Article by: Joaquin de Cristobal info@jdcpropiedades.com.ar Published: 21/05/2008

Opening a Bank Account.

Finding a short term real estate agent to rent your property.

You will need a bank account in Argentina, so you are able to receive the rent payments, and to be to pay services and taxes of the apartment through internet.

Opening a Bank account in Buenos Aires can be more difficult than you would expect being a non-resident foreign.

You would expect that the main American banks would gladly open an account to an American but this is not the case. Citibank, Bankboston, HSBC Bank and BBV refused to open a savings account to a non-residents.

The requirements changed from bank to bank, but they usually require you 1 year of residence, or a national ID document. This is stupid since you don't reside and don't plan to reside either in Buenos Aires. span>

By law the only requirement to open you a saving account is to have a Tax ID, an address certificate from the Police Department (we already explained how to obtain the CDI in Section 8 of this guide) and your passport.

If you are introduced, or if you already have an account in US / Europe with any of these banks they will open you one, but you may have to inquire the bank in your country so they refer you.

Banco Nación www.nacion.com.ar actually is the only bank that opens accounts to foreign non-residents requiring only the CDI (tax ID) and address certificate. The minimal deposits are for a pesos account ($ 50) and they charge $3-4 pesos for maintenance fee.

The minimal deposit for a dollar account in Banco Nación is U$S 500 (American dollars), and they charge U$S 2 dollars for maintenance fee.

They will give you an ATM card that you will be able to use worldwide to get money because it operates with CIRRUS MasterCard Network. Most of the other banks already mentions (except for Citibank) operate with Visa Plus Network.

You should be able to open the account in the day, but the ATM card will take from 10 to 15 days to arrive to the address you provided.

You may have to get a second address certificate after buying the apartment with the address of the apartment, so the ATM card arrives safely there.

You don't want your ATM card to arrive to the first address you provided before buying just to get the CDI (probably the hotel or apartment where you were staying at that time.

Anyhow, you won't need this account to be open until you already own the apartment, to make payments and receive the rent.

Finding a short term real estate agent to rent your property:

There are tons of short term real estate agencies in Buenos Aires. Some very big which will have more than 100 apartments each one, other are smaller or newer, while other target specific audiences, like high end visitors, gay visitors, european market, etc.

The market in this case is on your side, there are a lot of agencies to choose, that can make in some cases the conditions negotiable. The commissions they usually charge are in a range between 15% to 25% of the rent income.

Some of these agents will ask you how much do you want to charge, and offer at that daily/weekly/monthly price, other will recommend you a suggested price according to the location, quality and size of the apartment.

From my experience I can tell you that there are two systems, some agents charge all the commission to the owner, while others split it, will charge 15% to the visitor, and an additional 15% to the client.

Because there is good competition between the short term agencies, sometimes you can negotiate the commissions, or have the same apartment in different agencies.

The agency will take care of the management and all the operations (check ins, check outs, control of inventories, assist the visitors in anything they need, etc). The tenant usually pays a deposit before entering the apartment. The average stay for Americans is 7 days, while Europeans for example tend to stay 10 to 15 days.

When you choose the agency, size is not the only thing that matters, this people may have lots of tourists, but if they have 200 apartments, your chances of getting yours rented most of the time maybe fewer than if you use a smaller one, with a good niche audience for example. The thing to look here is occupancy and commissions. No one will assure an occupancy rate, but they can tell you more or less their average for that kind of apartment.

You always can change if you are not happy with the agency you chose. Make sure you don't sign anything giving them exclusive rights to rent your apartment for a fixed time. In that way you have the freedom to leave whenever you want, or try more than one agency at the same time.

There is a side effect of bargaining the commission to the temporary rental agency too hard, if you agree on a lower commission that their average, they will prefer to rent other properties before yours each time there is a new client, resulting in a lower occupancy and revenue for you.

External Article Link: http://www.property-partnership.com/overseas-property-guides/overseas-property-guide.cfm?id=142

Article Link: http://www.property-partnership.com/overseas-property-guides/overseas-property-guide.cfm?id=142

Please contact the author at info@jdcpropiedades.com.ar for more information.