Here in Argentina many people don't get insurance on their property. As you say not so many chances for problems. Some houses or ground floor units in Palermo and other areas have problems with flooding when we have heavy rain but not so common for problem. I don't have any insurance on my flat.
Many locals don't bother with insurance coverage. As you mentioned @Uncle Wong there are not too may natural disasters here. As @Vero mentioned, flooding can be an issue in some low laying areas but typically a problem for ground floor units so insurance is a good idea for those units. I've always insured my places.
I just got my policy renewal and for a 3 bedroom apartment I am paying about 100% more than I was before. It is about $735 dollars at current exchange rate. Like everything else, the prices has jumped up.
Thank you @earlyretirement for this breakdown. Something I wanted to point out is that on 3 apartments in a row on the Zonaprop website the realtors have used incorrect actual prices. I didn't realize the expenses could jump up so quickly. When I saw this post I asked if the listed monthly condo fee was correct and the realtor confirmed it was. But my realtor asked the doorman of the building if he could share expenses and we found out that the listed price on Zonaprop was totally inaccurate. It was about 1/3 of the true price. So beware.
This is a good point. When I was buying my apartment, not only was the monthly expenses totally off but they also listed the apartment as bigger than it actually was. When you get to the offer stage you will want to make sure the sq. meters match up with the actual title deed.
You're welcome @tootsi.
www.expatsba.com
Typically when making an offer (reserva) it's wise to make the offer conditional on it passing a property inspection by an architect certifying there are no issues with the property. Also, if you plan to rent out the property on Airbnb it may also be a good idea to make it contingent on short-term rentals not being prohibited in the HOA rules. Some buildings expressively prohibit short-term rentals. So it's a good idea to put those two contingencies in an offer.
That is how it was for me when I bought. They didn't want to make a conditional offer. They let me get an architect in to check everything before the offer. I wasn't going to rent out my apartment but that's a smart point to check the building HOA rules if you want to rent it out.
I wonder why they don't just list accurate details? It's annoying. I looked at a few units when I was in BA and some listings online had inaccurate information like age of the building. I didn't want to get anything that was too old so I was looking at some newer buildings but sometimes they would list the building was new when it was not. I don't understand why they don't just publish accurate information? Do they think people aren't going to find out?
@Todd brings up a great point and I wonder if this has something to do with it.
I recall most of the fake or repetitive listings were for new construction. Perhaps it's realtors putting up false or inaccurate listings, especially of new construction to dissuade some buyers and focus their search to older properties where they make a higher commission. Who knows or it could just be one of those, this is Argentina thingy.
Yes that has been my experience about the fake and multiple listings for the same units. My girlfriend says that it's always been chaotic here and the realtors are mostly all bad. Her family owns some apartments that they were doing Airbnbs because they didn't want to rent them out with the old laws as that didn't make sense. But with rising HOA fees and being slower now with tourism they switched to long term rentals.
When I was looking many years ago they had multiple listings back then too. I'm not sure if it was some scam more than just owner's giving multiple realtors permission to list it. One of the apartments I looked at had two listings. Really poor quality photos that were taken with a phone for both listings. I couldn't understand how a realtor wouldn't pay for professional photos.
That seems crazy to me. Seems counter productive to let two different realtors list your property at different prices.Yeah my place is in Palermo and I went the monthly rental route. Initially I planned to move down there around this time right now, but pushing it back 6-9 months and wasn't worried about optimizing profit. They were already thin and even more so with increasing inflation and place booked til end of the year.
I'll never understand the poor quality photos, even if they weren't professionally taken at least don't make it look like a monkey took them -photos at odd angles, up-close random part of cabinet, or rooms that they didn't even bother to clean.
Congrats! If you bought last year or beginning of this year you are already probably up 10% on value. Crazy how quickly prices are going up. Monthly rentals route is probably not bad to go. Guaranteed income for a few months vs. sitting empty until high season starts. Since you bought, how much has your monthly expenses gone up? In most of my girlfriend's properties they have almost tripled in less than a year.
Too funny! Yes that is very true. These days most smart phones take great quality photos. It's almost like they are taking horrible photos on purpose. Like you mentioned, strange angles or just photos of the cabinets or something. I couldn't take worse photos if I tried yet they are trying to sell an apartment like that.
@FuturoBA you are giving me bad memories of my property search years ago. I thought that things would have improved since then but it sounds like things are still the same. My friend is looking now and she said that it is easier for her to look at properties on Remax's website at least all the properties are genuine so far. But I don't understand how Remax can't have any listing standards.
www.remax.com.ar
