Buying a rural property in Argentina is HARD

@nikad

Thanks for the idea, what also makes us search challenging is the lack of connections. Would you recommend any reputable notaries in the rural Buenos Aires province? Do they not have websites with listings?

If the term ¨notary¨ is synonymous with the term ¨escribano/a¨ I doubt they would have websites with listings. That is the business of real estate agents and I seriously doubt an escribano with a good reputation would want to create that image. There may be a few escribanos who buy and sell properties on the side, but I imagine they would advertise them one at a time.

If I ever found one that owned a property I wanted to buy I would seriously consider using a different escribano for the escritura. Hopefully, the seller who is also an escribano would not be offended. If he is, that could be a warning sign.

I believe you will find most (if not all) notaries/escribanos in the ¨rural Buenos Aires province¨ are located in urban areas such as Bahia Blanca, Tandil, Mar Del Plata, etc. There was a ¨glitch¨ that delayed the closing for my house for ten months. Fortunately, the seller allowed me to move in while he resolved the problem. Although there were escribanos in Punta Alta we agreed to use one (with a better reputation) in Bahia Blanca.


I disagree about the safety issue with the rural properties. If your property is low-key, meaning if you don't have a fancy swimming pool and a huge casa and crazy truck and don't come across as a foreigner who is full of cash then there is no reason to be worried about safety.

I don´t mean to offend, but this is delusional...and extremely dangerous. This line of ¨reasoning (aka rationalization) will be detrimental to you and your wife´s safety and well being.

Did you not read the links I provided in my previous post, especially what happened to Mc kenna?

As a foreigner (aka newcomer) who is making improvements to an existing dwelling or building a house (however modest) you will come across as a foreigner who is not working and (relatively) full of cash.

Of course we'll have a proper fence and lots of trees for privacy, dogs and all that is necessary to be protected on a basic level. The main thing though is that we do not come across as wealthy foreigners anyways, we don't even dress up nice and our cellphones are old and cracked so nobody would think of us as a target.

People with fences, dogs, and trees, shabby clothes, and cracked phones still get robbed. Once in a while they do get killed. Earlier this year that´s what happened to a friend of one of my good friends who lives in Punta Alta. His friend lived in the rural area southeast of Punta Alta. He was robbed and shot in his home on a Saturday night. He was not a foreigner and he was not at all wealthy. His quinta was not within the urban zone and (obviously) not easy to protect.

Would I leave my wife alone? Sure why not. Do you really think that the entire rural Argentina is on a lock down? I don't think so, there are dangerous areas such as west of Greater Buenos Aires area, and other areas as well, but we are not going to live close to a villa where people deal drugs and shoot each other because of petty crimes, we want to live in a small community and know our immediate neighbors, that should be enough to guarantee basic safety...

The entire country is on a lock down...every night of the year. And we all live in houses and apartments with heavy duty shutters(aka anitrobo curtains) iron bars on their windows. I haven´t been in Capital Federal since late June of 2010. Have stores with street access stopped locking their doors during business hours?

Even here in the country, far from the nearest villa, nobody opens the doors to strangers, including me.

Even then, one of your immediate neighbors might be the one who tries to rob you.I know this from personal experience.

The nineteen year old wannabe gangsta was the wayward (uncontrollable) son of a very nice family who works on the quinta about 200 meters from my house.

He would have bashed my skull in with a four foot long wood 4 x 4 (cm) he grabbed form the front of my house if I had not been able to break it in half with a four foot long 5-8¨ metal rod I was holding as he ran toward me, swinging his¨weapon¨ in an obvious attempt to do great bodily harm.

In his twisted mind he had ¨good¨reason to kill me. I knew who he was. I knew his name. He introduced himself and asked me for drinking water just the day before. He said he was working at the brick factory across the street.

Fortunately, right after I broke his weapon and chased him into the street, a car with three young men who also live nearby drove past my house. I yelled to them and they chased after the thug (who they also knew). He got away but was arrested three days later.

He was sentenced to three years probation, but he hasn´t shown his face in this area since the incident. His family will have nothing to do with him.

...beyond that there is a greater risk of dying due to a car crush or poor health than robbery.

So far, the only real threat to my life in the eight and a half years I´ve lived here was the aforementioned attempted robbery and aggravated assault.

Nonetheless, I try to stay off the highway as much as possible and I rarely drive at night. Fortunately, the highway is well lit all the way to Punta Alta and a ¨well equipped¨ hospital is less than fifteen KM from my house.
 
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Steve is right. It seems you are thinking of moving to Argentina not even knowing how dangerous it can be to simply walk down the street at night in any neighbourhood. Sure, living in the countryside will get you away from those normal inner city problems, but it will also put a nice target on you where the word "foreign money" will be posted above your house on any map.

It's not the Wild West, but you absolutely will have to take serious precautions to avoid problems.
 
@steveinbsas, @semigoodlookin

I've been living in Argentina since January of 2015. I used to take public transit to work at a plastic shop before I lost my job a couple of months ago, I worked with negros from the villa nearby (I live in the Great Buenos Aires area) who cannot read and write and who had dealt drugs and conducted robberies themselves, some of them were stabbed and shot at, I even visited one of them in the villa one time out of curiosity and could not believe the conditions (I asked other co-workers to accompany me because I was afraid to go there by myself).

You are right to say that in their mind they have all the best reasons in the world to attack westerners if they see the potential to steal but along with the hyped sense of alarm there should also be a healthy degree of perspective and understanding.

First of all, I do not live in a country club like you do Steven, that automatically makes you a target, almost any peronista in the villa would wish you were dead. Then claiming that the entire country is on lockdown is an outright exaggeration, I've looked at crime rates and compared numbers to discover that crime and homicide rates are actually very comparable to those of New City, for example, in some cases are much better, in the matter of fact Buenos Aires happens to be statistically safer than Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires is probably the worst in entire Argentina.

Yes, you can argue that stats under Cristina were not accurate but I've also spoken to locals and they all agree that it's much safer to live outside the rat's nest (GBA) where all the migrants are cut-throat desperate to make a buck by stealing if need be. So out in the campo, it should be better for as long as we do not stand out and do not do anything that would invite attention unless one is being unlucky, but that is not something that can be controlled regardless of where you are in the world.

Of course, there is always the risk of a robbery and the best way of preventing one is to be prepared and we can make sure that our future property is secured and that we know when to leave it and when to stay home, properly fenced with numerous guard dogs, a hunting rifle perhaps, etc but I still insist on the point that the city is more dangerous than the campo if you are going to think that police can somehow prevent all robberies, they help but not always.

I would like to share a good Christmas story with you:

About a year and a half ago I visited a friend in a good neighborhood here in GBA (clean safe neighborhood close to city center) and after dinner time I accompanied him in his car to pick up something that he needed at the gas station, it was dark already. As soon as we drove off the gas station there was this dark (with no headlights) car following us all the way back to my friend's house, we got in quickly through the remote-controlled gate and thought they went away but the car did another loop around the block and stopped right outside the gate with few men inside it, no lights, just radios could be heard, they were communicating to someone else, a friend told me that they were the police who conduct organized robberies so he told me to get in the house but I didn't quite get it so I stayed outside the side door looking at them through the reja, luckily they couldn't see me from behind the tree, one of them held a gun.

The wife and his daughters started to panic and called the police, once the suspicious muchachos heard them calling the police they simply drove away. Then the cops came, listened to the story, asked if everybody was okay and drove away, and it is not clear who those guys were, since then my friend got obsessed with making the fence taller with more spikes on it, he put double lock on the gate as well as the front door, he also cancelled his patrol security because somehow they were not present on the roads that night, so how can it be safer living inside a city?

His neighbor lady got robbed while she was inside a shower, a group of men came in, told her to dress up and not to do anything stupid, they then tied her up politely and cleaned the house as if they were a moving company in the middle of the day, without a hurry and very professionally, nobody got hurt and she ended up borrowing a plate for dinner because there was nothing left in her house, that's how great the police are. My point is that cities are more dangerous because everybody here is a target.

This happened because city people are naturally targeted by organized criminals who don't have to go far to conduct their business and by the poor who feel disadvantaged want to make an attempt if they can see you've got a nice casa behind a nice gate.
 
The nineteen year old wannabe gangsta was the wayward (uncontrollable) son of a very nice family who works on the quinta about 200 meters from my house.

oh , man! Steve! what are fkk is going here and still why, Steve?
i am so sorry for your experience. And thank You for sharing.

So you insist on always to hire the security agenica?

Nowdays I am going to buy 4 hactares of chacra on La Costa. And i m searching all hidden problems.
 
oh , man! Steve! what are fkk is going here and still why, Steve?
i am so sorry for your experience. And thank You for sharing.

So you insist on always to hire the security agenica?

Nowdays I am going to buy 4 hactares of chacra on La Costa. And i m searching all hidden problems.
I Am getting nervous already. Be careful. Do get your own escribano to check things out.
 
WTF? How did this get necro'ed from five years ago?
I posted the link in response to questions asked in this thread:

Power of Attorney at a land sale

Buying rural or semi-rural property can be hard and also "somewhat" risky.

Living there can also be "somewhat" safe as well as very dangerous.

I know from experience (13 years of living in a semi-rural location) and I want anyone considering doing so to be well aware of the risks, as well as the rewards (like not being affected in any negative way whatsoever during the plandemic). 🤠

PS: My house and the galpon are no longer for sale, only the 2500 mt2 lot beside my house...and only for sale to a DIY prepper.
 
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I posted the link in response to questions asked in this thread:

Power of Attorney at a land sale

Buying rural or semi-rural property can be hard and also "somewhat" risky.

Living there can also be "somewhat" safe as well as very dangerous.

I know from experience (13 years of living in a semi-rural location) and I want anyone considering doing so to be well aware of the risks, as well as the rewards (like not being affected in any negative way whatsoever during the plandemic). 🤠

PS: My house and the galpon are no longer for sale, only the 2500 mt2 lot beside my house...and only for sale to a DIY prepper.
Ah, I see! Well, that is certainly a good and valid reason.
 
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