Chile Forum

Hola! My family and I will be coming to Chile to stay for 6 months to see if we like it. We think that to test the country, we will give Santiago a try for the first 6 months. We have 4 children. Does any one think that is a good idea, or do you have another city that you would recommend? I have spent some time on this forum and I believe I have a good understanding of the banking and visa issues. I have also seen several websites that advertise rentals in all areas of Chile. The question I have is ,that when the listings comes up it will tell you a little about the property and give you a price of say $1600 in USD. Then when you open the property listing its will give you a price usually around half of the price listed on the first page. I have been looking mainly on the the portalin site. Does anyone know what the difference in the prices are? Is the highest one monthly? Just not sure how to figure what the monthly rent is. My Spanish is not the greatest but I don't see anything mentioning the rent is by the month or week. Some do say daily but that is it. What are your thoughts?

sean7727 wrote:Hola! My family and I will be coming to Chile to stay for 6 months to see if we like it. We think that to test the country, we will give Santiago a try for the first 6 months. We have 4 children. Does any one think that is a good idea, or do you have another city that you would recommend? I have spent some time on this forum and I believe I have a good understanding of the banking and visa issues. I have also seen several websites that advertise rentals in all areas of Chile. The question I have is ,that when the listings comes up it will tell you a little about the property and give you a price of say $1600 in USD. Then when you open the property listing its will give you a price usually around half of the price listed on the first page. I have been looking mainly on the the portalin site. Does anyone know what the difference in the prices are? Is the highest one monthly? Just not sure how to figure what the monthly rent is. My Spanish is not the greatest but I don't see anything mentioning the rent is by the month or week. Some do say daily but that is it. What are your thoughts?

Not sure what you are looking at or seeing..... The US dollar to peso exchange is around 543 pesos to the dollar.... So if something in USD dollars says 1000 then it will be 543000 pesos so maybe the first three numbers of that are making you think half. Also, prices may be in UF (unidad de fomento) and that is 1 UF=21221 pesos more or less....

I am not sure what websites you are looking at specifically, but I am pretty sure you are seeing the USD price and then the other price you are seeing is the Chilean peso price. I look at Chilean real estate websites and that is how they are so for that reason I would suggest that you are seeing the same thing.

I believe he meant portalinmobiliario.com.... Prices there are in CLP and UF. And they are monthly rents for the most part unless otherwise stated.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:

PenquistaDeCorazon wrote:... The US dollar to peso exchange is around 543 pesos to the dollar....

Please Please Please, or is this a dream!

JaJaJa... I think I out too much salvia in the pipe. Hallucinating like Miley Cyrus
469?''Just put it into a currency converter and blindly posted it. I should always go to emol.... I see UF at 21.450,02 as well

converting UF and pesos, use the chilean central bank site (in english):
http://www.bcentral.cl/eng/index.htm

It is one of the few gov sites in Chile I like and use all the time. Mostly because it does not have a bunch of animated flash garbage.

O.k., you are going to have a real hard time getting rentals off the Internet, and not pay the price. Don't rent anything long-term off the Internet in Chile. Get a short rental, so you move once you are here and can visit places in person, get orientated to what areas are good and bad, and so on. You might find out you don't like Santiago, but be stuck with a one year lease.

Just because it is on the Internet, does not mean they will rent to a gringo that is not even in the country yet. We spend a lot of time explaining to landlords and real estate agents that a foreigner on a tourist visa can sign a contract for a house. There is some sort of urban myth of the extremely ignorant here that think a foreigner on tourist visa can not legally sign a rental contract or something.