Buenos Aires Real Estate Expo: Who Invited Small Investors to the Party?

Small investors at the Real Estate Expo were looking for safer investment alternatives than a $200k 911 Carrera.

Ten days have passed since Expo Real Estate Argentina 2010 (Did you see our video?), which gave Clari­n sufficient time to absorb all the information presented and formulate some conclusions of their own. Most notable was the fact small investors were really the stars of the event, significantly outnumbering large brokers, developers or architecture firms.

“We’re not talking about people with huge international support or institutional funds backing them,” said one attendee, “We’re talking about individual investors looking for a safe alternative for investing their capital.”

Just one small problem, Clari­n opines. The small real estate investor walking the floor of the Exhibition Hall is as likely to influence the direction of the local market (in terms of product and pricing), as a small shareholder attending the Annual Meeting of a large publicly-traded company (with the possible exception of Berkshire Hathaway).

Small real estate investors have concerns, needs and great ideas; yet, the push-push-push marketing by the local broker-developer community leaves them out in the cold. Don’t believe us? Try finding a local broker or developer with a blog, twitter account, or any type of social media plugin soliciting user feedback.

Instead, our inboxes are cascading with Argentine broker e-mails with subject lines like INCREIBLE PROPIEDAD! or PARA INVERSORES! and the requisite 5MB attachments which we never open. As one very astute broker told Clari­n, “The new way of operating should be less about having a big Rolodex and more about reading the market and having the capacity to segment your clients.”

Which is exactly what we do @InvestBA. We blog in several languages, we inform and educate, we promote lifestyle, we solicit feedback daily, and we know exactly which of our international clients would be interested in what types of real estate opportunities in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Uruguay. In short, Clari­n characterized the presence and demands of the small investor as “nuevos desafi­os,” but we view them as “nuevas oportunidades.”