Have a look at Real Estate Valparaiso, Chile for a few of the options. There are a lot more out there, so please feel free to get in touch and let me know what you're looking for.
Showing posts with label BUYING PROPERTY IN CHILE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BUYING PROPERTY IN CHILE. Show all posts
Friday, 30 September 2011
Real Estate in Valparaiso, Chile
I've been working a little bit more in Valparaiso over the last couple of months and there are some great properties for sale- commercial and residential- if you're interested in investing in Valpo.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Real Estate in Chile
You can also follow Chile Investments on Twitter.
Vineyards for sale, Chile. Real estate Chile. Farms for sale Chile Недвижимость в Чили
Viñedos en venta Chile. Campos en venta Chile. Viñas en venta Chile. Bienes raices Chile. Inversiones Chile.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Chile Investments on Twitter
If you're interested in getting news and views about Chile and finding out about real estate for sale in Chile, then you can follow Chile Investments' Twitter feed by searching for @chileinvest or simply clicking here.
At some point, I hope to have time to actually blog about something. Until then, look me up on Twitter.
At some point, I hope to have time to actually blog about something. Until then, look me up on Twitter.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Good Moods, TV & New Project
*I posted this over on Colchaguino first but realise I've neglected this blog even more so I'm re-posting here as well. But to make it more relevant to Valpo, I've added an old photo. :) *
See- old photo. Don't you wish Valpo still looked like this?
As anyone who has been following this blog for a while can tell, I haven't really been in the mood to post much over the last year or so. I just really haven't had the desire or energy. I think I'd been in a low-level bad mood for so long, it became my reality and I didn't realise why I felt so low on energy and general bounciness. Not that I've ever been particularly demonstrative...I did go to boarding school in England, after all. Trying to get me to show any emotion at all is something that has driven some past girlfriends to the edge of insanity. :)
After my short trip to Colombia, I feel completely different. My good mood is almost tangible. It's really strange...it's like a physical change. I'm feeling positive about work for the first time since the earthquake hit my business really quite hard (that's www.chileinvestments.com in case you haven't worked it out), I'm feeling positive about living in Chile and I'm loving calling Colchagua 'home'. There's a really great little community here and I'm starting to feel like a real part of it now. That's a nice feeling. And I've rented a small flat in Parque Forestal, Santiago to spend time there when I need a change of scenery (get in touch if you want to meet up for a drink or something- I've never lived in Santiago so don't actually know many people there!).
Something I thought might throw me out of my good mood was what I was doing all weekend. I filmed an episode of a wildly popular real estate show in the US and around the world that I'm contractually obliged to be positive about... :) I thought that a weekend of filming would drive me insane, but it was actually a lot of fun.
The crew were a real laugh and my clients were great as well (I won't mention who right now as she doesn't seem to have mentioned it on her blog so perhaps doesn't want anyone to know...). Anyway, both her and her husband are really fun and I had a fun time with them (despite helping her buy her place a while ago, I did so remotely and we only met for the first time very recently.)
So the show will air in January in the US, most likely, and then in Chile later in the year I guess. I'll let you know.
And finally, I haven't knocked any walls down recently (maybe that's why I haven't been particularly happy?)...but my drought is soon to come to an end. I've just bought a flat overlooking Parque Forestal (around the corner from the place I'm renting). It's a big renovation job and there are two walls that just have to go. I can't wait to get started...hopefully within 2-3 weeks. The plan for this property is to renovate to a really high standard, furnish it luxuriously and then rent it out to tourists, aiming for the high-end hotel market but providing a far better product at a much lower price. Mid-November we should be good to go. Here are some photos...
The 1960s building.
The view of the park is fantastic.
The little, unusable balcony will be incorporated into the living room by getting rid of the first set of sliding doors (see later photos) and replacing the nasty aluminium outer doors with fancy double glazed ones.
And I also like the street view going the other way.
Master bedroom (looks smaller in the photos than it actually is, although it's still not huge- the 2 bedroom apartment is 85m2 total).
Second bedroom.
The wall on the right will go, which will open up the maid's room (next photos), creating a 30m2 open kitchen, dining and living room.
And this wall in the middle...it'll move to the right in line with the door frame, linking up next to that window you see. That'll open up the toilet, which will be converted into the kitchen (also all along the wall on the left). The kitchen will then become a large bathroom.
Lovely carpets, eh? Happily, underneath is the original parquet floor.
Yey, renovations! I've really missed you.
For photos about my previous renovations, take a look at my old Valparaiso house and my house here in Santa Cruz...
Sunday, 7 February 2010
More renovations...but not in Valpo this time...
If you liked my posts about renovating my house in Valparaiso, you might be interested in seeing the job I did on my new house down in Santa Cruz in the beautiful Colchagua Valley. You might notice quite a few similarities in decor!
And if you're interested in buying a vineyard or fruit orchard in Chile or any kind of real estate in Chile, then you can see some fantastic properties over at www.chileinvestments.net Feel free to get in touch via the contact details on the right hand side.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Inflation and the mysterious UF
Everywhere you go in Chile you'll see 2 letters: UF. When i first arrived in this country way back in December 2003 (i can't believe it was so long ago) i just ignored it, thinking it was just some bizarre Chilean way of making things more complicated than strictly necessary. I still think the same but now i actually understand what the hell the UF is all about.
UF stands for Unidad de Fomento. It's an inflation index and once you get your head around it it's quite a useful tool when calculating how much things cost.
Let's have an example:
You want to buy a house. You look on an agent's website and see the price is listed at 1500 UF. Just what does that mean? Well, One UF is equivalent, today, to 18792.93 Chilean Pesos. So that means that the house is valued at 1500UF X 18792.93 which means 28,189,395 Pesos (or about us$54k).
The UF level is adjusted every day. Inflation in Chile runs to around 3-4% per year. Tomorrow's UF is expected to be around 6 Pesos higher, at 18798.36 Pesos. That means the same house tomorrow will cost: 18798.36 X 1500UF=28,197,540 or 8,145 pesos more than yesterday (about us$16).
If you're interested in property in Chile then please click Pacific Five, Real Estate Consulting, Chile
Pretty much all large scale purchases in Chile, such as cars and real estate, are valued in UF. Many services are also valued in this way. Retaining a lawyer on a monthly basis, for example, would be valued in UF. You would pay a fee every month of, let's say, 100UF. That fee in actual pesos would rise in line with inflation but the amount in UF stays the same. Insurance (health, car, home etc) is also valued in UF. In real terms, the cost doesn't increase, it only rises at the same rate as the Consumer Price Index. In some cases, you can freeze the UF to the level it was when you signed a contract. That means the cost of a service doesn't rise at all in line with inflation.
Chile's Central Bank pursues a policy of keeping inflation below 4% per year. A jump in consumer prices in July means that inflation is on course to come close to that 4% level by the end of the year. Last night there was a report on the news with worried Chileans wondering where it was all going to end. Short answer, it'll end with further increases in interest rates in Chile. Interest rates are currently at their highest levels for years, at 5.25% and are expected to be raised again to 5.5% in the near future. If the BC wants to keep inflation below 4% that's what needs to be done. (For anyone that doesn't understand the correlation between inflation and interest rates, a very basic explanation is that higher interest rates mean people have to spend more money re-paying loans and mortgages which, in turn, means they have less money to spend on consumer goods which reduces demand for goods and services which means prices don't rise as fast which means you can now breathe after a sentence involving lots of which).
Of course, raising interest rates has other effects. One of them is that the Peso will rise in value against other currencies (another basic explanation-higher interest rates mean that Chile is a nicer place to put your money for interest earnings so more people want to buy Pesos making them more expensive). Back in 2004 i was getting almost 1300 pesos to my Pound. Now i get 1050. The Dollar was around 750 Pesos, now it's 520. This has made Chileans goods more expensive. Chile is a major exporter and the higher price of the Peso has hit exporters hard. Further rises against foreign currencies won't help.
Anyway, whilst browsing Argentine daily, Clarin (a paper that somehow manages to be both tabloid and high-brow broadsheet at the same time), i came across yet another report about inflation in Argentinaa. Compared to their cousins across the mountains, Chileans really have nothing to worry about. I wrote about inflation in Argentina a while back, after my last visit there. It's really out of control. Again. Official figures are a lie. Friends still living in BA say that things are getting really expensive. Just read the articles linked-in some cases there have been 900% rises in the prices of basic fruit and veg. 900%!! That's absurd.
From being far and away the best tourism bargain in the world just a couple of years ago, Argentina is now, in many cases, more expensive than Chile. Supermarkets in Chile are now cheaper than in Argentina (and food is of a higher quality in Chile, with the exception of the unbeatable Argentine beef which can be bought here anywhere), eating out at a really decent restaurant is cheaper, hell even the price of a beer in a bar is less in Chile nowadays. And i'm not even including the fact that electrical goods and cars are 50-75% more expensive in Argentina due to ridiculously high import tariffs.
And it just has to get more expensive. Inflation will continue to gallop along at 12-40% a year (depending on who you believe) until the government drops its policy of maintaining the Argentine Peso below its true value (currently trading at around 3.12 to the Dollar). When this happen, prices in foreign currency will increase by up to 35% overnight. It should be around 2.1-2.3 to the Dollar. And prices in Pesos won't come down. So you'll have had 3-4 years of rampant inflation followed by a monetary adjustment of 35%. That'll make for one hell of a pricey country.
A lot of foreigners moved to Argentina because of it's great value real estate and extremely low cost of living. Both of those aspects of living have now been pretty much eroded. Property is over valued and the market is a big bubble waiting to burst. What's left is the cultural aspect of Argentina, something that far surpasses what Chile can offer (in terms of theatres, cinemas, film, art, literature, architecture). But i wonder how long all these foreigners who moved to Argentina for the cheap life will last as prices continue to rise?
What i've always found funny is the claim by numerous people involved in both tourism and real estate in Argentina (actually, both are very much linked as many foreigners have bought property there as a rent-to-tourist investment) that "Buenos Aires will be as expensive as Paris, New York and Madrid in a few years time. Invest in Buenos Aires property!!" This is ridiculous. BA tries to model itself as the Paris of the South. If the real Paris is no more expensive then i think i know where most foreigners will end up...especially as the flight is half the price...
Anyway, Argentina is still a pretty damn cool place to visit and i'm looking forward to my next trip back, probably sometime in the next couple of months. Nightlife is much more fun over there than here and i love going to a packed restaurant on a Tuesday night. In Chile restaurants aren't even packed on Saturday night. That enjoy life to the full attitude is something sorely missing in Chile. I guess it's a trade off between a stable economy and culture to the roller-coaster fun of Argentina. I love roller-coasters. But they make me feel sick after too many rides.
UF stands for Unidad de Fomento. It's an inflation index and once you get your head around it it's quite a useful tool when calculating how much things cost.
Let's have an example:
You want to buy a house. You look on an agent's website and see the price is listed at 1500 UF. Just what does that mean? Well, One UF is equivalent, today, to 18792.93 Chilean Pesos. So that means that the house is valued at 1500UF X 18792.93 which means 28,189,395 Pesos (or about us$54k).
The UF level is adjusted every day. Inflation in Chile runs to around 3-4% per year. Tomorrow's UF is expected to be around 6 Pesos higher, at 18798.36 Pesos. That means the same house tomorrow will cost: 18798.36 X 1500UF=28,197,540 or 8,145 pesos more than yesterday (about us$16).
If you're interested in property in Chile then please click Pacific Five, Real Estate Consulting, Chile
Pretty much all large scale purchases in Chile, such as cars and real estate, are valued in UF. Many services are also valued in this way. Retaining a lawyer on a monthly basis, for example, would be valued in UF. You would pay a fee every month of, let's say, 100UF. That fee in actual pesos would rise in line with inflation but the amount in UF stays the same. Insurance (health, car, home etc) is also valued in UF. In real terms, the cost doesn't increase, it only rises at the same rate as the Consumer Price Index. In some cases, you can freeze the UF to the level it was when you signed a contract. That means the cost of a service doesn't rise at all in line with inflation.
Chile's Central Bank pursues a policy of keeping inflation below 4% per year. A jump in consumer prices in July means that inflation is on course to come close to that 4% level by the end of the year. Last night there was a report on the news with worried Chileans wondering where it was all going to end. Short answer, it'll end with further increases in interest rates in Chile. Interest rates are currently at their highest levels for years, at 5.25% and are expected to be raised again to 5.5% in the near future. If the BC wants to keep inflation below 4% that's what needs to be done. (For anyone that doesn't understand the correlation between inflation and interest rates, a very basic explanation is that higher interest rates mean people have to spend more money re-paying loans and mortgages which, in turn, means they have less money to spend on consumer goods which reduces demand for goods and services which means prices don't rise as fast which means you can now breathe after a sentence involving lots of which).
Of course, raising interest rates has other effects. One of them is that the Peso will rise in value against other currencies (another basic explanation-higher interest rates mean that Chile is a nicer place to put your money for interest earnings so more people want to buy Pesos making them more expensive). Back in 2004 i was getting almost 1300 pesos to my Pound. Now i get 1050. The Dollar was around 750 Pesos, now it's 520. This has made Chileans goods more expensive. Chile is a major exporter and the higher price of the Peso has hit exporters hard. Further rises against foreign currencies won't help.
Anyway, whilst browsing Argentine daily, Clarin (a paper that somehow manages to be both tabloid and high-brow broadsheet at the same time), i came across yet another report about inflation in Argentinaa. Compared to their cousins across the mountains, Chileans really have nothing to worry about. I wrote about inflation in Argentina a while back, after my last visit there. It's really out of control. Again. Official figures are a lie. Friends still living in BA say that things are getting really expensive. Just read the articles linked-in some cases there have been 900% rises in the prices of basic fruit and veg. 900%!! That's absurd.
From being far and away the best tourism bargain in the world just a couple of years ago, Argentina is now, in many cases, more expensive than Chile. Supermarkets in Chile are now cheaper than in Argentina (and food is of a higher quality in Chile, with the exception of the unbeatable Argentine beef which can be bought here anywhere), eating out at a really decent restaurant is cheaper, hell even the price of a beer in a bar is less in Chile nowadays. And i'm not even including the fact that electrical goods and cars are 50-75% more expensive in Argentina due to ridiculously high import tariffs.
And it just has to get more expensive. Inflation will continue to gallop along at 12-40% a year (depending on who you believe) until the government drops its policy of maintaining the Argentine Peso below its true value (currently trading at around 3.12 to the Dollar). When this happen, prices in foreign currency will increase by up to 35% overnight. It should be around 2.1-2.3 to the Dollar. And prices in Pesos won't come down. So you'll have had 3-4 years of rampant inflation followed by a monetary adjustment of 35%. That'll make for one hell of a pricey country.
A lot of foreigners moved to Argentina because of it's great value real estate and extremely low cost of living. Both of those aspects of living have now been pretty much eroded. Property is over valued and the market is a big bubble waiting to burst. What's left is the cultural aspect of Argentina, something that far surpasses what Chile can offer (in terms of theatres, cinemas, film, art, literature, architecture). But i wonder how long all these foreigners who moved to Argentina for the cheap life will last as prices continue to rise?
What i've always found funny is the claim by numerous people involved in both tourism and real estate in Argentina (actually, both are very much linked as many foreigners have bought property there as a rent-to-tourist investment) that "Buenos Aires will be as expensive as Paris, New York and Madrid in a few years time. Invest in Buenos Aires property!!" This is ridiculous. BA tries to model itself as the Paris of the South. If the real Paris is no more expensive then i think i know where most foreigners will end up...especially as the flight is half the price...
Anyway, Argentina is still a pretty damn cool place to visit and i'm looking forward to my next trip back, probably sometime in the next couple of months. Nightlife is much more fun over there than here and i love going to a packed restaurant on a Tuesday night. In Chile restaurants aren't even packed on Saturday night. That enjoy life to the full attitude is something sorely missing in Chile. I guess it's a trade off between a stable economy and culture to the roller-coaster fun of Argentina. I love roller-coasters. But they make me feel sick after too many rides.
Friday, 22 June 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)