Pocitos | $500,000
A top-floor loft near Montevideo’s architecture school
This two-bedroom, one-bathroom loft is on Bulevar Artigas, the 6.5-mile-long thoroughfare that bisects central Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
With 12-foot ceilings and original brickwork, the loft is on the top floor of a four-story 1940s house that the seller acquired in 2017 and carved into three apartments. Pocitos, one of Montevideo’s most densely populated neighborhoods, has a mix of midrise buildings from the mid-20th century and new developments. The area’s dwindling stock of detached homes is getting demolished or converted to multiunit residences.
Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, the architecture and design school of the national Universidad de la República, is across the street. Pocitos Beach and Montevideo’s waterfront are a mile and a half south. Estudio Café, a fashionable coffee spot with a minimalist concrete interior, is just south. Carrasco International Airport, with nonstop flights across Central and South America and to Miami, is 15 miles east.
Foreigners can buy property in Uruguay without restrictions. Transaction costs total 7 to 9 percent of the purchase price, including 3 percent broker fees, 0.55 percent notary charges, and a 2 percent transfer tax. Foreigners who invest approximately $540,000 in real estate and stay in Uruguay at least 60 days a year qualify for permanent residency and a 10-year tax exemption on foreign-sourced income.
Size: 1,614 square feet
Price per square foot: $310
Indoors: The loft’s open living and dining area features a fireplace, restored original pine floors and peaked ceilings crisscrossed with white beams. The kitchen, integrated into the living room, features a built-in oven, a gas cooktop, and an extractor hood. There is a full bathroom on one side of the apartment, and a half-bathroom on the opposite end. The glassed-in bedroom, up a short flight of stairs, overlooks the living area.
The building’s lobby features checkerboard tile floors and glass doors onto the street. An elevator serves all three apartments.
