Chile Forum

To that of the U.S.?....U.S. looks like the average is around 1% on assessed value of property per annum?...Are property taxes set by the local province or at the Federal level and how does it look on average?

Here is an article we wrote on the subject some time ago:
http://www.spencerglobal.com/chile-law/ ... y-tax.html

The important one is if you are buying something in a rural area, most rural agricultural property is tax free or pays almost nothing. You can have 1,000 hectares of property that only pays say $50 US a year. On the high end, say an apartment in Vina del mar overlooking the ocean you could pay something around 300,000 pesos or more a year. Overall, however Chile does not get its revenue from property tax. The country is funded by things like sales tax (IVA) and income tax.

Thank you for the reply and information. I am doing some heavy research on this right now as I am looking to possibly relocate from the Caribbean to Chile. One additional thing, do you have any clients that move to Chile from Ecuador and how do they compare the two countries? Thank you.

No clients that previously lived in Ecuador, but I do know Ecuador is apples and oranges in terms of development compared to Chile. Political and economic stability being the biggest difference. Ecuador in many ways is a classic Latin American country with all the classic problems you will find in places like Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala. Corruption and poverty will be a serious issue. There is simply no country in Latin America that can hold a candle to Chile as far as corruption free environment. Chile has even outranked the United States in studies of corruption around the World (which perhaps is not saying much).

One additional question...and again thank you for your response...Are most RE transactions in Chile settled in Chilean Peso or U.S. dollars?

Pesos, this is not a dollarized economy.

We do have a few property deals done in Euros or Dollars. Normally those sorts of sales are done between foreigners. For example, two Europeans and all the money gets transferred in Europe. Once in a blue moon we get a Chilean listing a property in dollars.

I would say these are rare exceptions, and likely make up less than 3% or less of our property deals.