Chile’s capital Santiago, is the most expensive city in Latin America to buy real estate, a new survey has found. The Latin American Real Estate Survey -conducted by the Centre for Research in Finance (CIF) of the Torcuato Di Tella University and online real estate portal Zonaprop – crunched property prices in cities across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru and drew conclusions based on the value per square metre of apartments across 14 major cities.
According to the findings, which used prices as of March 2022, the cost of an average square metre of an apartment in Santiago de Chile was US$3,571, followed by Montevideo (US$2,867), Buenos Aires (US$2,570), Mexico City (US$2,374) and Rio de Janeiro (US $2,361).
At the other end of the scale, the cities with the cheapest price per square metre were Quito (US$1,217), Córdoba (US$ 1,289), Bogotá (US$1,354) and Rosario (US$1,524).
Commenting on the findings of the report, the Rector of Di Tella University, Juan José Cruces, said that real estate in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Córdoba dropped by around 1.4 percent when measured in dollars. He noted, however, “a significant recovery of housing prices in dollars in Brazil, Peru and Colombia” since September 2021. Cruces also stated that São Paulo witnessed the highest increase in the value of a square metre in dollars, rising 13.9 percent. The cost of an average square metre of real estate in Sap Paulo was US$2,100, according to the survey.
Ironically, estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) agree that Chile will have the worst performance in the region in 2023. The Chilean economy will grow by 2.2 percent this year but will contract by 0.9 percent the following year, meaning it will be the only country in the region with a decline in GDP, according to ECLAC. The IMF estimates that Chile’s economic output could fall by 1 per cent in 2023 after growing by 2 per cent in 2022. The Central Bank of Chile and the Ministry of Finance have also already diagnosed a tough scenario for the coming months.
