Real Estate listings and info from Santiago

Square Meters or Square Feet

Posted by jerry on 31. October 2009 21:19

When I put together the Living in Santiago site I only listed square meters on the site.  Why did I do this?  Well I had moved around to different countries through out my life and learnt the local way whether it was meters or feet.  Since they use meters here I figured that I would just stay with that.  However tonight after talking with a friend visiting from the States, I see that I should have included the square feet also.  As we sat on the balcony talking about real estate in general and the differences between here and there and what your money will buy, it hit me.  For example, and I find myself doing this, well 1 square meter is roughly 9 square feet.  So 180 m2 should be around 1620 square feet that price is a bit high.  The problem is that 1 square meter is not 9 but 10.76391 and that 180 m2 has now become 1937 square feet.  That is a 317 square foot difference.  On some of the other houses there was a 600-700 square foot difference.  So I guess I learned a new lesson and changed the page to display both meters and feet because some of us do tend to round down, after all it is ONLY 1.76391 square foot difference and I should be close.

What to Expect When Renting Property in DR

Posted by jerry on 17. October 2009 21:34

Even though I have found that my dollar goes further down here, I have found that getting set-up here can be expensive. However, once setup it seems to go smoother. Renting property here is a bit different than in other countries where I have lived. While I can not cover every possible situation, I hope that the guidelines give you a bit of an idea of what to expect and the process.
First thing to understand is that many times property are not exclusive. So there might be 3 – 4 different people / agencies involved with a property. Is this a good thing or bad thing? Well it means the agent gets to keep less commission, so that is a bad thing. However, we have talked with a couple agencies that handle everthing in house and do not share or work with outside agencies. While it is true that they get to keep more of the commission, we normally see their signs up longer and in a few cases after several months replaced with another agency. So this is a bad thing as they gained nothing.
Let’s start with some terms that I first heard here and took me awhile to to sink in. The first question after they tell you the monthly rent, is how much to move in. They say 2 + 1 (dos más uno). What is this 2 + 1 and why don’t they just say 3? Well it goes like this. The 2 is two months worth of deposit. You will either receive a receipt for this or there will be a paragraph in your contract showing that you paid the two months deposit. We will talk about this deposit a bit more below.
The 1 is used to pay for cost. These cost differ depending on agents, owners, lawyers, monthly rent, etc. For example if we had the listing for the property and are the only agent for the commission then many times we will use part of that commission to lower or pay for the cost of the contract. Again this would depend on the the amount of the commission, is there enough to cover the cost of the contract? Are we handling the contract with our lawyer, or is this a lawyer of the owner? Also we concider what other cost have we had to pay for this property. Many times you will not receive a receipt and for the most part, will not see this money again.
Okay lets talk about the deposits. For this example we are going to assume that you sign a contract on 1 June for 1 year. You move in on the first and setup house. On July 1 you make your first payment. Now unlike the US your receipt will say that you paid rent for the month of June. This was totally confusing to me because who in their right mind is going to allow you to live in a place BEFORE you paid rent for that month? However that is the case. So you continue to pay your rent until the end of the contract. You move out on 31 May of the following year. If there is no damage in the house then you would only receive 1 months deposit back as they will use one month to pay for May. So it would APPEAR that your intial deposit was last month rent plus 1 month deposit. But they do not see it nor talk like that. And remember all your receipts show you paying for the rent for the prior month.
Now lets talk about another difference. Let’s say after 6 months you want to move. Read your contract to know for sure, some say they need 1 month written notice, but you can leave and not have pay any penalties. This can be a good thing as most contracts are not binding you to the property for the full length of the contract. As I said check the contracts. Our contracts normally state 1 month written notice and you pay for any portion of the month that you occupy the property. So if you moved out on the 15 you would pay for the whole month, if you moved out on the 2 or 3 well that depends on how generous your landlords are. Now keep in mind that contracts are not prorated so that you pay on the first of the month. You rent due date is the date on the contract unless specifically stated in the contract that the rent is due on another date.
So what are the costs to moving into a place here? Here is a list of things that you need to consider when renting. All prices in pesos and are examples and not quotes. 2 + 1 for deposits and commission (3 months’ rent) Rental contract cost (hard to say depends on lawyers, owners, agents, price of property) RD$1,000 -RD$2,500 pesos if not picked up by agent or owner. Deposit for electric service, they will ask you what you plan on powering, the less you have the less the deposit will be. We have seen as little as $1,000 as high as $5,500. Deposit for water, normally around $1,500 - $2,000 Cable – like in the states you can catch specials and get it installed for free or some reduced cost. Normally $1,000 with monthly service running about $650 ($18 US) for 100+ channels including HBO, CineMax, and a couple other movie channels. Phone service runs about $1,000 and seems to be the hardest companies to work with. The major player is Codetel (for their internet) and their customer service skills are lacking to say it politely, and they are as slow as can be. You will need a lot of patience when dealing with them here in Santiago. Tricomm has better service but their internet is not up to the same standard as Codetels.
Some other things to keep in mind even though all services should be in the tenant’s name you can get cable and phone services in your name even if the prior tenant still owes on them. Electric and water are not like that. It's more against the property so you might want to check to see if there is a balance or ask the owner for a zero balance receipt.
Here is a big gotta you for many foreigners. Everyone needs a co-signer (guarantor) for the contract. Now depending on the owner many will not allow another foreigner to co-sign especially if they do not have their residency here. Others will allow it depending on how comfortable they feel with the person. They cannot run a credit check on a person that does not hold a cedula and this is one reason they are firm on the co-signer needs to have residency here. Be prepared to supply a copy of the passport or cedula for both the tenant and co-signer.
One last interesting fact, a landlord cannot raise their rent more than 10% on a contract renewal. I have seen some raise it a bit, while others have not raised it at all. In fact they run on a month to month after the initial contract expired.
We hope this helps and we are here to answer your questions, so drop us line through our contact page.

New Direction?

Posted by jerry on 3. February 2009 05:25

When we started the real estate section, it was in response to people asking us to help them find a place.  So why not.  Bascially we would get the info of what they were looking for and then contact several of the agents that we knew and see if they had something that fit the search.  Also as we would drive around we had a good idea of what was available.  As the request grew we decided to add a section on Living in Santiago that was for listing the different properties.  We started to look for properties and talk to the agents.  we explained who we were and what we were looking for.  It started slow an is still growing.  Well the other day we see a nice house up for sale so we call the number.  My wife explains that we would like to take pictures and list it on the site. The owner is friendly and asks us to come over so she and her husband can talk with us.  We spent a nice evening with them and at the end, she goes okay you can put your sign up.  Put our sign up?  Bummer, we don't have any signs.  So the next morning it is off to the designers and we have signs designed and printed.  We now have them placed on 2 houses and we are looking at more listing that are managed by us.  Sometimes doors open up and take us in directions that we did not think about.  I think the designers did a good job and we have had a lot of comments on the signs.  Anyways, here is one of our for rent signs. 

Welcome Santiago Real Estate

Posted by jerry on 2. February 2009 05:11

Would like to take this space to welcome you to our blog.  In my mind a blog is more for personal writings, almost like a diary, I nobody really wants to hear about me.  But as the interest in the real estate section grew I was trying to think about ways that I could send the information to those that really wanted it.  Do it with emails when we listed a property?  For awhile that seemed to be the answer in my mind.  Then one night in my web travels, I noticed several people using blogs to explain and put out information of a technical nature. I have to admit that it took me a bit to put the two together.  We already had a newsletter that had a listing of the week, but why not put some of the listings on the blog?  As I was going through the different blog packages that I could incorporate into Living in Santiago, I noticed that they had many features that I was looking for like RSS feeds.  A person can sign up to the feed and see all the latest properties, when the timing is right for them and I do not have to flood their mailbox with emails and possibly get lost in the spam folders.  So lets see if this fits the bill and we will go from there.  As always, we are open and love to hear from you with comments and suggestions.