From Clueless to Property Owner

I've been getting a little anxious lately thinking about purchasing real estate in Buenos Aires. I had a hard of time purchasing our first home here in the US. I just hated not understanding *everything* about the transaction. I wanted to read every document and understand exactly what I was signing and why. I wanted to be in complete control.

Well, that didn't happen. Despite being marched through the process like cattle, in the end, everything was fine and we were terribly happy. I took from that experience the idea that sometimes you just have develop some trust and then jump.

Now, I'm about to make a sizable move and I need some assistance. I need someone in Buenos Aires that can help take me from clueless to property owner.

Michael Koh of apartmentsBa.com seems like a very interesting cat and sounds like just the kind of person I need.

Boston.com / Travel / Following their dreams down to Buenos Aires US expats remake their lives after 9/11

''Even those with more established roots in American life are giving it all up. Growing bored after eight years as a senior vice president at a health care company, Dallas native Michael Koh, 31, went around the world but kept returning to Buenos Aires.

''Out of all the places I had been around the world, my heart was still in Buenos Aires," Koh writes in an e-mail. Since moving here, he has been working in tourism, studying Spanish, and developing a real estate business aimed at foreigners.

Maria Paz Anzorreguy’s Weblogs » Real Estate. Buenos Aires. Gringo invasion.

THE ECONOMIST 25 May 2006 Gringo invasion.

Looking for lofts in Buenos Aires In 2003, when John Kahoun, a New Yorker, decided to buy an apartment as a rental investment, he was deterred by the cost of property in Manhattan. So for $70,000 he bought a loft in Buenos Aires, the home of his former wife. As Argentina’s economy has recovered from its 2001-02 collapse, so have property prices. Mr Kahoun’s property in Palermo Viejo, a trendy neighbourhood beloved by film-makers and artists, has nearly doubled in value. Foreigners like Mr Kahoun have contributed to a continuing property boom in Buenos Aires. They account for up to a quarter of buyers in some wealthier neighbourhoods. Two years ago, Michael Koh, an American, set up Apartments BA, a firm which buys property for foreign clients and rents it out to foreign tenants—about 15% of whom come to the city for plastic surgery. Mr Koh says his investors, many of whom have never seen their properties, enjoyed a rise in their capital asset of 25% last year on top of rental income worth 10% of their investment.