Despite
the drop in prices in Argentina created by the recent financial mess, most
Argentines were not anxious to sell their real estate, as real estate in
Buenos Aires tends to hold its value in all situations. Buenos Aires
is a city of tradition with traditional neighborhoods with traditional
and unwavering lifestyle. Many residents have lived in the same apartment
their entire life and they are not going to sell their apartment simply
because there is yet another political or financial crisis. Another
tradition in Argentina is having one crises after the other. The value
of real estate doesn't overreact to political and financial disasters,
they happen much too often to have them cause much of a ripple in the real
estate market.
It seems that the bargains that I
had come to find were not going to be found in Buenos Aires.
"Our image of the city is always
slightly out of date." said the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges referring
to Buenos Aires.
While we didn't find any steals we
did find very reasonable real estate prices in the San Telmo neighborhood.
San Telmo is sort of the Greenwich Village of Buenos Aires, filled with
cafes, antique shops, jazz clubs, tango clubs, art galleries and an ongoing
street fair that gets jammed on weekends. The hodgepodge of European architecture
in San Telmo, much of it covered with graffiti, does have a certain scruffy
appeal. There is a ruinous quality to the neighborhood that gives the impression
of once rich royalty down on its luck. For a certain kind of person it'd
be a really great place to live, perhaps the greatest place of all.
My daughter fell in love with San
Telmo. I suspect she envisioned herself living a Greenwich Village
Bohemian lifestyle without the Greenwich Village prices. Her romantic
sensibilities aside, I also felt a scruffy fondness for San Telmo.
In San Telmo I saw a 1,000 square
foot two bedroom apartment for US$70,000. It had a very large sunny
terrace, with a decent view. Compare that with a 870 square foot
two bedroom apartment in the Recoleta for US$90,000. In fact those prices;
$70 a square foot versus $103 a square foot are a good yardstick to use
for the entire city. In the better neighborhoods the prices are $100
a square foot and up and in the more bohemian neighborhoods $70 a square
foot would be the norm.
I did see some neighborhoods in the
outlying area towards the airport where apartments could be had for around
$40 a square foot. How exciting it would be to live in these outlying
neighborhoods is another question.
The higher prices in the Recoleta
and Barrio Norte area are justified by those areas being the best areas
in which to live, and despite the fact that there are no steals, the values
of these properties have demonstrated their staying power through the worst
of times, which would certainly seem to indicate they will continue to
do so far into the future.
Wine, Dining & Entertainment
In Argentina you'll drink some of
the worlds best wines, all of them from Argentina. Very few of Argentina's
superb wines are exported, so you'll have to go to Argentina to drink them.
Even though Argentina is a major wine producer, there is such a high level
of local demand that it isn't necessary to export the wine; it's all consumed
locally.
I tried several different wines.
When I found one I liked I returned to the store to buy three bottles of
it. I asked the sales clerk if they had anything else as good as
the bottle I had picked. "There is the next category up," she replied.
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Buenos
Aries July 2003 - We arrived at night. After the wide open spaces
and the endless golden beaches of Brazil; Buenos Aires on first impression
seemed an endless city of medium size high-rises without a horizon. Another
Los Angeles, I thought to myself. The fifty-five minute ride from the airport
passed through district after district, made discernible as separate districts
by their slight alteration in architectural style. The ninth largest
city in the world, covering 75 square miles of the earth’s surface, (stretching
from the Rio del Plata to the famous fertile lands called the pampas,)
Buenos Aires is the political, economic, and cultural capital of Argentina.
This city called Buenos Aires, as we were soon to discover is a
city of style, both genuine and affected; but real or artificially enacted,
the style of the Porteños doesn’t have any counterpart in the outer
world and its uniqueness in itself is probably worth the price of admission.
