Chile Forum

Has anyone had any dealings with this outfit? They are in Temuco and build houses in the area. Good /Bad?

Yea, one of their managers contacted us back about the time the financial crisis broke (so did socavesa and a few other companies). The builders were all in a panic in the early months, and hoping we could get them in to the foreign market.

Anyway, we went out and met with them. They showed us their "show" house. Not impressed. Any company that sells houses, and their "example" house is a construction mess, stay away from. The things that got my attention, was the impregnated 2x4 in the walls where standard studs would have been just fine, crooked floors, crooked doors, single pained glass flanking thermal pain glass, and so on and so forth. All around low quality construction. It is one thing to bait and switch, which people kind of expect the show house to be a bit better than what they get, but when the show house is that sloppy, chances are they are going to be really bad on a finished product you get if you buy green.

I have seen some of their houses in the wild around Temuco, after they have been built for a few years, and they pretty much reflect the same problems. Sloppy constructions resulting from sloppy management, and corners cut in strange ways.

In short, nothing we are going to put our name on and recommend to clients.

If I was inclined to hire a Chilean building company to build my house, and I really would only do that when faced with living homeless in cardboard box with a gun to my head, http://www.socovesa.cl/ Socovesa builds relatively good homes and backs up their warranties. I lived for several years in one that we rented, that was new, and it was fairly well built as Chile goes (survived the 8.0 in Temuco in good order). When there were problems, they fixed it. You need to go with one of their higher end models, because the floor plans can be strange (so are most houses in Chile), but the fundamental construction was good.

Thanks for the information!!