Chile Forum

Well i see that the dollar is now at 595 allready..., and the euro at 760. This is really not normal anymore eh!! I see from one hour to another a change of up to 5%. It is just madness. Yesterday i called banco estado, they were paying 778 pesos/euro, now they are paying 741 pesos/euro. I am loosing my hair here!!

Back in Dec I was doing the same thing with the GBP, now it's headed the other way, I know what you are going through.

Floating between 589-596 all day, now at the lower end of that spectrum... not sure if I should wait and see what happens over the week or just pull out now. Ive got the feeling its going to go up again, not down... if that news only dropped it back to where is more or less been for the past month, then it seems like it wont be enough to take it lower. Possible jump up for the USD in chile in the next 2 weeks?

I have a little question:
where can i find the exchange rate of the dollar and euro to chilean peso on internet? Because there are a lot of values on different websites, but i want an updated value on each time of the day, which is moreless the same value as they use in the chilean bancs. I see by example on google a value 775peso/euro, on other websites i see 757peso/euro, and when i call banco estado, it's possible that they only pay something like 745...
Anyone?

xe.com seems to have the most up to date.

Chile's central bank web site will have closer to what you get your bank, which is typically about 4 pesos less.
http://www.bcentral.cl/eng/

Well when they lowered the interest rates it was expected that the dollar would go up not down. Lower interest rates weakens the peso. They want to do this so they can continue to lower interest rates.

Ok, finally i've got news from the chilean banc that they can do the payment.
But i really don't understand what exchange rate they use. On internet, i find 765 peso/euro. I find this on google, on XE.com, and on Bancocentral.cl. Now they tell me that they are paying 734 pesos/ euro. Can this be normal?? I really don't understand, and ok, it is not that i don't trust these bancs (Banco Estado), but still.... can anyone explain?

Typically it is about 4 pesos less than the observed rate. Now, what day they are using is almost never clear.

Worse one is customs. They set the rate once a month, and it might differ by over 100 pesos one way or the other.

I just spotted this.
I don't know if it was posted before but seems interesting in regards to the current slow down in the Chillean realestate market.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090209/od_ ... realestate

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – With home sales plunging as the global financial crisis chokes domestic demand, Chilean real estate companies are offering apartments at what they say are cost prices at night -- and even picking up buyers' air fares as an incentive

yea, we have had heavy contact from developers recently. You know the guys that would not give us the time of day two years ago, now begging for meetings. We have also found when negotiating for clients the developers are willing to more or less give us anything we ask for. They use to be fairly, take it or leave it.

I should caution however this is for condos or cookie cutter type developments. Individual houses and properties outside the shake and bake Chilean geared developments are still solid, and sellers are still not really willing to move much more than about the traditional 10% wiggle room in any negotiation in Chile. What has dried up is that middle to lower class second home market for Chileans from Santiago that had use to have credit and a bit of disposable income. They where designed and built for a market that was marginal at best to start. Once that dried up, then the deals came out.

I would also caution about reading in to this any comparisons between what has happened in the U.S. vs. what is going on in that segment of the Chilean real estate market. The banks in Chile did not over extend themselves with loans they can not recover. This is just a case of excess inventory that developers overreached, and now they are liquidating and pulling back on starting new projects. They had massive profit margins on those apartments. In many cases they likly exceeded 200% profit margin on the cost of building or more. They are not exactly taking a bath.