Chile Forum

Bahia Inglesa is a very tight real estate market in Chile. In fact, it is one of the few in Chile we would say that is a genuine seller's market.

Add an inexperienced buyer to the mix, and I could see that market turning someone off very quickly. Just generalizing to all of Chile is a bit of leap.

I am on the road right now and don't have a lot of internet time, but will get back with a whole lot more to say about this.

Salud from Santa Cruz wine country.

by the way, someone call tombrad2 our resident northern Chilean expert to help kick this subject around. I think he will have a better feel for the issue. :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea:

At least two American expatriots and a friend who is a native Chilean living in Santiago have discouraged me from trying to purchase land in Bahia Inglesa citing their general distrust of northern Chilenos in general! Please let me know if you can shed any light on this.

We stayed a few days in Vicuna, a night in Copiopo and finally got to Bahia Inglesa. The town, more accurately a village of about 100 people year round, is a jewel. The real estate market is not friendly to Americans. I hired a consultant afeter I returned and paid them $275 to check out real estate, through a Chilean lawyer, in Bahia Inglesa. Only four properties were offered for sale the past year year. I felt the prices were far too high to be realistic. One property is covered with large ( seveal ton) boulders and the one I really wanted was priced at around $30K USD.

I just had a closer look at that post, and realized that we were the ones he hired to do the search in Bahia Inglesa . Because of this I can not comment specifically on the details of client's case, but I am fully free to comment on anything he published that is untrue.

1. This is not the whole story and we did not in any way tell him or any one else that Northern Chileans are not trustworthy.

2. We did find many more properties than he even contracted us to find. There are more than 4 properties for sale in the area, he simply was not interested in looking at any other price range, and properties are very expensive in that area.

3. There are a lot more properties for sale in the area, but you need money.


Bahia Iglesa is a very very expensive place. If you think you are going to buy beach front property for a few thousand dollars anywhere in Chile, you are in the wrong country. In that area expect to spend about 50 million pesos to even be in the game.

Finally, there are some very good reasons for why costa rica is so cheap.

Land price inflation by sellers typically happens in very remote areas where the sellers are ignorant of real estate markets all together. We have never seen an area where across the board people bump prices simply because a foreigner is the buyer.

The prices in the real estate market overall may be driven by large numbers of foreigners buying, but it happens across the board for both Chileans and other foreigners. Simply, market forces at work.

Like everywhere in the World, and just about every industry, they will bump prices when the ignorant are involved. That is, an inexperience buyer simply says 'I'll take it', and has not done their homework or does not know that the negotiation is not over, or even how to start a negotiation in that particular part of Chile (this is a big country, with as many micro-cultures as micro-climates).

On the other strange hand, we have seen some very ignorant buyers go in to areas where the people are simply honest and liked them, and get property deals under market value. The sellers felt some sort of responsibility to make sure this poor foreigner did not get taken advantage of by some unscrupulous seller.

We also know areas, like Futaleufu where the whole community has agreed that they simply do not want Santiago Chileans buying in their region and turning it in to another Pucon resort for the low class new rich from Santiago. So, be careful who you take to help negotiate. You might be better off on your own, if the person helping you alienates the sellers and the community.


BUYING REAL ESTATE IN CHILE IS VERY VERY VERY DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PLACES IN THE WORLD.

What a foreigner perceives as nothing being available, prices being jacked up just because they are foreigner, people being unfriendly, people seeming not to want to negotiate, real estate agents not showing them anything, and so on is 99.99999999% cultural ignorance.

Spend a lot of time doing your home work before hand. The Chile Forum is here to help with that. And most importantly, get professional help.

There are still good deals in Chile, you just have to know how to find them.