Chile Forum

For your bike trip, you might want to contact Lu warner at the vallebonitochile.com I know he biked the entire austral route some years ago.

We have a few listed on our site allsouthernchile.com on the austral. Your best bet, for the best deals is the people you meet as you go along. South of La Junta is where your best prices will be.

There are no squatter issues in Chile. You might have some property line issues. In fact anywhere in that Patagonia we STRONGLY urge all of our clients to hire a surveyor to have your property lines sorted out before buying. Remember this land did not have any value even 10 years ago, so not even the government cared much about who got what. Surveyors are relatively cheap.

Most land in the south is zoned rural agricultural property and has no property tax or very little. At the most, for a big property you would likely pay something around $100 a year in property taxes for say something over 100 hectares+. Again, most is simply exempt.

The issue with leaving land unoccupied is often more about someone cutting the trees. Typically our clients in the course of buying however strike some deal with the neighbor or someone else in the community to keep an eye on their property while away. If it is just watching an otherwise empty property a good one is to strike a deal with a local rancher to be able to graze a few cows in exchange for watching the property. Typically you make friends in the process of buying, and those friendships go a long way to solving a lot of problems later.

Expect to pay about 500,000 CPL on the low end for large property tracks of 100 hectares or more, and for under 100 hectares about 1 million to 3 million south of La junta. Again much depends on the features.

There are some great little side valleys off the Austral, that have almost no one living in them with really cheap land, and good roads. It is like buying your own little Switzerland or Salt Lake valley. We had a client buy a couple small tracks about 3-7 hectares and pay about 3 million a hectare. With time, you could likely find something around that size for about 1 to 2 million.
Focus on the people however, and not the land. Good deals in southern Chile comes from friends, not strangers.