Chile Forum

OK - my ultimate retirement plan has me Chile bound, in about 10-15 years. I've been looking for property for sale (over the internet) in southern Chile. I'm looking for something in the region of Puerto Montt south to General Carrera (even out on Chiloe would be great). What I've found over the past year are very large plots of land - not bad deals, but in total they are large parcels (in the thousands of acre range) and are out of my budget range. I'm looking for something in the 20-50 acre range ... for something like about $75.00 - $150.00 (US dollar) per acre. I'm not necessarily looking for something right in town limits - I certainly don't mind being a bit out of the reach of civilisation! Anyway, I guess my question is if this is reasonable, and how might I get info on potential land parcels? Thanks for any assistance!

If you really look hard you might be able to find something in southern Chile for around $1000 US a hectare at the very bottom. Don't expect things like a view of the volcanoes or a lake.

We know of no one selling land in the $75 - 135 US range in southern Chile. Anyone selling at that price is likly a scam, or it is something you would not want to live on.

Relistic is to expect that a 5,000 square meter lot or a hectare will run between $2,000-20,000 US, depending on how popular or remote a piece of land is. Anything under that price will likly be land you get because the people just plane like you. It will not be something that you find on the internet. It is a more personal get out and talk to the farmer type thing. We have lots of properties listed at: http://www.allsouthernchile.com/content ... ion/28/95/ to give you an idea.

As your purchase size goes up, you get a little better price; however, about $500-1,000 US an acre would be more relistic with buying say 50 acres.

We also have a few properties that have not been listed yet. They should be posted later this week on http://www.allsouthernchile.com

Thanks Admin - Chuck(?). I definitely keep the old adage in mind: "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is"! I just recall speaking with a real-estate person in Coihaique last year, and seeing that it was possible to find some fairly inexpensive land down around that region. Of course, I promptly lost the business card that I was given (bummer for me)! And, as you have pointed out, even something like $500-$1,000 per acre is quite superior to just about anything you can find here in the US! Here in Idaho, it's been about 30 years since you could find anything as inexpensive as $750 an acre!

I have been keeping an eye on the properties listed on the allsouthernchile site (and I've found one other that seems to have good info) ... where do your listings come from? I'm in no major rush to be a "landgrabber", just trying right now to do some research on what my options might be. Are you aware of any good sites (aside from this one!) where a person can find something like a list of potential real-estate folks doing business in Southern Chile?

First, for those just joining this conversation, we are not real estate agents in the traditional sense. We list properties for free, and sell legal and other consulting services to foreigners to make the sale happen, and help them after the sale with getting established in Chile. We get no commission on the sale of the properties and there is no charge for listing them on our sites. The consulting services are how we mostly pay for running this site and other sites in the All Chile Network. We are completely all for promoting other peoples property, as it is what our business is based on.

Most of our listings come from talking to people. It really is the only way to find out if there are any good deals in the rural parts of Chile. In southern Chile, buying property is more like applying to be a member of the community. Most of the time land is sold by word of mouth to friends and relatives. Most of the best deals do not have for sale signs hanging on a post. We typically start out by mentioning to people that we list real estate for free on our website in English. After dinner, coffee, drinks, magically everyone seems to know about some land for sale. I often wonder if they are simply putting a piece of land up for sale because they like us, rather than they had been actively trying to sell it before.

We tried contacting real estate agents the old fashion way, which after weeks of begging dozens of them to let us promote their properties for free we had one property with no photos. It was really amazing for all the weeks of calling and having meetings with real estate agents in southern Chile, how little information they provided. It did not matter how we approached them either (we tried the mystery shopper approach a few times with no luck or information).

We gave up on the real estate agent approach, and started just wondering around the towns and the back roads ( a lot more fun ). We found that any given farmer tilling his field to be a better real estate agent than any of the guys with signs and nice store fronts. Which we prefer to save the locals the real estate sales commission, and put the money directly in their pockets anyway. We have found that after handling a few deals in an area, the locals have now started contacting us directly when they want to sell property. We hope this will keep rolling, and the properties will find us this way. We also hopes it will help to get the gringos off to a good start with the locals when they do buy in an area.

A couple of sites that we are aware of that are good, however limited and not Chile specific, are the http://santiago.craigslist.org/ and http://www.propertyhaven.com . we actually republish a lot of our property listings on those two sites. Another one that has some is http://www.chileforsale.com/

The others we have seen are fairly specific to just one property or one project, or are in Spanish. It is one of the reasons we decided to start listings properties on All Southern Chile. It would be impossible to help people buy property, if they could not find it in the first place.

I'm looking for some land possibly in or around (maybe south) of Pichilemu to Consititucion on the coast. I like the area near LLoca or El Penon as it has river to ocean access by boat. Do you have any listings in the area I can look at next week or the week after next? I do plan on using your services to close a deal when we find the right piece. My wife is from Valdivia and we currently live in Florida (US). A friend of mine is a courier in Santiago and we plan on driving to Pichilemu sometime next week to look around and thought you might have some listings to look at. I'm not stuck totally on the area but it seems to have most of the things we are looking for. I do like the lake region also and would consider something in the northern part of that area with a great view or water access, this could be a stream or lake. Being fom Florida I like the heat and realize the lake region is not that but we plan to purchase only 1-3 hectarias in the south for summer use but want our primary residence near the coast and north but not north of V region. Have you ever used a term called a 10-32 exchange in land purchase's. I'm not entirely sure if it possible for me to do with land I'm selling here to offset the capitol gains tax but will inquire with my tax attorney if it possible on out of country investments. Am I correct in reading that you are affiliated with land attorney's to check regulation and assuring compliance with local laws and taxes? Thanks in advance for your help

Greetings,

We would be happy to help. Yes, we do have several attroneys involved, and legal work with regards to real estate is our primary service. We also do a lot of the logistical consulting after purchase (i.e. connecting electricity, cordinating moving, construction contracts, etc).

I will PM you with more information.


Best,

Great resourse and we can talk more about the consulting as I'm a believer in staying with local knowledge. Our hope is that we can zero in on an area and look at listings for a week and then return in 60 days to spend 2 weeks or more looking again unless we get real lucky and find something that is a good fit now. I've traveled from La Serena to Castro zig zagging as I went 2 times and think the coast area around Pichilemu is where we will look first. Anything in the area that you might know about?

Im searching the forum to see if anyone has experience clearing Eucalyptus trees. I visited a rural plot for sale which is randomly covered by different sizes and heights ,over 100 in all.
My interest would be to clear the land and plant long term native species more friendly to the wildlife and also some fruit trees. After spending several hours sitting in the middle such flammable pillars,the only friend i made was a small spider(probably lost). Not really good enough if you want to get back to nature.

Anybody know,
Is the soil going to be problematic ( too acid ,toxic) for further growing projects,or too costly to neutralize.over 5000sqmt.
Is it very costly (or necessary) to remove the roots too (they go down deep and its a big hole) or they keep growing back damaging surrounding buildings from underneath.




will talk to conaf and the local municipal this week to get some feedback also and check the laws.

I've started to educate myself on such topics but don't feel qualified enough to give you a direct answer. I'd advise you to hire a specialist to dig a hole in the ground and check for pH, depth of topsoil (vs. subsoil), texture, potential compression and drainage problems, among other things. See this document for more details:
http://www.inia.cl/medios/biblioteca/ta/NR36668.pdf

Thanks for that link.On another note a couple of people have commented that the earthquake shifted,redirected the underground water flow in some areas resulting in dry pozos.

You're looking for land in Region 5, right? Have you pinned down where, if I may ask? We're looking for land near Quillota/La Cruz, or Limache if Quillota proves too expensive. What kind of prices are you seeing? Quillota is all about palta hass and it's getting more and more urbanized. This has pushed prices beyond 15M/ha according to several people from the area I've talked to. However the convenient logistics, availability of water, nice view and fertile land make it quite attractive to us. We intend to grow flowers, a vegetable garden and a (somewhat experimental and diversified) orchard.

Feel free to PM me if you want to further compare notes. I've been reading a lot and plan to do a hell of a lot of further due diligence before spending money. I've got friends in Olmué who spent several millions on a well less than a year ago and it's already dry... You can't do too much homework on this.