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Is it a good time to buy property in Buenos Aires now?

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SUMMARY

Yes. It is a good time to buy property in Buenos Aires now for a selective cash buyer or long-term owner, but the broad bargain created by the 2019–2023 downturn has already largely disappeared.

Buenos Aires sits in an unusual middle ground. Average asking prices remain roughly 11.7% below their previous peak, yet they have already recovered about 15% from the 2023 low, so buyers are neither entering at distressed prices nor chasing a booming market.

Completed transactions are less bullish than listing prices. Used apartments are closing around USD 2,112/m², slightly below their level a year earlier, which suggests the recent recovery has paused even though advertised values are still edging higher.

Sales activity is holding up much better than mortgage lending. Total purchases fell only around 1.8% during the first seven months while mortgage-backed transactions dropped roughly 36%, implying that cash and other non-mortgage buyers have quietly become more important.

That creates a useful window for buyers. Demand is strong enough that the market is functioning normally, but weak mortgage competition and flat completed prices mean buyers generally do not need to rush.

Rental economics are also far healthier than before the downturn. CABA's gross rental yield is around 5.76%, roughly double the level seen near the end of 2019, although the citywide average is still not high enough to rescue an overpriced or poorly chosen apartment.

Negotiation may matter more than waiting for the citywide index to fall. Used apartments are currently closing roughly 4.8% below publication prices, a meaningful discount when underlying prices themselves are barely moving.

Neighborhood selection changes the economics far more dramatically. Premium areas such as Puerto Madero and Palermo offer liquidity and stronger resale appeal but relatively weak yields, while cheaper neighborhoods can produce gross returns of 8% to 10% or more.

Existing apartments also have some protection from unusually expensive replacement costs. Construction has become much more costly in dollar terms while existing-property prices have barely moved recently, making another large citywide repricing harder to justify without a fresh economic shock.

The weakest case is a short holding period. Acquisition costs, eventual selling costs, maintenance and the opportunity cost of capital can easily overwhelm one or two years of modest appreciation, particularly while actual closing prices are flat.

The best current setup is therefore fairly specific: a buyer with a long horizon, enough liquidity to negotiate properly, and the discipline to choose the apartment rather than simply the postcode. Waiting for another 2023-style bargain may eventually work, but it probably requires another Argentine crisis rather than a normal property-market correction.

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Is Buenos Aires property still cheap today?

Buenos Aires property is still cheaper than at its previous peak, but the easy bargain phase has already passed.

Zonaprop currently puts the average advertised apartment in CABA at around USD 2,471/m². That remains about 11.7% below the historical high of its series, which was close to USD 2,800/m². Buyers are therefore still entering below the level reached before the long downturn.

The comparison with the bottom tells a different story. Prices fell to roughly USD 2,150/m² in 2023, so the average advertised value has already recovered by about 15%. Someone who bought near the low has captured a meaningful part of the rebound.

More recently, the pace has almost disappeared. Asking prices have increased only 0.9% so far this year and 1.3% over 12 months. That is the weakest annual increase reported by Zonaprop in more than two years.

Calling Buenos Aires “cheap” today therefore goes too far. Prices are still below their old highs, but the market has already moved well beyond its distressed phase.

Market point Approx. asking price Change to current level What we learn
Historical peak ~USD 2,800/m² Current is ~11.7% lower Full recovery has not happened
2023 trough ~USD 2,150/m² Current is ~15% higher The biggest bargains have disappeared
Current CABA average USD 2,471/m² Prices have recovered substantially
Last 12 months +1.3% Growth has almost stalled
This year +0.9% Very little recent appreciation

Are Buenos Aires property prices actually rising now?

Actual Buenos Aires apartment prices are basically flat right now, which makes the market much less bullish than advertised prices suggest.

The M² Real index produced by RE/MAX Argentina, Universidad del CEMA and Reporte Inmobiliario tracks completed sales of used apartments rather than listings. Its latest reading puts the average closing price at USD 2,112/m², versus USD 2,131/m² one year earlier. That is a 0.9% decline.

The previous readings tell much the same story. Actual prices were USD 2,200/m² in May, USD 2,108 in June and USD 2,112 in July. There has been noise from one month to another, but no sustained move upward.

Negotiation has also remained fairly stable. In the latest M² Real data, apartments closed about 4.8% below their publication prices, after a 5.1% gap the previous month. Buyers are still negotiating, but sellers are not being forced into huge discounts either.

This is one of the clearest reasons not to rush. Buenos Aires property prices recovered strongly from their lows, while the latest completed transactions show that the market has now paused.

M² Real measure Latest result Comparison What it suggests
Used-apartment closing price USD 2,112/m² -0.9% YoY Broad prices are flat
Previous month USD 2,108/m² Almost unchanged No new acceleration
May reading USD 2,200/m² Temporary high One month did not become a trend
Negotiation gap -4.8% -5.1% previously Buyers still have some room

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Is the Buenos Aires property market slowing down?

The Buenos Aires property market has stopped accelerating, but people are still buying homes at unusually healthy volumes.

The Colegio de Escribanos recorded 6,051 property purchases in the latest reported month. That was 9% below the unusually strong 6,651 transactions recorded a year earlier, yet it was also the best month of the year.

The longer comparison is more useful. Buenos Aires recorded 35,528 purchases during the first seven months of this year, just 1.8% fewer than during the same period last year. The Colegio de Escribanos points out that the latest July volumes were among the strongest seen in many years; only by going back to 2008 do we find a better July.

So buyers have certainly not disappeared. Roughly the same number of properties are changing hands as last year even though financing conditions have become considerably less supportive.

What has changed is the speed of the recovery. Last year's surge has turned into a busy but largely flat market. For someone deciding whether to buy now, that is actually quite a comfortable setup: enough activity to avoid a frozen market, without the pressure of rapidly rising prices.

Have mortgages stopped driving Buenos Aires property sales?

Mortgage lending has weakened sharply in Buenos Aires, yet property sales have barely fallen because cash and other non-mortgage buyers are filling most of the gap.

There were 959 mortgage-backed purchases in the latest reported month, 31.2% fewer than a year earlier. Across the first seven months, only 5,111 purchases involved mortgages, roughly 36% fewer than during the equivalent period last year.

Now compare that with total transactions, which declined by only 1.8%.

Using the Colegio de Escribanos figures, we estimate that mortgages financed around 22% of purchases during the equivalent period last year but only about 14% this year. Non-mortgage transactions appear to have risen from roughly 28,200 to more than 30,400.

That stands out. Buenos Aires currently has a much weaker mortgage market without anything close to a corresponding collapse in home purchases.

It also tells us what could restart faster price growth. If mortgage lending recovers while cash demand remains this resilient, Buenos Aires would suddenly have an additional pool of buyers competing for the same properties.

First seven months Previous year Current year Approx. change
Total purchases ~36,180 35,528 -1.8%
Mortgage-backed purchases ~7,986 5,111 -36%
Mortgage share of purchases ~22.1% ~14.4% -7.7 pp
Non-mortgage purchases ~28,194 ~30,417 +7.9%

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Can buyers still negotiate on Buenos Aires apartments?

Buenos Aires buyers can still negotiate today, but expecting distressed sellers to accept huge discounts is unrealistic.

The strongest evidence comes from completed transactions. According to the latest RE/MAX–UCEMA–Reporte Inmobiliario data, used apartments sold for an average of 4.8% below their publication price. A month earlier, the gap was 5.1%.

That is enough to make negotiation worth taking seriously. On a USD 150,000 apartment, 4.8% represents USD 7,200. A buyer who simply pays the listing price could therefore give away more than several years of expected appreciation if the wider market continues moving at its current pace.

The flat closing-price trend gives buyers another advantage. Sellers may still anchor themselves to the strong rebound seen after 2023, but completed deals currently give them little evidence that values are still climbing rapidly.

We would be especially hard on properties that have sat on the market, need renovation, carry unusually high building expenses or are priced near the top of their neighborhood despite having no exceptional characteristics.

The current opportunity lies partly in negotiation. Buyers do not need the whole Buenos Aires market to fall if they can purchase the right apartment several percentage points below an optimistic asking price.

Are Buenos Aires rental yields good enough for investors now?

Buenos Aires rental yields are much better than they were a few years ago, although a roughly 6% gross return still leaves little room for buying a mediocre apartment at the wrong price.

Zonaprop currently calculates a 5.76% annual gross rental return across CABA. At that level, an investor needs about 17.3 years of gross rent to recover the purchase price.

The historical comparison is striking. Near the end of 2019, Zonaprop's citywide gross yield was around 2.8%. An apartment then required approximately 36 years of rent to recover its purchase price. Today's relationship between rents and property values is roughly twice as favorable.

That improvement makes Buenos Aires considerably more interesting for landlords. It also gives investors some return while waiting for possible capital appreciation rather than requiring prices to rise simply to make the investment worthwhile.

Still, 5.76% is gross. Vacancy, repairs, taxes, management, building costs that remain with the owner and acquisition expenses all reduce the real return.

We would therefore see 6% as a useful starting point rather than a compelling yield on its own.

Period Gross rental yield Approx. gross payback What changed
Late 2019 ~2.8% ~36 years Property was expensive relative to rent
Current CABA average 5.76% 17.3 years Economics have improved dramatically
Difference ~+3 pp Payback roughly halved Renting out property makes much more sense now

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Are Buenos Aires rents still rising faster than inflation?

Buenos Aires rents are still rising quickly in pesos, but they are currently losing slightly to inflation.

Zonaprop puts the average monthly rent for a two-room apartment at ARS 873,668. That figure is 30.7% higher than one year earlier, which sounds enormous until we look at the more recent trajectory.

Rents have increased 17.5% so far this year, while accumulated inflation over the same period reached about 19.2%. In real terms, Zonaprop calculates a decline of roughly 1.7%.

That cool-down is relevant for investors. The rental market changed dramatically after Argentina dismantled the previous rental rules, and available long-term supply recovered strongly. Landlords can negotiate contracts much more freely these days, but they also face far more competing apartments than during the shortage.

We therefore would not build an investment case around rents continually beating inflation. The better argument is that Buenos Aires now has a more functional rental market and a healthier relationship between rents and purchase prices than it had several years ago.

Is buying a Buenos Aires apartment better than continuing to rent?

Buying a Buenos Aires apartment makes much more sense for someone planning to stay for years than for someone simply trying to escape today's rent.

The citywide gross rental yield of 5.76% gives us a useful shortcut. A tenant effectively pays something in the region of 5% to 6% of a property's value each year in gross rent, depending on the neighborhood and apartment.

An owner avoids that rent, but ownership is hardly free. The capital tied up in the apartment could earn a return elsewhere, while the owner also faces acquisition costs, maintenance, property-related taxes, building expenses and eventually selling costs.

That makes short holding periods difficult to justify. With actual property prices currently close to flat year on year, somebody buying today and leaving again in two or three years cannot count on appreciation to cover all those frictions.

Over seven, ten or fifteen years, the calculation becomes much more favorable. Transaction costs are spread over a longer period, rent is avoided for many years and even moderate property appreciation starts to matter.

For a settled household, buying can make sense now. For someone unsure whether Buenos Aires will still be home a few years from now, renting remains perfectly rational.

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Are high construction costs making existing Buenos Aires apartments more valuable?

Today's unusually high construction costs give existing Buenos Aires apartments one of their strongest supports against another major price collapse.

Zonaprop's construction series shows dollar-denominated building costs rising enormously from their late-2023 level. At one point this year, construction costs were more than 40% above their long-term average and more than three times their extraordinary 2020 low.

That creates a widening gap between what existing apartments cost and what developers must spend to produce new ones.

The relationship is especially interesting because apartment prices themselves have barely moved recently. Construction became dramatically more expensive while existing-property asking prices gained less than 1% this year.

Developers can respond through cheaper land, smaller margins, different specifications or slower construction, so high building costs do not automatically force apartment prices upward.

Even so, replacement economics are now far less favorable than during the downturn. A good existing apartment that needs little work becomes more attractive when producing an equivalent unit from scratch costs substantially more.

For buyers worried about purchasing immediately before another deep property slump, this is one of the better arguments against that scenario.

Does the Buenos Aires neighborhood matter more than waiting for lower prices?

Choosing the right Buenos Aires neighborhood can change the investment far more than waiting for another 2% or 3% drop in the citywide property index.

The price differences inside CABA are enormous. Recent Zonaprop data put Puerto Madero above USD 6,000/m², while apartments in Lugano can average close to USD 1,100/m². Palermo and Núñez sit much closer to the USD 3,400/m² range.

Rental yields move almost in the opposite direction. Zonaprop recently measured gross yields of 10.7% in Lugano and 8.1% in Parque Avellaneda, compared with around 4.7% in Palermo and Núñez and only 3.8% in Puerto Madero.

That means a buyer deciding between two neighborhoods can alter the gross income return by several percentage points before doing anything clever with the individual property.

The difference reflects what buyers are paying for. Palermo, Núñez and Puerto Madero command premiums for location, amenities, international recognition and desirable housing stock. Rents rise too, but nowhere near enough to keep pace with the purchase-price premium.

Waiting six months for the average CABA price to change slightly is therefore a secondary decision. Choosing between a 4% neighborhood and an 8% neighborhood can transform the economics immediately.

Neighborhood Approx. sale-price positioning Recent gross yield Better suited to
Puerto Madero Above USD 6,000/m² ~3.8% Prestige and capital preservation
Palermo Around USD 3,400/m² ~4.7% Liquidity and broad demand
Núñez Around USD 3,400/m² ~4.7% Premium residential demand
Parque Avellaneda Much cheaper ~8.1% Rental income
Lugano Around USD 1,100/m² ~10.7% Maximum gross yield

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Is buying in Palermo or Puerto Madero still worth it?

Palermo and Puerto Madero can still be good Buenos Aires property purchases, but investors are paying heavily for quality and liquidity rather than income.

Puerto Madero makes the trade-off particularly obvious. Recent asking values exceed USD 6,000/m² while gross rental yields sit below 4%. Palermo costs considerably less, but its yield around 4.7% also trails the citywide average.

An investor accepting those numbers is effectively betting that premium locations will remain easier to rent to affluent tenants, easier to understand for international buyers and easier to resell than cheaper parts of CABA.

There is a reasonable case for that, especially for someone whose priority is preserving dollar value rather than maximizing monthly cash flow.

But these neighborhoods give buyers less room for error. At a 4% gross yield, paying 10% too much for an apartment can wipe out years of rental return.

We would concentrate on properties that are genuinely difficult to reproduce: excellent natural light, outdoor space, a good floor plan, low noise, sensible building expenses and a location that works even within the neighborhood itself. A fashionable postcode alone is not enough.

Could buying costs wipe out the return on a Buenos Aires property?

Buying and later selling a Buenos Aires property can easily consume several years of modest appreciation, so short-term buyers should take transaction costs seriously.

The exact figure varies with the property, whether it is a primary home, how the transaction is structured and whether agents are involved. Notarial fees alone commonly add around 1% to 2%, before other registration, administrative, tax and brokerage costs are considered.

CABA has made the equation more favorable for some owner-occupiers. Current rules provide a full stamp-tax exemption for qualifying sole and permanent residences up to the city's applicable threshold, while certain other purchases within that range receive lower treatment. Qualifying first-home mortgages can also benefit from stamp-tax relief.

Investors do not benefit in the same way from every exemption.

These costs become particularly important in the current market because actual closing prices are barely higher than they were a year ago. A property appreciating 1% annually does not quickly compensate for several percentage points of buying and selling friction.

We would therefore avoid purchasing an average apartment today with a two-year exit plan unless the initial price is unusually attractive or there is a clear way to create value through renovation or repositioning.

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Could Argentina's currency still hurt a Buenos Aires property investment?

Argentina's currency can still hurt a Buenos Aires property investor because apartments are valued in dollars while ordinary long-term rents are usually collected in pesos.

The currency environment is cleaner than during the years when multiple exchange rates distorted almost every transaction. The official and financial dollar rates are currently much closer together than they were during the worst periods of capital controls, making property pricing and money movements easier to understand.

But landlords still face a currency mismatch.

A Buenos Aires apartment can remain worth USD 120,000 while its peso rent suddenly buys fewer dollars after a devaluation. Contract adjustments may eventually catch up, but the owner's dollar income can fall in the meantime.

The reverse can also happen. When peso rents rise rapidly and the exchange rate moves more slowly, dollar rental income improves.

This makes local property a different proposition from holding a conventional USD bond or collecting dollar rent elsewhere. The apartment itself behaves largely like a dollar asset, while its income stream retains a meaningful exposure to Argentina's peso economy.

Foreign investors should price that instability into the yield they are willing to accept.

Could Buenos Aires property prices fall again?

Buenos Aires property prices could fall again, but the current market does not look like the beginning of another 2019–2023 collapse.

There are enough weak points to take the risk seriously. Actual used-apartment closing prices are slightly lower than a year ago. Mortgage-backed transactions have fallen by roughly one-third. Peso rents have lately trailed inflation. Argentina also retains substantially more currency, inflation and policy risk than mature property markets.

Yet the conditions behind the previous property decline have not fully returned.

Transaction volumes remain close to last year's strong level. Cash and other non-mortgage purchases have actually increased by our calculation. Gross rental yields are roughly twice their late-2019 level. Replacement costs have risen dramatically, making new competing supply expensive to produce.

A recession, renewed currency turmoil or another financing shock could still push dollar property values lower. We just do not see enough evidence today to make another major decline the most likely outcome.

The more plausible near-term risk is boring rather than catastrophic: prices could simply go nowhere for quite a while.

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What could make Buenos Aires property prices start climbing again?

Cheaper mortgages could give Buenos Aires property prices another push because financing is the clearest source of demand that has gone missing.

The potential is easy to see in the current numbers. Overall property transactions are nearly matching last year's level despite mortgage purchases being down roughly 36% across the first seven months.

Banks have recently begun offering lower UVA mortgage rates again. Banco Nación has been around 6%, ICBC around 6.9%, and Banco Ciudad and BBVA around 7.5% on some lines, although conditions vary considerably by borrower and product.

Mortgage disbursements have also started recovering from their recent lows. They remain well below last year's stronger levels, so we would not call this a new credit boom yet.

Still, a sustained normalization would add buyers to a market that is already handling roughly 35,500 transactions in seven months without much mortgage help.

Combine stronger credit with expensive new construction and property values that remain below their previous dollar peak, and the next leg upward becomes quite believable.

This is the main risk for buyers who decide to wait several years for the return of 2023 prices: those prices may require another economic crisis rather than an ordinary market correction.

Is it a good time to buy property in Buenos Aires now?

Yes. We think this is a good time to buy property in Buenos Aires selectively, especially for a cash buyer or long-term owner, although it is no longer the spectacular buying opportunity seen near the 2023 bottom.

The market currently offers a combination we rarely get at the extremes of a property cycle. Prices have recovered enough to show that the multi-year downturn ended, while actual closing values have recently stopped rising. Transactions remain strong, yet mortgage demand has weakened enough to remove some competition. Rental yields are close to 6% citywide rather than the roughly 3% available before the downturn.

Buyers also retain negotiating room of around 5% on completed used-apartment transactions. That is particularly useful when the broader market itself is appreciating very slowly.

Meanwhile, high construction costs make another huge downward repricing less easy to imagine, and a future recovery in mortgage lending could bring additional demand back into the market.

We would still avoid three types of purchase: overpriced premium apartments bought purely because the neighborhood is fashionable, properties intended to be resold within a few years, and leveraged investments where an expensive UVA mortgage overwhelms the underlying property return.

For everyone else, waiting for Buenos Aires to become obviously cheap again could mean waiting for another Argentine crisis. The current market offers something more useful than a dramatic bargain: decent prices, better rental economics, active transaction volumes and enough hesitation among buyers to negotiate.

Buyer Our view today Why
Long-term owner-occupier Good time to buy Flat recent prices and a long holding period
Cash investor Good time to look actively Less mortgage competition and room to negotiate
Yield-focused investor Attractive in selected neighborhoods Citywide yield near 6%, much higher in cheaper areas
Premium-area investor Be demanding Stronger liquidity but weaker rental yields
Short-term buyer Usually avoid Transaction costs are too important
Expensive-UVA borrower Wait or compare carefully Financing can ruin an otherwise sensible purchase
Buyer waiting for another crash Probably waiting for too much Current sales, yields and replacement costs do not point to a collapse

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OUR METHODOLOGY

This analysis tests whether it is a good time to buy property in Buenos Aires by combining valuation, completed transactions, sales activity, mortgage demand, rental economics, neighborhood differences, ownership costs, construction economics and currency exposure. We do not treat any single indicator as decisive.

We distinguish advertised prices from completed-sale prices. Zonaprop's sale index is used to understand asking-price levels, recent changes and the distance from previous highs, while the M² Real index produced by RE/MAX Argentina, Universidad del CEMA and Reporte Inmobiliario is used to see what buyers are actually paying for used apartments.

We compare current prices with both the previous market peak and the 2023 trough. Using both reference points avoids calling Buenos Aires either “cheap” or “expensive” simply because one historical comparison happens to support that conclusion.

Transaction activity comes primarily from the Colegio de Escribanos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. We use its deed data to compare current purchase volumes with the previous year and to separate mortgage-backed transactions from the rest of the market.

Some figures are our own calculations from those published numbers. In particular, the estimated mortgage share of transactions and the change in non-mortgage purchases are calculated by combining total deeds and mortgage-backed deeds over equivalent periods.

Rental economics are based mainly on Zonaprop's CABA rental series and rental-yield data. We compare current yields with the late-2019 market to judge how much the relationship between rents and purchase prices has changed, while current rent growth is considered alongside official inflation data from INDEC.

We also use neighborhood-level sale prices and rental yields because citywide averages can hide very different investments. A premium apartment in Puerto Madero or Palermo and a higher-yield property in Lugano or Parque Avellaneda should not be judged with the same return expectations.

Ownership friction is included rather than assuming the purchase price is the entire investment. AGIP's current stamp-tax rules and guidance from the Colegio de Escribanos are used to assess transaction costs and exemptions, while Zonaprop's construction series provides the replacement-cost context for existing apartments.

Currency and financing are treated separately from the property itself. BCRA material is used for the current foreign-exchange framework, while Banco Nación, ICBC, Banco Ciudad and BBVA provide the mortgage-rate references used to assess whether cheaper UVA credit could eventually add demand back into the market.

Key sources used for this analysis include: Zonaprop's CABA sale-price index, Zonaprop's CABA rental index, Zonaprop's December 2019 market report, Zonaprop's construction-cost report, Universidad del CEMA's July 2026 M² Real release, Reporte Inmobiliario's July 2026 M² Real publication, the Colegio de Escribanos' July 2026 deed statistics, AGIP's current stamp-tax benefit guidance, INDEC's price and construction-cost data, the BCRA's exchange-rate framework, Banco Nación's mortgage terms, ICBC's UVA mortgage terms, Banco Ciudad's Primera Vivienda program, and BBVA Argentina's mortgage offering.

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