Is it safe to buy property in Buenos Aires?

How risky is a normal Buenos Aires purchase today?

Buying a normal resale apartment in Buenos Aires is currently quite safe from a legal-ownership perspective, provided we use an independent escribano and refuse to close until the title, seller and building have been properly checked.

Argentina's reputation makes this question sound scarier than the property system itself. The country has lived through defaults, currency controls, very high inflation and abrupt policy changes, but Buenos Aires real estate still operates through a formal land registry and public deeds.

For a property in CABA, the Registro de la Propiedad Inmueble records ownership and legal claims against the property. Before an escritura is signed, an escribano can obtain the domain certificate showing the property's legal status and a separate inhibition certificate showing whether the seller is legally blocked from disposing of assets. The domain certificate also creates a temporary priority reservation for the planned transaction.

The deed data say the system is busy, not broken. The Colegio de Escribanos recorded 41,583 sale deeds in CABA from January to August 2026, only 2.3% fewer than a year earlier, and 6,055 in August alone (−4.9% year on year). Each of those went through the same registry and notary checks you would use.

What deserves our attention is the quality of the individual deal. A finished apartment with a clean title, a normal consorcio and a straightforward banked payment is a very different purchase from an unfinished development financed by buyers' installments.

Risk	Finished CABA resale	Off-plan apartment	How much control do we have?
Defective title	Low after proper checks	More complicated	High
Existing liens	Usually detectable	Can involve project land	High
Seller unable to transfer	Usually detectable	Depends on structure	High
Developer failure	Very low	Material	Limited
Currency/payment problems	Moderate	Moderate	Fairly high
Regulatory change	Moderate	Moderate	Low
Bad resale price	Moderate	Moderate to high	High at purchase

Can foreigners safely buy property in Buenos Aires?

Foreigners can generally buy and directly own ordinary apartments in Buenos Aires today, without needing an Argentine partner or nominee.

Argentina does restrict foreign ownership of some land, which creates confusion online. Those limits come from Law 26,737 and apply to rural land, defined as property outside the urban boundary. They are back in force for now: DNU 70/2023 tried to repeal them, and on 9 October 2026 the Supreme Court provisionally suspended that repeal pending a final ruling.

That distinction leaves a normal apartment in Palermo, Recoleta, Belgrano, Caballito or another CABA neighborhood outside the rural-land regime.

A foreign buyer still needs an Argentine tax ID. Most non-residents get a CDI from ARCA: the application is free but can take up to 30 business days, so start it before you start negotiating. Documents in another language need a sworn translation. This is paperwork, not an ownership problem.

We would be much more suspicious of someone proposing an Argentine nominee because "foreigners cannot own Buenos Aires apartments." For an ordinary urban purchase, creating an unnecessary second owner can make the transaction less secure.

Can we really verify who owns a Buenos Aires apartment before paying?

Yes. Buenos Aires gives buyers several ways to verify the owner, the property's legal status and registered claims before the escritura takes place.

The CABA property registry provides information on ownership, mortgages and other gravámenes. It also offers a separate search for inhibitions against a person. That separation is useful because two different problems can kill a transaction: the apartment can carry a legal burden, or the seller can personally be prohibited from disposing of property.

An old escritura shown by the seller is therefore never enough on its own. Someone may have acquired a property cleanly ten years ago and subsequently mortgaged it, faced an attachment or become subject to a judicial restriction.

The current domain certificate is much more useful. According to Argentina's Ministry of Justice, the certificate tells the escribano the property's present legal situation and establishes priority for the transaction being prepared. CABA currently offers standard, urgent and next-business-day express processing.

This is one reason we are fairly confident about conventional title risk in Buenos Aires. The important information is searchable before we hand over the purchase price.

Check	What we are trying to establish	Main problem it can uncover	Who should handle it?
Current ownership	Who legally owns the apartment?	False or unauthorized seller	Escribano
Domain and gravámenes	What affects the property?	Mortgage, attachment or restriction	Escribano
Seller inhibition	Can this person legally sell?	Judicial prohibition	Escribano
Cadastral details	Does the legal unit match reality?	Undeclared alterations or mismatch	Escribano/professional
Expensas status	Does the unit owe building charges?	Existing consorcio debt	Escribano/administrator
Tax status	Are property charges outstanding?	Unpaid liabilities	Escribano

Does the escribano really protect a Buenos Aires property buyer?

Yes. For a normal Buenos Aires resale, the escribano is one of the strongest protections we have, which is why choosing an independent one matters.

The escribano verifies the legal documents, requests the relevant registry certificates, prepares the escritura, checks the parties and their authority to sign, handles key tax formalities and submits the transfer for registration.

For ordinary resale transactions, the Colegio de Escribanos explains that the buyer normally chooses the escribano. We would use that choice rather than automatically accepting whoever the agent or seller usually works with.

The buyer should still think commercially for themselves. An escribano can tell us whether the title is transferable, but the escribano is not there to decide whether USD 180,000 is too much for the apartment, whether the building is unpleasant to live in or whether the unit will be difficult to resell.

Those are separate judgments. The notary itself costs about 1% to 2% of the price plus VAT, and with the agent, stamp tax and certificates a CABA buyer pays about 6.4% to 9.4% in total. Saving part of that by skipping independent notarial review would be a bad trade.

Is a boleto de compraventa enough to make the property ours?

No. A boleto de compraventa can give the buyer important contractual rights, but a completed Buenos Aires purchase should normally end with an escritura and registered ownership.

This distinction matters because buyers often become financially committed before title actually transfers.

A reservation may take the property temporarily off the market. A boleto can set the price, payment schedule, closing conditions and obligations of both sides. The escritura is the public deed through which ownership is formally transferred in the standard completed transaction.

We therefore care a lot about what happens before a large deposit becomes non-refundable. The reservation or boleto should deal clearly with a defective title, undisclosed restrictions, false information and the seller's failure to complete the transaction.

A seller who wants a significant payment immediately while discouraging title checks is giving us a very good reason to stop. There are too many apartments in Buenos Aires to make that shortcut worthwhile.

Is buying an apartment off-plan in Buenos Aires much riskier?

Yes. Buying an apartment en pozo carries meaningfully more risk than buying a finished Buenos Aires apartment, even though legal protections for future units have improved recently.

With a finished resale, we can inspect the physical apartment and investigate a legal unit that already exists. An off-plan buyer may initially be buying contractual rights to a future apartment that cannot yet be possessed or separately titled.

Argentina has been building a stronger registration framework around those contracts. Rules introduced in 2025 allow certain boletos and other contracts covering projected units to be registered, while CABA's property registry requires the underlying property to be formally brought into the relevant registration regime. The framework was broadened again in 2026 by allowing additional authorized entities to record contracts involving future units.

That is useful progress because a buyer's contractual position can become visible and traceable instead of existing only in a private folder.

Construction risk remains. Registration cannot guarantee that the tower will be finished on schedule, that costs will stay within budget, that the developer will remain solvent or that the delivered unit will match the sales presentation.

Cost risk is very real in 2026. Many instalment plans are indexed to the CAC building-cost index, and a fideicomiso al costo can pass overruns on to buyers. Zonaprop puts building costs in dollars up about 18.5% since January 2026, while used-apartment asking prices rose only 1.4%. Read the indexation clause before anything else.

The premium you pay for new is already large: in Q2 2026 a new two-room flat asked USD 3,215/m² against USD 2,343/m² for a used one (+37%), and a new three-room (two-bedroom) flat USD 3,349/m² against USD 2,160/m² (+55%) (IDECBA). For safety, we would choose the completed apartment unless the off-plan price sits well below a comparable finished new unit.

Question	Finished apartment	Off-plan apartment
Can we inspect the exact unit?	Yes	Usually no
Does the unit legally exist separately?	Usually yes	Often not yet
Can title transfer now?	Usually yes	Usually later
Construction-delay risk	Very low	High
Developer-solvency risk	Very low	Material
Specification can still change	Little	Yes
Buyer rights can be registered	Title itself is registered	Sometimes, depending on structure
Overall risk	Lower	Clearly higher

Can a Buenos Aires developer fail even if our off-plan contract is registered?

Yes. Registration can strengthen an off-plan buyer's legal position, but it cannot remove the financial risk of a weak developer or an underfunded project.

This is where we would dig deeper than the sales agent's brochure. We want to know who owns the land, what debt sits against it, whether the project uses a fideicomiso, who the fiduciary is, how much construction depends on incoming buyer payments and what happens if the development runs short of money.

Recent rules on divisible mortgages and future units make some of these relationships more transparent. The regulations require information on the underlying property, ownership restrictions, tax debts and the project's future subdivision. They also allow individual buyer contracts to be linked to the legal record of the development.

Those improvements help us see the structure. They do not tell us whether the developer can execute it.

Past projects are more revealing. A builder with several completed developments, normal delivery histories and no recurring legal disputes deserves a different risk assessment from a new vehicle selling renders before meaningful construction has begun.

We would demand that extra return up front. Paying almost the same price for an unfinished promise and a comparable finished apartment makes little sense when the buyer is carrying most of the construction risk.

Is moving dollars into Argentina still a major risk for property buyers?

Moving dollars for a Buenos Aires property purchase is much easier to structure legally these days, although we would still agree the exact banking route before signing a binding deal.

Buenos Aires property is heavily dollarized. Listings, negotiations and economic comparisons commonly use US dollars even though much of the country's everyday economy runs in pesos.

The foreign-exchange environment has changed a lot since tight controls dominated these deals. BCRA data for June 2026 show individuals making net foreign-currency purchases of USD 2.82 billion, including about USD 2.02 billion in banknotes. On 22 October 2026 the official retail rate (about ARS 1,545 to 1,549), the MEP rate (about ARS 1,548 to 1,554) and the blue rate (about ARS 1,570) were less than 2% apart, against gaps of more than 100% in the old cepo years.

The rules for foreign investors have also been liberalized since 2025. New non-resident investments brought through the official foreign-exchange market gained clearer routes for later repatriation, although the exact treatment depends on the type of investment. Subsequent BCRA measures modified some of the original holding-period rules, while foreign direct investment can still have its own conditions.

For a foreign property buyer, that makes documentation more important than memorizing one headline rule. Before transferring the purchase money, we would ask the receiving bank how the incoming capital will be coded, what evidence it will retain and what documentation would later be needed if the property is sold and the proceeds are sent abroad.

That is a practical problem we can solve before closing. Discovering the answer after the sale is much harder.

Is paying cash for a Buenos Aires apartment a bad idea?

Large undocumented cash payments add unnecessary risk to a Buenos Aires property purchase, especially for a foreign buyer who may eventually need to prove where the money came from.

Cash has historically played a large role in Argentine property transactions, particularly because the market is dollarized. That history does not make every cash-heavy structure equally sensible today.

Real-estate professionals, banks and escribanos operate within Argentina's anti-money-laundering framework. From July to December 2026, property deals paid in cash above ARS 275.85 million (750 minimum wages, about USD 178,000) are reported to the UIF, and source-of-funds checks can apply below that too. The Inocencia Fiscal II law, published in October 2026, eases tax rules for Argentine residents' savings; it does not switch off these checks and does not cover foreign buyers.

One more rule worth knowing: under the Civil Code (arts. 765–766), a price agreed in US dollars has to be paid in US dollars. Agree in the boleto how they will be paid, counted and where.

We would therefore want the financial story to be easy to reconstruct. Bank statements, evidence from a previous asset sale, income records, tax filings or company documents can show where the acquisition capital came from.

Complex arrangements raise more questions. Funds arriving from several relatives, cryptocurrency converted shortly before closing, a company paying for an individual's apartment or cash entering through several routes can all require more explanation later.

A documented bank route usually gives us better evidence, better personal security and a cleaner file if the capital eventually leaves Argentina again.

Can a Buenos Aires building turn a good apartment into a bad investment?

Absolutely. In Buenos Aires, the consorcio can create larger financial surprises than the apartment itself.

Most apartments sit inside a propiedad horizontal structure, so owners share the cost of elevators, staff, cleaning, utilities in common areas, façade work, roofs, pipes and other building expenses through expensas.

Those charges are not small. ConsorcioAbierto put the average CABA bill at ARS 379,774 a month in September 2026 (about USD 245), up 4.9% in the month and 28.6% over 12 months. Staff takes about 31% of it, maintenance 28%, and extraordinary charges already about 10%. A typical one-bedroom in Palermo lists expensas around ARS 200,000 (Mob, Sept 2026).

A seller can show us a beautiful renovated unit while the building is preparing to replace two elevators or repair decades of façade deterioration. If owners have postponed maintenance for years, the next extraordinary assessment can absorb a meaningful part of the discount we thought we negotiated.

We would therefore read recent expensas statements and owners' meeting minutes rather than looking only at the current monthly charge. The minutes can reveal approved works, arguments over unpaid bills, litigation, employee disputes and projects that have been discussed but not yet billed.

Existing common-expense debt also deserves a formal check. Buenos Aires rules provide for building administrators to certify the unit's expensas situation when requested in connection with a transfer. Arrears are common: about 15% of CABA units were behind in September 2026, and a building where many neighbours do not pay ends up charging the rest more.

The safest-looking apartment can still be a poor purchase if the building underneath it has been financially neglected.

Building check	What we want to see	What would worry us
Monthly expensas	Costs consistent with services	Very high recurring charges
Recent payment history	Unit is current	Significant arrears
Assembly minutes	Routine maintenance	Large works already approved
Reserve position	Some capacity for repairs	No money in an aging building
Elevators, roof and façade	Maintained systems	Years of deferred work
Litigation	Minor or routine issues	Major employee or contractor claims

Is it safe to buy a Buenos Aires apartment with a tenant already inside?

Buying with a tenant can work, but we would consider vacant possession safer when the buyer wants immediate use or maximum control.

Argentina's rental rules are far more flexible than under the old rental law. Since DNU 70/2023, the parties choose the length of the lease, and rent can be agreed in pesos or dollars with the indexation they pick. That freedom looks set to last for now: the 15 October 2026 session in Congress to overturn the decree failed for lack of quorum (121 deputies present, 129 needed).

Those freedoms apply to the contract. Purchasing the apartment does not magically erase an existing tenant's rights.

We would read the actual lease before agreeing to buy. We need to know its end date, payment history, deposit, guarantees and any clauses affecting termination or renewal. An older contract signed under the previous law may still be indexed to the ICL, which rose about 31.5% over 12 months, so the rent may differ a lot from today's market. If the seller promises that the tenant will leave before closing, vacant delivery should appear clearly in the transaction documents.

Problems with possession can become slow and unpleasant if someone refuses to leave. Argentine law provides judicial routes for eviction, but a foreign owner will generally prefer never to need them.

Long-term occupation also does not produce ownership overnight. Adverse-possession rules require far more than somebody simply entering an empty apartment. For an overseas owner, the realistic concern is the time and cost of recovering possession rather than suddenly losing registered title.

That is why absentee ownership works better with a reliable administrator, a functioning consorcio and somebody checking the property regularly.

Is Buenos Aires property financially safer now than a few years ago?

Buenos Aires property looks financially healthier today than it did near the bottom of the previous cycle, but the recent price data have cooled enough that we would stop calling this a strong appreciation market.

Zonaprop's September 2026 index puts the average CABA apartment asking price at USD 2,484 per square meter, up only 1.4% since January. Real closing prices are flatter still: used apartments sold at USD 2,097/m² in September, 0.4% below a year earlier (M² Real, RE/MAX, UCEMA and Reporte Inmobiliario).

The longer trajectory gives the number more meaning. Buenos Aires prices fell for years after their previous peak, eventually turned upward, and remain about 11.3% below the historical maximum in Zonaprop's series, roughly USD 2,800/m². So we are buying after a recovery, but before prices have returned to their old high.

Transaction activity is holding up better than mortgage activity. January to August 2026 produced 41,583 CABA purchase deeds, down just 2.3% year on year. Only 6,170 of them (14.8%) involved a mortgage, and mortgage-backed deeds were down about 34% on the same months of 2025.

So about 85% of buyers closed without a bank loan. That gives us more confidence in basic market liquidity than the price-growth number alone would.

The combination is fairly clear: people are still buying, but sellers currently have little evidence to justify aggressive price increases.

CABA market measure	Latest level	Comparison	What we take from it
Average asking price	USD 2,484/m²	Zonaprop, Sept 2026	Price growth has slowed
Asking price change in 2026	+1.4%	January to September	Almost flat in dollars
Distance from historical peak	-11.3%	Zonaprop series	Recovery remains incomplete
Closing price, used apartments	USD 2,097/m²	-0.4% YoY (M² Real, Sept 2026)	Sellers have no pricing power
Sale deeds, January to August	41,583	-2.3% YoY	Market activity remains solid
Mortgage-backed deeds, January to August	6,170	-34% YoY	Credit is the weak part of demand

Could we struggle to resell a Buenos Aires apartment?

Yes. Buenos Aires has enough transaction volume to give ordinary apartments a real resale market, but a badly chosen property can still sit unsold for a long time.

The latest deed numbers make a frozen-market scenario hard to argue. About 41,600 CABA purchases closed from January to August 2026, with just over 6,000 in each of July and August.

Individual liquidity varies far more than those citywide numbers suggest.

A conventional one- or two-bedroom apartment with decent light, sensible expensas and good transport access has a broad buyer pool. A huge luxury unit, a dark ground-floor apartment, a property with awkward distribution or a building carrying expensive problems can be much harder to exit.

Entry price probably matters most. Buenos Aires buyers compare properties locally and negotiate in dollars: in September 2026, deals closed on average 4.75% below the last asking price (M² Real). Paying USD 200,000 because the apartment feels cheap beside Madrid or Miami does not mean the next Argentine buyer will agree that it is worth USD 200,000.

Exit costs add to that. A seller pays about 5.4% (agent at 3% plus VAT, and half the stamp tax), so buying and selling in CABA costs about 12% to 15% in total. With prices flat, you need several years of rent just to cover that round trip. The good news: since 1 January 2026, individuals, including non-residents, pay no income tax on the gain when they sell a home (Decree 406/2026).

We therefore prefer properties that are easy to explain in one sentence: good street, normal layout, good light, manageable building costs and a price close to comparable transactions.

That approach gives us more protection than trying to predict where the citywide USD/m² index will be three years from now.

Does rental income make Buenos Aires property safer?

Rental income currently gives Buenos Aires investors a decent cushion, although today's average yield is too modest to repair a bad purchase.

Zonaprop's September 2026 index puts the average CABA gross rental yield at 5.70% a year. At that rate, an investor needs about 17.5 years of gross rent to equal the purchase price. A two-room flat asked ARS 898,154 a month (about USD 580), up 28.7% over 12 months, slightly below 33.4% inflation.

The improvement versus a few years ago is real. Zonaprop's yield was about 2.3% in 2020, under the old rental law. Since rent control ended, rental listings have come back to about 3.6 times their February 2023 low, landlords have far more freedom, and the rent-to-price ratio has recovered. More listings also means more competition for tenants.

We still have to remove the expenses that the headline yield ignores. Vacancy, repairs, insurance, management and owner-paid extraordinary expensas all reduce the return. Tax is the big one for a foreigner: since 2026, residents pay no income tax on a long lease to a tenant's main home (Decree 406/2026), but the decree is silent on non-residents. Until an adviser confirms otherwise, plan on 21% of gross rent withheld, plus about 0.5% a year of wealth tax (Bienes Personales) on the property. That takes 5.70% gross to roughly 4% before any running costs, and to about 3% net for a normal managed case.

Neighborhood choice also changes the equation. Using Zonaprop's September 2026 barrio rents and prices, a 50 m² flat yields about 9.7% gross in Villa Lugano and 8% in La Boca, against 4.6% in Palermo. That does not make the south safer: the buyer pool, tenant profile and resale speed are very different from Palermo, Belgrano or Recoleta.

We would rather earn a slightly lower yield from an apartment we can rent and sell easily than chase the city's highest gross percentage with no regard for exit liquidity.

Rental measure	Current reading	What it means
Average CABA gross yield	5.70% (Zonaprop, Sept 2026)	Reasonable income, not exceptional
Years of gross rent to recover price	17.5 years	Before expenses and vacancy
Best headline-yield areas	Villa Lugano 9.7%, La Boca 8%	Lower purchase prices help yields
Main hidden deductions	Vacancy, repairs, management, extraordinary expensas	Net yield can be materially lower
Tax for a non-resident landlord	21% of gross rent by default, plus 0.5% a year wealth tax	About 3% net in a normal managed case

Is Argentina's economy still a serious risk for Buenos Aires property owners?

Yes. Argentina's economy remains the biggest risk we cannot eliminate through title checks, even though that risk affects liquidity and returns much more directly than basic ownership.

An apartment may be priced in dollars, but the people who want to buy or rent it still live in the Argentine economy. Recession can weaken demand. Expensive mortgages can push out buyers who need a loan. Currency swings can distort local purchasing power. A regulatory change can complicate capital flows again.

Dollar pricing gives property owners some protection against peso inflation, but it cannot force buyers to accept the seller's dollar valuation.

The current market illustrates that nicely. Deeds are only 2.3% below last year while mortgage-backed purchases fell about 34%, and closing prices are 0.4% lower than a year ago. Inflation is still 33.4% over 12 months (INDEC, September 2026), and in October 2026 the IMF cut its 2026 growth forecast for Argentina from 3.5% to 2.1%. Demand exists, but buyers have little appetite for higher dollar prices.

We would separate legal safety from investment safety. We can get comfortable with a clean title. We cannot make Argentina's macro cycle disappear.

For a buyer planning to hold for many years and who does not need a specific exit date, that volatility is manageable. Someone who may need to sell in 12 months should demand a much larger margin of safety on the purchase price.

What would make us walk away from a Buenos Aires property?

We would walk away when a Buenos Aires property deal becomes harder to verify than it should be.

A normal transaction is fairly boring. The registered seller matches the person at the table. The current title checks are clean. The apartment matches its legal description. Building records make sense. There are no unexplained extraordinary expenses. The money follows a documented route. The escritura is handled by an escribano we trust.

Problems start when several exceptions appear together.

A seller asking for a large non-refundable deposit before registry checks deserves caution. So does an agent discouraging us from choosing our own escribano, a developer unable to explain the ownership or financing of the land, a tenanted apartment being sold as though vacant possession were automatic, major building works that never appear in the sales discussion, or a complicated cash arrangement nobody wants documented.

One unusual detail can have an innocent explanation. Three or four usually mean we should spend our energy on another apartment.

Buenos Aires has thousands of properties for sale. We gain very little by forcing a messy transaction to work.

What changed for Buenos Aires buyers in October 2026?

Several things, and only some of them matter for a city apartment.

Rural land is the one that made headlines. On 9 October 2026 the Supreme Court provisionally suspended the repeal of the Rural Lands Law, so foreign-ownership limits on rural land apply again for now. For a flat in CABA this changes nothing. For a quinta, a farm or a lot outside a town's urban boundary, ask the escribano for a written check of the parcel before any deposit.

Rent control is not coming back for now. The 15 October 2026 session to overturn DNU 70/2023 failed for lack of quorum, so a lease you sign today stays under the free rules. Mortgages are getting more money: the pension fund (FGS) put ARS 200 billion into banks on 7 September and another ARS 200 billion on 6 October. That helps resident buyers, who are your future buyers when you sell, but non-residents with only foreign income still have no confirmed access to UVA mortgages.

Residency is a separate track. The citizenship-by-investment programme announced on 2 October 2026 asks for a USD 350,000 contribution or a USD 800,000 bond, and buying property does not count towards it. Anyone telling you an apartment purchase "comes with" residency is wrong.

Is the strong peso a new risk for Buenos Aires property buyers?

Yes, and it is the one people miss. Argentina got more expensive in dollars in 2026.

The wholesale dollar hit a nominal record of about ARS 1,527 on 21 October 2026, yet it rose only about 4.9% since 1 January, while consumer prices rose about 23.6% from January to September. Your peso costs (expensas, ABL, repairs, staff) are rising much faster than the dollar, so they are eating more of your dollar return each month.

Rents are the other side. A two-room flat renting for ARS 898,154 a month is worth about USD 580 at today's ARS 1,550. If the peso weakened to the ARS 1,941 ceiling of the official band, the same rent would be worth about USD 463, a 20% cut in dollar income before the next indexation catches up. The private forecasters surveyed by the central bank (REM, September 2026) expect about ARS 1,614 by the end of 2026.

What to do: build your yield at a weaker peso, not today's rate, ask for indexation every three or four months in a peso lease (or agree the rent in dollars, which is legal again), and budget expensas growing with inflation, not with the dollar.

So, is it safe to buy property in Buenos Aires?

Yes. We consider buying a completed, properly titled apartment in Buenos Aires reasonably safe today, while off-plan developments, undocumented payment structures and overpriced properties belong in a clearly higher-risk category.

The legal side is stronger than Argentina's reputation suggests. CABA has a formal property registry, current ownership and lien searches, seller-inhibition checks, public deeds and a mature notarial system. Foreigners can directly own normal urban apartments. CABA recorded 41,583 purchases from January to August 2026.

The market side requires more judgment. Asking prices are around USD 2,484/m², closing prices USD 2,097/m² and flat over a year. Gross rental yields average 5.70%, closer to 3% net for a non-resident. Mortgage deeds fell about 34% while overall sales held up. Those figures describe a functioning market, but they give us no reason to overpay: aim for about 5% below asking.

Our safest version of a Buenos Aires purchase is therefore quite specific: a finished apartment with vacant possession, clean registry checks, manageable expensas, no looming building works, a documented dollar trail and a price supported by local comparables.

An off-plan unit from an untested developer deserves much more skepticism. So does an apartment with unclear occupants, a distressed consorcio or a transaction built around undocumented money.

If we buy the boring version, Buenos Aires property is safe enough. The remaining uncertainty comes mainly from Argentina's economy, the strong peso, future regulation and the price we eventually get when we sell. Those risks are real, but they are risks we can price into the investment rather than reasons to avoid owning Buenos Aires property altogether.