Lisa Prevost wrote an article breaking down the Chilean real estate market. My team and I have helped hundreds of foreigners buy and rent apartments in Chile since 2013 when we started Andes Property were quoted extensively in this report. Our attorney Jose Tomas Marambio, a Santiago real estate and business specialist is also quoted. Overall, Santiago and Chile in general are still interesting places to invest. You can still find properties that generate 8-10% cash on cash returns and as commodities prices return, there’s still room for the Chilean Peso to strengthen, further increasing gains as you diversify out of dollars. From the article:
Santiago saw an increase in housing prices between 2010 and 2015, but the pace has slowed since, said Nathan Lustig, an entrepreneur and a principal at Andes Property, a company that provides furnished rentals in Santiago, primarily to foreigners.
A value-added tax on the sale of new properties went into effect in 2016, and “prices for new construction went way up, as everybody tried to buy before the new tax came in,” Mr. Lustig said. “And they’ve kind of stayed that way.”
The value-added tax rate is 19 percent, but the final rate is usually lower, because it is applied to the sale price after the land value is deducted, said José Tomás Marambio Yaes, a real estate lawyer in Santiago.