Chile Forum

I currently live in Portland, OR and have been a home builder/carpenter for 20 years specializing in quality renovations and custom woodworking. I just started looking into places to buy land for my own homestead, and am fascinated by southern Chile. After reading many of the construction posts I wonder whether there might be interest in professional construction management and/or the market for a construction firm building to higher standards than appears to be readily available. The relocation advice on this site suggests that starting a business in Chile is not terribly difficult, and if I delivered services as promised with a degree of professionalism it would be a pleasant departure from some of the stories I've read (not that the story varies much here in the States). I would like to hear your experiences and whether you think there is benefit to offering the mentioned services and skills, as I would seriously consider relocating to start something if so. Thanks for all the input in advance.

The problem is you may be a great builder, but you will never manage a group of Chilean trades. I would recommend you build your place (not to deep in or back of beyond) and train a crew while you build then use the crew to build a spec house sell it move to next spec house, you may find expats willing to pay a premium for a properly built house but not many Chileans. Note, if you are living back of beyond there is not much call for fine home building over there.

Don't go yet, I need you to help me rebuild a foreclosure south of Chehalis, WA that I'm gonna buy. There are a ton of threads here about this subject if you can find them, plenty of info regarding all that. Also, somewhat tongue in cheek, (but not much) you might want to get a feel for the concept of 'chamullo'. Maybe Px can chime in he's actually had the experience of building in Patagonia, but then I suspect he's a masochist.

Thanks for the advice on the starting up, sounds like a good idea to get to know a few good trades first. I figured that it would take some time to get a feel for the right place, any thoughts on areas to look at that aren't 'back of beyond' but still reasonable land prices? And Chuck if you need a hand in Chehalis send me a PM, but I'd love to meet up just to chat about your experiences in Chile.

bouchardcraftwork wrote:I currently live in Portland, OR and have been a home builder/carpenter for 20 years specializing in quality renovations and custom woodworking. I just started looking into places to buy land for my own homestead, and am fascinated by southern Chile. After reading many of the construction posts I wonder whether there might be interest in professional construction management and/or the market for a construction firm building to higher standards than appears to be readily available. The relocation advice on this site suggests that starting a business in Chile is not terribly difficult, and if I delivered services as promised with a degree of professionalism it would be a pleasant departure from some of the stories I've read (not that the story varies much here in the States). I would like to hear your experiences and whether you think there is benefit to offering the mentioned services and skills, as I would seriously consider relocating to start something if so. Thanks for all the input in advance.

First, a welcome to the forum.

I am also a builder, or perhaps more accurately a herder of Chilean builder-cats in the XI and XII regions. You will notice many comments on this forum about the unsatisfactory nature of Chilean trades workers, architects, ditch-diggers, cattle-rustlers, and the like. Actually the word "unsatisfactory" is terrible understatement but an honest assessment would involve terms unsuitable for a family-oriented forum.

I would agree that starting a construction business would not be terribly difficult, compared to your other challenges, but running a successful construction business would be another matter. In my opinion, which was formed mostly in southern Patagonia and may not be universal, there may be several impediments or challenges:

--You would need to speak the language and ways of the realm. You cannot get by in English in the building business if you do it truly professionally. Yes, you can talk to your customers, but not your subs and suppliers. You can play the handyman, talking with your hands and Duden Illustrated Spanish-English dictionary and a Sodimac paper catalogue. But somebody at the ferretería is going to tell you that you need a "combo" and a "chuzo" for a job and you and your dictionaries are going to think, WTF? Unsurprisingly, the trades have their own language here, and it's not in the dictionaries. And that assumes that you can get a worker to actually open his mouth to pronounce a word. Chile doesn't speak English and it doesn't really speak good Spanish, either.

-- There seems to be only a small set of Chileans willing to pay a decent amount to have a job done well. Most of them have German last names. Most Chileans are accustomed to getting poor trades work done for moderate rates, then getting it done over, and over, until it is sort of done though not done well, and after a while everyone gives up in disgust. It is that sort of worker that you will have to deal with if you plan to hire locals. In time you will come to appreciate Mexicans.

-- Remember that the norms and standards here differ from what you know. Some of the norms and standards have given rise to objectively bad practices in wiring, plumbing, and carpentry (OK, also lousy practices in surveying, in site grading, you name it, the local practices are sometimes not just disturbing but codified). Exposure number one: there is no black-pipe in Chile for gas work. The workaround simply sucks. Now go ahead and try to find Romex in this toy country. Never mind - you have to run everything in conduit. And in some places the mice eat the plastic conduit along with the insulation of the wiring inside. And the plastic master cylinder of the truck you drove in on.

-- The relationships between the Chilean trades are largely built on a degree of networking that would make the mafia blush. You, dear gringo, will never really become a part of that. And so you will pay more for materials and subcontracting. Your competing for services such as the delivery of sand and aggregate will be at a disadvantage. And when you finally get that "washed sand" delivered, it's got more organic ca-ca in it than a Whole Foods outlet, because you are the outsider and a competitor and you will pay the Gringo Surcharge in oh-so-many ways.

-- A substantial number of Chilean trades workers, not all but waaay too many, are thieves first and builders second or perhaps third. I would say building skills come in third. Drinking and drinking-related absenteeism are usually their first or second rated skills, and they often do multitasking involving drinking and working, and/or drinking and thieving and of course drinking and driving. One of the reasons that low-quality tools predominate in this country is that nobody is willing to invest in good tools that workers will almost certainly steal. The only way you can get a Chilean to do good trades work is to kidnap him between the ages of 2 and 4 and take him out of the country where he will never see another Chilean nor learn their evil practices, and them instruct him in the ways of sobriety, hard work, sobriety, responsibility, sobriety, the meaning of the little lines on a tape measure and the bubble in the level, sobriety, and skills development. And even then, it's possible that the evil Chilean worker ways may be in his DNA, in which case you will have to throw him back like some inedible carp.

Where does that leave you? Working by yourself, or teaming with someone from the civilised countries? Work for somebody else who needs the skills you have and will handle some of the rest? There are people here who need a skilled carpenter and are willing to pay for good work, but how big is that market and how long will it take to develop a large enough customer base?

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Don't even attempt it unless you are made of incredibly durable stuff and are willing to, as we say, "grow another self."

I am currently working with an English-speaking madman here in Aysén. He could use an expert craftsman who spoke Chilean, though the farm right now has rather primitive conditions and a great deal of Patagonian mud is involved. I will PM you with some contact arrangements if you might be interested.

BTW, the summit pack in your avatar needs to be adjusted to ride closer to your back, until that ice-axe is almost ready to take off an ear.

I have to say that none of the challenges mentioned come as much of a surprise, although some are insurmountable (i.e always a gringo.) Experience tells me that trades protect themselves from outsiders through those practices no matter if its Chile, Canada, Boston, or Portland. Acceptance of certain local conditions and practices seems par for the course in a lot of ways, even so, developing a reputation and client base would take quite a while. Luckily, I'm not in a hurry. In a lot of ways I want to shed a large portion of the inherited 'civilized' ways, and 'growing another self' is compelling. I enjoy challenging projects and locations, less so money and politics. Always in the end the true value is in the relationships built.

BTW: That summit pack is long gone, having been suitably upgraded to a better fitting one. My posture isn't too bad, although the picture makes it look like I have a gut.

nwdiver wrote: Note, if you are living back of beyond there is not much call for fine home building over there.

Not an "enormous" demand in all back-of-beyond areas but here in Aysén the foreigner/outsider market in remote lake-side and stream-side real estate is amazing. And with some of those properties goes the need for some decent building, while others are just being held until values go further into the troposphere. There is also Santiago money invested around here and some of their people have seen how things can be done better, though they will be miserly at paying for it. A savvy and well connected, highly skilled builder should be appreciated around here. But without knowing the language he's just another tourist. A reasonable fellow might think, well, I will simply partner with a Good and Honest Local Chilean Builder. Rule number one: there is no such thing here. Attempting to "partner" with a Chilean is your first step to ruin.

Standard counsel here is to make an exploratory trip of a month or so, with a checklist and a structured approach to the critical issues and not the scenery. It's handy to discover such things as ... almost nobody builds extensively with kiln-dried dimensional stick lumber here due to the expense, but when using roughcut native wood you naturally need to know which tends to warp, and how long to season which wood type, since you as gringo will be sold green wood and told oh-go-ahead. A good woodworker will see that few local builders are interested in bringing out the beauty of the native wood, and those who do are typically very clumsy in the attempt (rule number two: standards for almost everything are lower in Chile). Quality wood work - that's an area where a truly skilled nonlocal craftsman could shine.

bouchardcraftwork wrote: ...although the picture makes it look like I have a gut.

The standard Chilean gut is considerably larger than yours!

ryanar wrote:

bouchardcraftwork wrote: ...although the picture makes it look like I have a gut.

The standard Chilean gut is considerably larger than yours!

The gut matters less than the guts. Obviamente !!

Estoy de acuerdo!

Its all been said here before on this forum, but:
Local architects are a nightmare. Given half a chance, they produce pretty, impractical designs that ignore stuff like utility routing, rainwater management, natural illumination or any of the other details that make all the difference, The worst ones are extrememely bureaucratic, and will happily spend your money complying with irrelevant standards and regulations while ignoring important items such as providing adequate insulation,.

Below the architectos come the proyectistas and ingenieros, who do the utilities and structural calclulations.
These will come up with the most expensive, impractical, inefficient solution possible, to the extent that the local utilities (another nightmare) will refuse to connect the property.

The building contract needs to specify all the material used, right down to individual fittings, otherwise you will get the cheapest stuff. I know this happens everywhere but here they take it to extremes, right down to the sand/cement ratio used.

Then come the actual workers, whose qualities have been extensively and faithfully described by Px and others.

At all levels there is a stubborn resistance to supervision which they see as interference. If you try to have it your way, they will ignore you, and will eventually walk off if you insist too hard.

Been there, and spent many, many millions of pesos to arrive at these conclusions.