I will take a look at some of the areas you listed closer to where we were looking so thanks again.
No, my wife isn’t from Argentina but we have lots of friends from Argentina as well as South America and you’re right that many of them have tons of money and it has nothing to do with drugs or illegal money.
One thing I really admire about a large percentage of the people in South America is they don’t spend beyond their means. But often times that is because credit isn’t available like it’s doled out in the USA.
Kids will often times live with their parents until their 30’s or until they are married. People actually save up and when they need to buy a property, they often pool money together or get loans from their parents. It’s just a different mentality vs. the USA where kids want to move out of their house as quick and young as they can.
It’s very common for people to pay cash in many parts of South America. So when you see someone buying a property or driving a nice car…it’s actually because they have an actual net worth…. which is far from the situation in the USA. Where many people from the outside looking in and driving a nice car you’d assume they have money but they really don’t in many cases.
I took sdrealtor’s post to be sarcastic but I haven’t been on this board long enough to know all the various personalities. I’m just trying to take good bits of information from each post. It’s a great forum of what seems to be intelligent people on the subject of real estate in San Diego.
In my friend’s development in La Jolla, he said many are simply legitimate businessmen from Mexico. There are many, many wealthy people in Mexico and also in South America.
I travel throughout South America quite a bit for work and was just in Sao Paulo, Brazil and it’s amazing the amount of growth there. I was looking at property in Sao Paulo for a client and it’s amazing how expensive it’s gotten there. 1 bedroom apartments in nice areas were going for $300,000 US.
In places like Argentina, the banking system is completely broken and can’t be trusted so people have no where to put their money except real estate as people don’t invest in the stock market here so it’s either literally under their mattress or in “bricks” or land.
Definitely I appreciate all the posts on this thread and will take a good look around all of these areas that make sense for the family.
