International Real Estate - House Hunting in ... Argentina - NYTimes.com This 4,300-square-foot wood-and-plaster lodge-style house on Moreno Lake has uninterrupted views of the water and the Andes. It was built in the 1950s and updated in the 1990s. The living room has picture windows of the lake and a working stone fireplace. The ceilings are pine; the floors and columns are cypress. French doors open to the lawn, which slopes down to the lake. The kitchen has painted wooden cabinets, marble countertops and windows overlooking the woods. The master bedroom, on the ground floor, has an en-suite bathroom, a dressing room and lake views. Another ground-floor bedroom overlooks the woods at the back of the house. A dining room and another bath complete the ground floor. Upstairs are two bedrooms, a study and a third full bath. The property has a private boat dock. According to the listing agent, the lake floor has been carved out to allow deeper-hulled boats access to the dock, even in the summer when the water level is lower. There is a 200-square-foot outbuilding currently being used as a workshop; it could also serve as a garden shed, the listing agent said. Lake Nahuel Huapi, where there is a border crossing between Argentina and Chile, is accessible via boat from Moreno Lake. Although this property is within the municipality of San Carlos de Bariloche, usually called Bariloche, the downtown area is about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the house. The Llao Llao Hotel, built in the 1930s during Bariloche's first influx of tourists, is about a half mile away. Bariloche, a popular tourist destination, has boating, fishing, kayaking and windsurfing in the summer, and skiing at Cerro Catedral in the winter. Bariloche's airport, which is the nearest, is a 45-minute drive. The flight to Buenos Aires from there takes two hours. A small mortgage market and a lack of cheap credit in Argentina has kept the property market relatively stable, according to William Bateman, the managing director in Argentina for Swiss Finance and Property, a Switzerland-based company that invests in Argentine real estate. He also noted that a banking crisis in 2001 and 2002 had led many Argentines to invest in real estate, as opposed to keeping their savings in banks, which are viewed as potentially unstable. Prices in Bariloche have held steady since 2008, when the market stopped growing, Mr. Ansaldo said. A new house in a development costs about $2,000 per square meter ($186 per square foot), Mr. Bateman said. An older house with lake views costs about $1,100 to $2,000 a square meter ($102 to $186 a square foot), depending on the location. This house is priced higher, at $3,250 a square meter ($302 per square foot), because it has lake frontage. Metropolitan properties are more expensive, said Roberto Guichon, director of Guichon Propiedades, a real estate firm based in Buenos Aires. He says that apartments in the central neighborhood of Palermo in Buenos Aires cost $1,700 to $3,000 a square meter ($158 to $279 a square foot), and that in Recoleta, another popular area, apartments sell for $2,500 to $5,000 a square meter ($232 to $465 a square foot). Much of the tourism in Patagonia is concentrated in Bariloche, said Mariano Ansaldo, an associate broker at Argentina Properties Sotheby's International Realty and the listing agent for the property featured here. The majority of buyers are from Buenos Aires, though a favorable exchange rate with Brazil is spurring more interest from Brazilian second-home buyers. Buyers from Europe and the United States are also common, according to Mr. Ansaldo. There are no major restrictions for foreigners buying property in Argentina, Mr. Ansaldo said. They need a tax identification number, usually acquired from the Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos, the equivalent to the Internal Revenue Service, and it takes about 48 hours to obtain. In Bariloche, which is within 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) of the Chilean border, Mr. Ansaldo says foreign buyers are required to fill out additional paperwork at a notary's office. For plots smaller than 5,000 square meters (1.25 acres), buyers must register their intention to buy. For larger plots, or buyers who intend to operate a business, a special permit must be sought; the process usually takes six months, but is free of charge. In a typical transaction, the buyer and the seller each pay a real estate agent commission of 3 to 4 percent of the purchase price, said Roberto Sorzana, the farm division manager for Reynolds Propiedades, a real estate company that sells property in Argentina and in southern Uruguay. Mr. Ansaldo says transfer taxes, which are usually shared equally by the buyer and the seller, vary depending on the price of the house. For this house, transfer taxes would be 2 percent. An additional 1.5 percent of the sales price is withheld by the government until all taxes are paid. Notary fees are 2 percent of the purchase price, Mr. Sorzana said. High inflation in recent years has led to a practice of pricing Argentine real estate in dollars, not pesos. Some people have begun to price properties in euros because the dollar is losing value, but "99 percent of properties are priced in dollars," Mr. Ansaldo said. Llao Llao Hotel: llaollao.com Official website of Argentina: en.argentina.ar Central Bank of Argentina: www.bcra.gov.ar Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos: www.afip.gov.ar Spanish; peso (1 peso = $0.26) Taxes of about $260 a year are due to the province of Rio Negro, and Bariloche's municipal taxes for this house come to $300 a year. Mariano Ansaldo, Argentina Properties Sotheby's International Realty, 011-54-11-5648-9880; sothebysrealtyargentina.com