doesn’t really matter, as an immigrant you know you’re at a disadvantage not speaking the national tongue even if you can get by okay for a while… They say necessity is the mother-of-invention, and not-really-necessity, well, that’s our situation…
Sharing mate with people is an Argentine cultural experience. You drink it out of a wood gourd, sometimes elaborately decorated, with a metal straw. We’ve had mate with gauchos in Salta in northwestern Argentina, farmers in Buenos Aires province, and portenos (Argentines who live in BA).
At first we didn’t know what all the fuss was about… Mate is very bitter. The first couple sips from the gourd are like drinking boiling grass water. But once you learn to deal with the bitterness, mate is really quite rewarding. There are the social rewards of bonding with other people while sharing mate, but also a noted feeling of well-being after drinking it. It makes you alert yet relaxed…
My wife and I have taken to having mate, like tea time, around 4-6pm… It’s an acquired taste, for sure. But, little rituals like having mate are special in that they make you slow-down, talk, and reflect… something most of us should probably do more of…
An American friend who’s been living down here for three years was telling us some investor horror stories the other day…
One was about a new apartment building in Belgrano where the developers sold each apartment twice pre-construction, then skipped town… That was a year ago and the place is tied up in intense litigation and probably will never be finished…
While Argentina has great value in real estate, like any place, there is risk involved. You’ve got to do your homework. Make sure you’re dealing with reputable people…
I’ve recommended the Argentina Owner’s Manual in the past and continue to do so, as it’s a great way to instantly get reputable contacts in the country… Just because people speak good english does not mean that they necessarily share your business values…
That said, our experience here has been a very good one. The more time we spend in Argentina the more we like it.
We must apologize, dear reader, for our sluggish editorializing on your behalf of late… That’s because we’ve been two-timing you… We’ve fallen into the embrace of another, blog, a political blog no less…
Much of our free time has gone towards promoting the candidacy of presidential hopeful, Texas Congressman Ron Paul at: http://goronpaul.blogspot.com/
We’re not really even ‘in to’ politics, but Dr. Paul, actually has us excited…
I know, I know, this is a blog about Buenos Aires. What do American politics have to do with anything? Well, as an American living overseas, it has a lot to do with it actually…
The US is powerful and highly influential around the world. Argentines know a lot about the US and American politics… because it affects them… You’ve probably heard that Argentina is anti-American, that’s true in a sense. But they, like most people in the world, understand the difference between the American people, and the US government.
Why don’t they like us? Well, I’m not going to get into the entire history of economic and political relations between the US and Latin America… but it comes down to the fact that they don’t like us pushing them around, manipulating things in the region, and acting with favoratism towards some countries and not others. You can argue till you’re blue in the face about whether we do this or not. But you’d be hard-pressed to deny that we don’t throw our weight around down here…
The fact is that our image as a bastion of democracy and economic prosperity is tainted by our bullying… So called, ‘foreign aid’ is used for political gain… We practice protectionism in agriculture to help American farmers, however the vast majority of those benefiting are in fact large corporations… In the past we have supported oppressive and anti-democratic regimes to advance our own self-interest.
Ron Paul is the only presidential contender who will put a stop to all that… Paul will end all foreign aid. He’ll put a stop to ‘corporate welfare’ and protectionism. He will put an end to our military-adventurism overseas. He will bring our military, currently occuping over 100 countries, home. He will close the thousands of overseas military bases. He’ll protect the US borders instead of the border between Iraq and Jordan…
He is a non-interventionist, not an isolationist… Look at how we trade with Vietnam now, how much better that works than fighting them and losing 50,000+ lives… Trade, not war seems like a good motto to me…
Then, we can stop ignoring Latin America and help them the best way possible which is to trade with them… and not the corporate sponsored, trade organization sort of (NAFTA)trade either, but real ‘free trade’ that brings prices down and increases the quality of goods and services.
By doing this we’ll make a lot more friends than enemies.
There’s a lot more that can be said about all this, but we’ll leave it at that.
Please take a moment to look into Ron Paul and see what he’s about. At his official website: http://www.ronpaul2008.com or my other blog at: http://goronpaul.blogspot.com/
(Also, be sure and check out the videos about him on Youtube.com… There’s a very interesting online grass-roots campaign swirling around the man.)
You might not like his positions on everything, but, he is honest and has real integrity. You can vote for him and not feel like you have to take a shower afterwards… Why take one of the ‘lesser of two (very evil) evils’ when you don’t have to?
Here’s Ron Paul at a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s show…
The subject of American coffee came up again at a dinner we went to last night with an American expat and his 6-month pregnant Argentine wife… She revealed to us that the Argentine nickname for American coffee is ‘umbrella juice’, perhaps a tad more flattering than the French ’sock juice’…
But umbrella juice is coming to a street corner in Buenos Aires soon, fellow blogger Alan Patrick reports… Starbucks will be opening up here in the coming months…
They said it would never work in Paris. But, of course, it did. We’re quite sure it will flourish in BA as well… especially if it’s true that there are 70,000 Americans now living in Buenos Aires according to our new expat friend. That’s a lot of umbrella juice drinkers! But it’s not the foreigners that will make it work, it’s the irresistable fashion of carrying around those cups and the convenience of getting that fix on the go…
More to come from way south of the border…
Yesterday we got to tag-along with a friend to visit a farm just outside Buenos Aires. It was about an hour and half from downtown, north of Pilar in an area called Cordales. This is farm country that is unfortunately being developed into gated communities. But, for it’s proximity to BA, it was surprising rural, with one attractive horse farm after another and few developments. Our friend, who had business there, invited us, as he knew we were curious about the land out of the city.
It was a lot like parts of northern Texas… pretty country…
We saw a lot of ‘for sale’ signs in the area. Evidently, land there goes for about $20,000-$25,000 per hectare. A hectare is about two and a half acres…. So, it’s not dirt-cheap. But, it was nice and the proximity to the big city is a real plus.
We arrived back in BA this morning… It feels great to be back!
Here’s some of what we missed in the US:
- The coffee. (This is going to sound very snobby, but, the French have a name for American coffee which translates to ’sock juice’. After enjoying Argentine coffee for months, cafe americana tasted awful… even in nice restaurants, you order espresso and they give you some diesel fuel in a small cup…)
- The food. (We went to some of our favorite restaurants back in Florida, and despite a few exceptions it was disappointing…)
- The excitement. (We missed the daily adventure that comes with the language, cultural, and geographical complications we face in BA.)
- The prices. (It’s tacky to talk about prices, but, we were shocked to find how fast money disappears in the US comparitively…)
We could go on, but you get the idea. We enjoy life down here…
But it’s not for everyone… We talked to a couple of Latin Americans in south Florida, who had been to BA, loved it, but had absolutely no desire to live here. They appreciate the lifestyle, the culture, and the many things that the city has to offer… but their main complaint was the business environment. They say there’s a different set of values in business. What people say and what they do can be entirely different things…
We have not experienced this ourselves. People have kept their word in our dealings… That’s because these people understand how important ethics are to a lasting and successful business. Sure, you can screw someone once or twice, but that’s it… Then you’ll no longer have the opportunity to do business with them, or their contacts, again… Especially in this internet age, word gets around, fast… Reputation is important in South America. If you’re careful and deal with the right people you can reap the substantial opportunities that exist down here.
To find some good contacts, I recommend the Argentina Owner’s Manual from International Living. It doesn’t cost a lot, but could save and make you a lot of money if you’re thinking about doing business in Argentina.
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