Deixe-me ir, preciso andar
Vou por aí a procurar
Rir pra não chorar
— Candeia, “Preciso me Encontrar,” as recorded by Cartola, 1976

The title of this piece refers to a popular saying in Brazil: laugh so you don’t cry. Argentina has its own Río de la Plata version: reír para no llorar. After the Brazilian elections had ended on Sunday night, both banks of the Iguazú were doing one or the other.

Quickly after it was confirmed that sitting president Lula da Silva had won the elections, messages from other heads of state in the region started rolling in, except for one. Javier Milei has not congratulated Lula and his administration already stated that it doesn’t plan to do so because of ideological differences (goes without saying that Lula did not congratulate Milei either).

The president-elect secured 51.77% of the valid votes, compared to 48.23% for Flavio Bolsonaro. The result reverses what happened in the first round, when Bolsonaro prevailed with 47.15% against Lula’s 45.02%. A comeback like this has never happened in Brazilian history before, and as we will see below the results are not without controversy.

On Monday the Bovespa tanked -14% after digesting what Lula IV means for Brazil, with some stocks getting hammered with declines of over 50%. Argentines are familiar with these types of market reactions, the last one being the second biggest country stock market crash in history in 2019, after Peronists won the PASO primaries and Macri’s reelection became uncertain. Yesterday’s crash in Brazil triggered a circuit breaker in São Paulo, and it was the single biggest one-day move since 1999.

Besides the existing ideological differences in both administrations and economic slowdown (especially on the Argentine side as a customer), Lula is now the single most important foreign actor in Argentina’s 2027 presidential elections. We don’t have to go that far back to see the role he played in 2023, as readers of The Milei Starter Pack will remember.

During both debates Lula also kept hammering on Flávio Bolsonaro being a “friend of Milei”, while repeating the same fake news he later used as an excuse for total social media censorship right after he won the elections: Argentina is so empoverished under Milei that consumers are now buying donkey meat instead of beef, lol.

Below I will go over how irregular Sunday night actually was, and what to expect from the perspective of the Donroe Doctrine for both Brazil and Argentina.

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In this Macro Pulse issue for Founding Members we go over the general macro trends and the political plans brewing in the opposition camp that plan to make Milei’s road to reelection as bumpy as possible.

In the full report below we cover the following:

• Inflation: what the lower September print means even though some outlets are focusing on the MoM increase;

• BCRA housekeeping: rates, international reserves and the peso;

• Credit & Country Risk: household credit and riesgo país trends;

• Economic Activity & Fiscal

• The Lonely President: the best critique of the government this year, checked line by line against the numbers;

• The Ticker: previous ticker candidates performance and a new name;

• Mara's read highlighting the main takeaways

Vamos.

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In the paid section I go over the numbers for August, and the calendar for the monthly mortgage boost by the BCRA (which lines up incredibly well with the 2027 elections).

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In this article I will go over the details of both bills (together with other pending risks), and why timing will be of the essence once the program is officially “open for business”.

When FT originally came out with the what now turned out to be higher amounts of a $500,000 donation and $1,000,000 zero coupon bond, Senator Jorge Capitanich (from Chaco, Cabinet Chief under Cristina Kirchner) filed a Senate bill on August 24, little over a month later.

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Over this weekend after Caputo’s announcement on Friday, two more bills landed in Diputados. One from Agustín Rossi, the last Cabinet Chief under Alberto Fernández, and the only Defense Minister under Cristina Kirchner to ever to lose track of a missile, did not hold back in his bill:

“Our bill repeals the “significant investment” ground introduced by DNU 366/2025 and establishes that no payment, contribution, donation, investment, or purchase of securities may substitute for the residency required to obtain citizenship.

It also dissolves the Citizenship by Investment Programs Agency; prohibits the issuance of public debt securities that grant citizenship or immigration benefits; and prevents the State from hiring intermediaries to market citizenships.”

Tranqui.

The other bill was filed by Florencia Carignano, who ran Migraciones for four years:

“We have introduced a bill with @PaulaPenacca to repeal the citizenship-by-investment scheme and the agency created to administer it.

Argentine citizenship cannot become a commodity to be exchanged for money or a mechanism to attract capital.

The bond with our country cannot be bought; it is built through residency, integration, and putting down roots.”

Migraciones is the office that would sign off on every CBI file.

The details of Carignano’s proposed bill are still unknown, since the last update on the Diputados site was on the 29th. Surely tomorrow or early next week we will be able to read the details of her proposal, which will probably be in line with Capitanich and Rossi bills, but could contain more details since she is very familiar with residency and citizenship in Argentina.

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In a nutshell, these are the three ways Peronism wants to kill Argentina’s CBI program, before it even started (as of today, there is still nothing published about regs in the Official Gazette):

All this is before we get to the court ruling from June, that already knocked the floor out from under Milei’s decree that the whole CBI stands on. In this free article I will go over the details of these proposals and what we know so far.

The Capitanich Senate Bill

S-1441/2026 would ban any citizenship by investment program, put the two-year residence rule back into Ley 346, repeal the investment articles of DNU 366/2025 and all of Decree 524/2025, dissolve the citizenship agency, and forbid the state from hiring or licensing private firms to market citizenship (sorry, agents).

The Capitanich bill was sent to three committees on September 4, but has sat there since without any movement. The details of the text are very interesting for potential CBI investors, because he specifically details that “acquired rights” (Article 12) should be kept. Meaning, if you obtained Argentine citizenship through the CBI program and your application is final, you get to keep the citizenship.

Another interesting part is that investment applications without a final decision (resolución firme) on the day his law would take effect go back to the ordinary rules. That means two years of residence and then citizenship.

So the hardest text in the Senate respects derechos adquiridos (acquired rights), which is a long-standing tradition in Argentine law. What you already hold, a later law does not take away.

The exposed group is the CBI applicants with a file still open; and the article says nothing about a donation already paid, by the way. None of the three texts does.

There is a strong precedent on how Argentina treats open files, and Milei’s own government wrote it: in his 366/2025 decree that moved naturalization from the courts to Migraciones, all the open citizenship applications though the courts carry on and go to a judge. All the new ones after the decree date go to Migraciones.

That said, there are no guarantees, and the Capitanich bill says nothing about open cases who already wired the $350,000 donation but haven’t received their citizenship yet.

One thing that’s noteworthy in the Capitanich text is that he does open the door to residency by investment in Article 9:

The provisions of this Law do not prevent Congress from establishing or maintaining temporary or permanent residency regimes designed to promote productive investments, provided that such regimes: a) do not automatically grant citizenship; b) do not, in and of themselves, lower the constitutional and legal requirements for naturalization; c) verify the lawfulness and traceability of funds; d) establish controls to prevent money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other economic crimes; e) respect the jurisdiction of the provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires; and f) do not grant exceptions to the limits established by Law 26.737 regarding the ownership or possession of rural land.

This particular bill is not something to freak out about too much, because for it to become law it needs a majority in both chambers, and bills that get that far rarely arrive the way they were filed.

So far it has had no committee debate, and it will be hard for Capitanich to get the votes required to get something like this through, but the fact that there are three proposals to ban the CBI within a span of two months already tells you that if Milei is not reelected, the program stands on weak ground.

The Rossi Diputados Bill

Rossi posted his text on X on October 2, the same day as the launch: 13 articles under the title Ley de Prohibición de la Venta de la Ciudadanía Argentina.

Carignano's bill was filed the next day but that text is not yet available, but her press release on X says that it eliminates the CBI program and the Agency responsible for it.

The Rossi bill goes full scorched earth compared to the lighter Capitanich bill that only takes away the granting of citizenship by investment: Article 8 of Rossi’s bill says that all open files “count as withdrawn”, full stop.

His Article 9 says that citizenships already granted through investment carecen de validez (are not valid), and orders Migraciones and the Registro Nacional de las Personas to cancel the documents. His reasoning is that President Milei had no power to legislate citizenship issues by decree (a similar reasoning upheld by the Cámara Electoral that declared the decree unconstitutional).

A lawyer friend who reads these things for a living sent me two notes after going through the Rossi bill:

1. It bans citizenship in exchange for "investments" without ever saying what an investment is;

2. 3 bills on the same subject from the same party in six weeks, with different answers on acquired rights, on open files and on residency.

The opposition to Milei in Argentina does not seem to talk much to each other.

The Court Case

On June 30 the Cámara Nacional Electoral declared DNU 366/2025 null, nulidad absoluta e insanable, void from inception.

The court’s arguments are that citizenship creates political rights, which are an electoral matter, and the Constitution forbids decrees on electoral matters.

The court then notified every federal electoral judge in the country so the criterion would stick everywhere. I covered the ruling in The Shopkeeper Who Broke Argentina's Golden Passport and the government's 36-page appeal in The Empire Files Back.

Why is this even more important than the three bills that would still have to be approved by both chambers? If the Corte Suprema confirms the nullity, the CBI route disappears with the rest of the decree (good news for residents who did leave for a couple of days and want to naturalize, since they would then be able to do so through the original route).

As of today, the Supreme Court has not responded to the case. Judging from the last ruling over the Ley de Tierras decree I discussed in The Cap is Gone this week, that took over 1 year for the Court to pick it up. One year from now is election time in Argentina, so it seems unlikely that the Corte would be dealing with this CBI case then.

If a filing is initiated under a decree declared void by the Supreme Court presents a much more difficult situation than a law change that still respects citizenship granted through investments. There is also no way of knowing what will happen with the money in this case.

Knowing the Argentine system well, applicants would probably have their documents cancelled before seeing their donation or bond money back.

The Odds

Low. At least for now. Peronism was crushed pretty badly in the midterms in 2025, and now only holds 25 of 72 Senate seats (the lowest level since 1983).

Say a CBI ban gets through both chambers anyway. Milei would veto it, and to override that decree would need another two thirds in each chamber.

Besides these low legislative odds, the bills also have an expiry date: a bill that has not passed its chamber of origin, lapses by the end of the parliamentary year after its filing. For both 2026 bills that is February 29, 2028. To stay alive, S-1441 needs the Senate to pass it during 2027, an election year, with 25 votes against 45. Lol.

The date that matters is December 10, 2027 (the start of the next government). Presidential elections are held in October and Milei’s first term ends in December.

The CBI Calendar

When looking at these threats together, we get a clear picture of the best filing window:

Argentina has not published the processing times, so the bars used in the graph use the standard timelines of the Caribbean programs (3 to 6 months). That gives us three applicant paths:

1. If you submit the application in the first wave (and assuming a reasonable processing time) the decision would arrive in the first half of 2027, meaning it would fall squarely within Milei’s term;

2. If you submit it in mid-2027, the decision would coincide with the election season—a typically turbulent period when little administrative progress is made—leaving a very tight timeframe;

3. Alternatively, you could wait for the situation to become clearer and for there to be certainty regarding Milei’s continuity, in order to submit the application to the next Congress.

Important sidenote is that none of these timelines take a Supreme Court ruling into account, which could potentially undo the whole decree.

The table below walks through different scenarios from left to right, with different outcomes depending on the stages:

Rossi’s bill is the harshest on paper, the Capitanich bill is the mildest. The Supreme Court ruling has no calendar and no precedent.

Final Thoughts

The conclusion from all this is fairly simple: either move fast on your application, or don’t apply at all if you think these risks are too much of a gamble. As of today, time is not working in anybody’s favor, since the Argentine government has made various announcements but has not yet published any regulation or final program requirements in the Official Gazette.

Until that happens, there is no way to apply. Caputo has promised Q4, so the final regulation should be ready in the coming days if not weeks.

With regards to the threats, under the Senate text, you would be protected if your citizenship is granted before the end of 2027. If you have filed but are still waiting, precedent would be on your side. The person with the most to lose is the one who waits until 2027 to start. The Corte/CNE is the risk I cannot calendar for you, and the honest answer is that nobody can.

If you are seriously considering the program as soon as the final regulation is published, join the waitlist to book an eligibility call once the portal opens.

SIGN UP FOR THE WAITING LIST

Let me know in the comments if any of these risks change your math.

See you in the Jungle, anon!

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BowTiedMara covers Argentine macro, real estate, citizenship and residency, and sovereign individual strategy from the ground in Buenos Aires. For 1x1 consultations on residency, citizenship, and investing in Argentina, or to follow along on X and YouTube, see the links below.

• 1x1 Consultations: book a 1x1 consultation for more information about obtaining residency, citizenship or investing in real estate in Argentina here.

• Propertyinbuenosaires.com: personal resource website with everything you need to know about buying and selling property in Argentina.

• ArgInvesting.com: new project — a mini-Bloomberg for Argentina. Live FX, BCRA, inflation and bond data with interactive charts, plus the full Macro Pulse report. Built off the Argentina Macro Pulse you’ve read here.

• X/Twitter: definitely most active here, you can also find me on Instagram but I hardly use that account.

• Podcasts: You can find previous appearances on podcasts etc here.

• YouTube: Check out my channel for real estate info and more.

• WiFi Agency: My other (paid) blog on how to start a digital agency from A to Z.

In previous articles like Argentina’s 5,000-Slot Citizenship by Investment Program, Argentina Picks its Citizenship Director and Argentina Just Killed the CBI Tender: Milei’s decree creating the citizenship by investment option in May 2025, a new CBI agency, and an international tender that was later cancelled in April this year by the Argentine government.

In between April and now there have been multiple local court rulings appealing individual citizenship cases where the entire legal basis of Milei’s decree (which was very ample and also included new naturalization rules) got stripped under unconstitutional claims (I discussed some examples in Argentina’s Citizenship Decree Ruled Unconstitutional and A Shopkeeper Who Broke Argentina’s Golden Passport). So far these have been individual cases and there has not been a nationwide adoption of the unconstitutionality claim of Milei’s complete decree that includes the citizenship by investment option.

Back in April, I wrote that no one should expect applications to be submitted before the fourth quarter of 2026, at the earliest. Well, the fourth quarter of 2026 began on Thursday… funny how things turn out.

The main conditions came in cheaper than what the Financial Times published in July ($350k for the donation and $800k for the bond, instead of $500k and $1M), discussed in The Empire Files Back.

I already heard that Milei would make an announcement in Paris this Friday regarding the CBI program, so this week I’ve been frantically checking the Official Gazette to see if any new regulations were published by either the Ministry of Economy or the sub agency that was created just for the CBI filings.

So far… crickets in the Boletín Oficial.

The real unknowns lie in the details: the actual duration and total cost of the bond option, who processes the applications, and whether the legal basis will withstand potential judicial scrutiny. That has not changed after Caputo’s verbal announcement today.

What Was Announced

Caputo presented two routes, according to the statement relayed to IMI Daily by members of AMIGO, the company formed by the five-firm consortium that advises the government on the program: a non-refundable contribution to the National Treasury starting at $350,000, or the purchase of an $800,000 government bond created for the program. Applications are set to open in the fourth quarter of 2026.

This is what we know right now, split between what the government confirmed and what is still reported or unknown:

Autist note — a zero-coupon bond pays no interest. Normally Argentine bonds can be attractive in two scenarios: 1) you buy them when the country’s Risk Index is through the roof like I did in 2022 for 25 cents on the dollar and you make a 2-3x when someone sensible gets elected, or 2) Risk Index is stable and you go for the higher interest. In the CBI case, the government asks you to buy one at face value as the price of a passport, and the interest you never receive becomes the real cost of the program. More on that behind the paywall.

Want to be first in line? If you are seriously looking at the Argentine Citizenship by Investment program, fill in the Argentina CBI Shortlist (two minutes, no commitment) and you will get every official update, the application checklist as soon as the rules are published, and a heads-up when the portal opens. Serious applicants only, please.

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How we got here

A short timeline for the new readers who just found this page through a search engine:

• May 29, 2025: DNU 366/2025 rewrites immigration rules, moves naturalization from federal judges to the immigration office (DNM), and opens the door to citizenship through a “relevant investment.” I covered it in Immigration DNU Fine Print.

• July 31, 2025: Decree 524/2025 creates the Agency for Citizenship by Investment Programs (APCI) inside the Ministry of Economy.

• December 2025: MECON launches an international tender to hire one firm to design and run the whole program. Details in Argentina’s 5,000-Slot Citizenship by Investment Program.

• January 2026: six firms bid. See Argentina’s Citizenship Gold Rush.

• March 2026: the labor reform removes automatic tax residency for investment citizens, the single biggest obstacle for wealthy applicants. See Argentina CBI Fiscal Residency Solution. The evaluation commission also recommends a winner.

• April 14, 2026: Caputo signs Resolution 522/2026 and kills the tender.

• April 28, 2026: Decree 285/2026 names Aixa Granara as Executive Director of the APCI, ad honorem (unpaid). The agency got a director, but still no rules, no amounts and no application procedure; I covered it in Argentina Picks Its Citizenship Director.

• June 30, 2026: the Cámara Nacional Electoral declares DNU 366/2025 null for everyone. See The Shopkeeper Who Broke Argentina’s Golden Passport.

• July 2026: the government files a recurso extraordinario and asks the Corte Suprema to revive the decree. I went through the brief in The Empire Files Back. The CNE conceded the appeal.

• October 2, 2026: official launch in Paris.

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So as of this week, the article in Milei's December 2023 decree that repealed Law 26.737, is in full force.

One thing that the Supreme Court did not do is determine whether the section of Milei’s decree dealing with the Ley de Tierras is unconstitutional or not. The Court’s ruling effectively restores the validity of Federico Sturzenegger’s sweeping emergency decree, by reinstating the repeal of the regulation in its entirety (pending intervention by another court) on the grounds that the organization bringing the lawsuit lacked legal standing to do so.

In September 2025 I wrote that the Court would take years to come to a ruling around this case, but it has done so in 13 months (quite fast for Argentine standards).

What died on Tuesday

In 2012, the second presidency of Cristina Kirchner pushed through Law 26,737, which put into effect the “Regime for the Protection of the National Domain of Property, Possession or Tenure of Rural Land”, commonly known as the Land Law or Ley de Tierras in Spanish.

This law limited land sales to foreigners in Argentina to a maximum of 15% of the national territory and forces the provinces to report the amount of land in the hands of foreign individuals or foreign corporations.

Among other points, it established that a foreigner couldn’t have more than 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) in a core agricultural zone (the best soil in northern Buenos Aires, southern Santa Fe and southern Córdoba).

Any one nationality, in turn, could not exceed 4.5% of the land of a department, a province or the country as a whole. It also prohibited foreigners from owning land containing (or bordering) large, permanent bodies of water; in Neuquén and Río Negro, this encompasses the vast majority of what anyone would wish to purchase.

In practice, no province ever got close to 15% foreign rural land ownership, as Minister Bullrich tried to point out during the debates around repealing or changing the law:

The full breakdown of who owns what, department by department, with the spreadsheet, is in Update on the Ley de Tierras. The property bill, what it wanted to do to this law and what survived the Senate, is in Private Property Reforms.

With this latest Supreme Court ruling reinstating Milei’s decree, all four restrictions from the old Ley are now gone, together with the authorization certificate from the Registro Nacional de Tierras Rurales, the piece of paper every rural escritura to a foreigner had to wait for (111 of them were issued in all of 2026, which tells you how many deals were actually moving).

Border Zones

What is still in force, is certain restrictions around foreign land ownership for border zones, which is a restriction many countries implement. Decreto-Ley 15.385 of 1944 wants property in the zonas de seguridad de fronteras in Argentine hands and requires a previa conformidad from the Interior Ministry before a foreigner or a foreign-controlled company can buy inside them.

These zones run up to 150km inland from the land border and 50km from the coast lines, and were redrawn in 2018 to leave out most urban centers.

Constitutional lawyer Andrés Gil Domínguez summarized it well in Río Negro this week:

Although the repeal eliminates hectare-based quotas, land acquisition in border areas remains subject to the Border Security Zones regime (Decree-Law 15.385/44), which requires foreigners to obtain prior authorization from the national government; in other words, while there is no cap on surface area, there is a case-by-case assessment based on defense considerations.

Argentina joins the rest of Latam

The panic campaign in July, with Lali Espósito's stories and Amnesty International videos, was focused around the narrative that a country without a foreign ownership cap is a country for sale.

Here is what the rest of the regions looks like without the cap:

Brazil is now the last country in Latin America with a percentage cap on foreign land ownership: 25% of any municipality and 10% for any single nationality.

Every other country runs on border strips and nothing else, Argentina now included. Apart from Nicaragua, where the state declared its entire 15 km strip public property in August 2025, in all other countries there are certain border restrictions related to foreign ownership.

In the last 4 countries on the list, there are no restrictions at all. As I mentioned back in July with regards to the fear campaign around Argentina removing the 15% foreign ownership cap:

Uruguay is the comparison the Panickinians should be afraid of when it comes to their aversion to money moving in. There is no cap on foreign ownership in Uruguay, and between 2007 and 2020 foreign-controlled companies took control of roughly 7 million hectares, close to 40% of all the country’s farmland. This doesn’t seem to hold the country back in any way, shape or form. Uruguay is still Uruguay.

The only thing Montevideo ever banned was foreign states buying farmland, in 2014, and that is the one restriction Milei's decree also keeps under the 1944 clearance regime.

Final Thoughts

Less restrictions = bullish. The restrictions that remain in place are for border protection, which is something most bigger countries in Latam apply. Foreigners own roughly 5-6% of rural land in Argentina, and nowhere did foreign ownership even get close to the 15% cap.

Will that change now? I doubt it. For that to happen, Argentina needs to prove Milei’s reforms stick, and even then it is not very likely that percentage will ever get above 10% (for example in the US, where there is no cap either, the share is about 0.67%; direct foreign ownership of cropland and pasture alone is even smaller). If Argentina would ever get to Uruguayan levels, that would mean many foreign investors start betting on Argentina’s future and we could see an unprecendented investment boom.

If you were on the fence about buying in the zona núcleo or had a rural deal waiting on the certificate, it is safe to say you can call your escribano this week to start setting up the deed without the need of additional permits (only check left is whether the parcel sits inside a border security zone).

See you in the Jungle, anon!

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Other ways to get in touch:

• 1x1 Consultations: book a 1x1 consultation for more information about obtaining residency, citizenship or investing in real estate in Argentina here.

• Propertyinbuenosaires.com: personal resource website with everything you need to know about buying and selling property in Argentina.

• ArgInvesting.com: new project — a mini-Bloomberg for Argentina. Live FX, BCRA, inflation and bond data with interactive charts, plus the full Macro Pulse report. Built off the Argentina Macro Pulse you’ve read here.

• X/Twitter: definitely most active here, you can also find me on Instagram but I hardly use that account.

• Podcasts: You can find previous appearances on podcasts etc here.

• YouTube: Check out my channel for real estate info and more.

• WiFi Agency: My other (paid) blog on how to start a digital agency from A to Z.

Meanwhile Argentines are just responding to the ebbs and flows of their economy the way they know best: buying crispy US tokens from their banking apps, since there are no more restrictions for doing so.

This article will go over both stories: bipolar Morgan and the latest developments in bimonetary savings accounts. They do not quite agree, and the gap between them is where the 2027 election will be decided.

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During my first 10 years in Buenos Aires, I had the same thoughts. Even now, whenever I see a crumbling house or PH in complete shambles with a Se Vende sign on it, I still look up the price online at the realtor site promoting it.

As discussed in one of my first Buenos Aires real estate articles, Buying property in Argentina - Part 1, I have some experience in fixing up worn down PHs.

So when a fantastic interview popped up on El Club del Ladrillo, a local real estate podcast, I took notes like a degen reading a new memecoin whitepaper. Episode #60 features Manuel Irurzún, who has been flipping apartments in Buenos Aires for more than fifteen years and has become THE influenza on Instagram talking about flipping in CABA, but not without merit: all his flips are real and his content is very good. He has amassed close to 1 million followers in just 1.5 years, so his business model definitely appeals to more people than just me.

Irurzún is very open about his numbers, which is great and a rare ocurrence in Argentina where most pricing is opaque, and very few folks in the business community will actually show their margins.

This article will run his playbook through the eyes of a foreign investor interested in flipping homes in Buenos Aires. We’ll go over what still works and what does not work anymore, what the ideal macro backdrop is for this business model, and some of the ways it can go horribly wrong.

The Balvanera Dental Office

Irurzún’s first flip he discusses in the video was a dental office on Avenida Pueyrredón and Córdoba, in Balvanera (also called Once), in 2011. I have lived in this area and if there’s one ideal place to find run down properties with beautiful façades, it’s here (still is, but that is also because it still is a very illiquid neighborhood).

The dental office was in such a bad shape that the realtor didn’t even want to show it to him, and the people who had seen it ran away in horror.

His parents lent him the start up cash to fund the purchase ($65,000 USD) for the 100+ m2 property. His total renovation costs amounted to only $12k USD, converting the clinic into a four-room home. Try doing this today and it would be a multiple of that number for such a big job, whereas the purchase price for something that run down would probably only be a 2x now.

While lifting the old pine floor the crew found a hidden 3x3 meter cellar. A free extra room, which not even the realtor knew about. Two months after finishing the remodeling, he sold the property for $135,000 USD.

That 2x+ sounds great, and it is a great return, but Irurzún does give some context of the downsides he had to face during the whole process: the job should have taken seven months and instead took almost a full year. He hired a crew boss who told him not to worry, “I’ll handle everything”, paid him weekly on Friday, and by month 3-4 the handler had already collected almost the whole budget for the job, with the bathroom still unfinished.

This is guaranteed to happen to newbies, and it happened to me exactly like this when merging those two PHs into one: the plan was six months, and it ended up being close to double that time, and in the end everything was way over budget in dollar terms despite the peso depreciating faster than inflation at that time.

Luckily for me, my crew did finish it, but in Irurzún’s case he had to hire a second crew to finish the rest. He hired the dude he knew or was recommended to him, which is what most people will do, but depending on the scale of the remodeling, some things turn out to be too much to handle for certain contractors.

Why that trade is no more

Despite the fact that most of the things that could go wrong, did go wrong, Irurzún still walked away with a 2x+ in 2011. In my case had I sold, it would have been closer to a 1.5x at the end of the 2010s. With construction and labor costs in USD terms now, this return would shrink even further.

Back then, in his words, you bought a property and the next year it was always a little more expensive. This was the famous “property prices only go up” era, that ran from 2003 all the way to Macri’s forced devaluation in mid-2018. Up until that fateful year, after which RE prices started to decline -50% in real terms until mid-2023, price appreciation was baked into the cake, prices were still relatively low, and labor costs paid in pesos melted away against the dollar. Most of the benefits I discussed in Currency Arbitrage for Real Estate in Argentina in 2023, are no more.

All three of these headwinds have dropped out of the equation now. Under Milei the peso is strong in real terms, so renovation and construction costs are high in dollar terms. Distressed properties are less of a bargain compared to 2020-2023, even though used properties are still heavily discounted versus new construction.

So is the fixer-upper trade a thing of the past for foreign investors? No. It can still be profitable, albeit that margins are now lower and need to be examined on a deal by deal basis. It also depends more on your role in the transaction. Below we will go over these roles, the numbers including tax traps, and my own scar tissue in this segment.

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The September issue of the Macro Pulse, covering August, in three words: records and cracks.

Here is what is covered inside:

• Inflation: August saw the lowest MoM print of the year with 1.7%, but data suggests the floor lies within this range, not so much below.

• Peso, Reserves, and rates: a stable exchange rate, and record reserve levels during those same four weeks, alongside a rebound in rates.

• Country risk & Credit: remains at 500 points despite a global sell-off of bonds; the credit cycle is shifting, with household delinquency at 12.8% and continued deterioration in personal loans.

• Economic Activity: industrial output fell 5% MoM (twelve of sixteen sectors in negative territory) contrasted against record oil production and a modest yet real surplus; a two-speed economy ahead of the budget.

• The Malvinas dossier: what Milei announced, and why Cristina’s 2013 sanctions were a “paper tiger” in comparison. We go over how Vaca Muerta changes the outlook in combination with the Ushuaia base, and what London’s “relentless” response forgot to mention.

• The Ticker: why this month’s ticker is a bank, and which one.

• My analysis and the updated list of indicators to watch through the end of September.

Vamos.

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The man walking up to that post was Severino Di Giovanni, an Italian typographer from Chieti, aged 29. He had refused a priest three times. He had asked for a coffee with lots of sugar, taken one sip, and then pushed it away. When the officer tried to put the blindfold on, he shook it off: ¡Venda no! And when the rifles came up he got two words out before the volley: Evviva l'anarchia!

Eight bullets, then one more to the right temple, just to be sure.

Author Roberto Arlt (famous for his Los Siete Locos novel) was there as a reporter for El Mundo, and his chronicle is the reason we still talk about that morning. His editor cut the opening line, reportedly the only time Arlt was ever censored: "Today I have seen men put on white gloves to kill another man."1 What ran instead was a stopwatch: “Five minutes to. Anxious faces behind the bars. Four minutes fifty-eight seconds. The bolt screeches and the iron door opens.”

Severino Di Giovanni was the last man the Argentine state tried, convicted, and executed by firing squad through a procedure that at least purported to be a judicial process (his friend Paulino Scarfó met the same fate the following morning, whereas the 1956 firing squads under Aramburu’s command were something entirely different; we shall discuss both cases later). His body was placed in an unmarked grave at Chacarita Cemetery, with orders that its location be revealed to no one. The next day, the grave was found covered in red carnations. When it comes to graves in Argentina, there is always someone who knows where they are.

This story and that of anarchism in Argentina in general are essential to understand many of the problems that have plagued the country throughout much of the 20th century: the bombings and kidnappings carried out “in the name of the working class,” which would later bear the Peronist or Marxist stamp, have a documented origin. It all started in Buenos Aires around 1900, and the majority of the names associated with it were Italian. A virtually identical story unfolded in the United States during the same period, involving the same immigrants, the same ideas, and the same state response. The two stories even collided in 1927, resulting in numerous deaths in downtown Buenos Aires.

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At the end of August, Caputo announced that the State pension fund will begin lending pesos long-term to banks so they can lend pesos to first-time home buyers. Yes, a libertarian government fixing the mortgage market with ANSES funds.

Below we’ll analyze what this means, and why the timing for this plan might turn out to be optimal. We’re also running some construction numbers for 2026 compared to last year, and see what the impact of dollar-denominated company loans could mean for the construction sector.

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During the better part of the 21st century, Argentina was begging for gas. Household energy was heavily subsidized, and tankers from Qatar, Trinidad and Nigeria happily lined up in front of the regasification ship in Escobar to make sure that subsidized LNG reached porteño households. All the while the second-largest shale gas deposit outside of North America sat right under Neuquén, basically untouched.

Last week, a consortium of oil companies signed a $900 million dollar loan with nine international banks to build the pipeline that will secure Argentina’s LNG exports for good. The good news is that this was only the small part of the deal, because behind the scenes YPF, Eni and Abu Dhabi’s XRG are closing a deal with international banks for an additional $16 billion.

Today I will walk through the two financing rounds that will decide whether Vaca Muerta molecules end up in European grids and Brazilian power plants, and what Pampa Energía’s $2.7 billion investment in a fertilizer plant in Bahía Blanca could mean for Doha’s current monopoly on that front.

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From this issue on, my involvement in the macro part of the report will be more direct, and I’m adding an additional section with a highlighted local company ticker. The first company under the lens is an oil name that got a famous new shareholder this week.

Last month we were wondering if sub 2% monthly inflation would finally become a reality, and it looks like we have our answers after the INDEC came out with the latest inflation data.

Here is what is covered inside:

• Inflation: July inflation higher after June’s sub-2% print and what drove it. The reasons behind the annual number ticking up for the first time in months.

• The Nervous Spread around a Calm Peso: the official rate below 1,490 but Country Risk index rising after hitting its Milei-era low, and what the bond market is pricing.

• BCRA USD reserves < $50 Billion: reserves have hit a seven year high, despite slower buying pace.

• BCRA Reform: vote for the reform text is set for August 26, and how much of the original Milei package survived.

• “Indebted families” panic: overall delinquency map that was widely shared on social media this week, the comparison with the BIS table that puts things into perspective, and the demographics around these defaulters.

• M3 Debate: we run the numbers on the criticisms around the “money supply tripling” under Milei.

• NEW: The Ticker: A Vaca Muerta pure play I flagged back in January.

• Mara’s read: how these stats could influence Milei’s 2027 reelection campaign.

Vamos.

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Yesterday the Senate voted on a private property bill, but unfortunately the one door everyone was hoping would open up foreign direct investment (the rural land cap), remained firmly shut.

In tandem, the Argentine Central bank was asked to release the bank reserves that fund mortgages, and said no. Besides this, multiple judges are ruling in favor of mortgage delinquents, and leaving private banks to pay for the difference.

Todo bien, total normalidad.

Below I will explain why these three things will have a lasting impact on the Argentine real estate market, and why the count for transactions and mortgages is now running in opposite directions.

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Patagonian Texas goes into depth on the Vaca Muerta Sur (VMOS) pipeline, but the main headline is that this will roughly double Argentina’s oil export capacity on its own, with an initial 180,000 barrels per day, expandable to 550,000 and later 700,000.

This 437 km pipeline from the Neuquén basin to Punta Colorada on the Río Negro coast was funded by a consortium of all the big players in the Argentine energy game (YPF, PAE, Vista, Pampa, Pluspetrol, Chevron and Shell).

At the water’s edge, two monobuoys will load VLCC supertankers 6 to 8 km offshore, fed by onshore tanks holding 4 million barrels, and the first exports are expected in Q4 of this year.

By the end of the 2020s, this one pipe should be moving $15-20 billion dollars per year in exports. For a Central Bank that has been stacking US Tokens like there’s no tomorrow (as we saw in Keeping the Faith), those are exactly the dollars that could completely replace the already lowered agro export tariffs, and the whole Milei TMAP story depends on them.

It was only a matter of time before some of the usual suspects came out of their natural habitat to see if they could put a stop to the energy section of Argentina’s growth story.

The formal reason is Península Valdés, the whale sanctuary and World Heritage Site that sits around 30 km across the water in another gulf, in another province (Chubut).

But the real story involves a familiar set of protagonists: international NGOs, foreign money, and the playbook I already described three years ago in The Role of NGOs in South America. Below we go through UNESCO’s latest joyita, who actually signed the petition, and why the same organizations go completely quiet the moment a drilling rig flies a British flag.

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First some of the good news. A plan was sent to Congress to change the Central Bank charter that will make financing the Treasury through the peso printer a felony. It imposes criminal penalties on deficit monetization, one of Argentina’s core problems since the start of the BCRA early last century.

Besides all this, the chainsaw keeps roaring to make sure the bloated public sector is gutted as much as possible, which keeps federal spending in check. As of now, more than 71,000 public sector employees have been severed from the state apparatus.

The effective tax burden continues to decline nationwide; a gradual and slow process that shouldn’t be interrupted in 2027 if Argentina wants to reach the levels of the 1990s.

Next to less fiscal pressure, the BCRA has been stacking US Tokens like there’s no tomorrow, and is now closing in on 50 billion USD gross and 12 billion net reserves. These are very much needed given the maturities Argentina is facing in the next 24 months.

Even despite selling a record number of pesos tu buy Benjamins, the exchange rate has only begun to move a little in the last couple of trading days, surpassing the 1600 pesos per USD threshold for the first time in forever. The upper band is at 1800, and the peso is still very far removed from that level (if it would get there too quickly, we might see inflation pick up again).

So all in all, the macro picture is very sound and is everything is running according to plan (TMAP - Todo Marcha Acorde al Plan).

So what about the political and micro picture? Below I will discuss Milei’s recent decline in popularity and his weight on the Brazilian elections later this year in October.

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While the whole country watched the national team play its way to the World Cup final, the government picked that exact window to make its two biggest institutional moves of the year: a full 2026-27 financial program and a Central Bank reform that would rewrite the BCRA charter back to its 1935 wording.

It also closed the file that had been dragging the administration through the mud for months, with Adorni finally handing in his resignation. Add the cleanest inflation print in almost a year and this is the densest issue we have run in the series so far.

About the final itself: Argentina lost, and the country is still processing it. If you trust the signs, though, there is a consolation prize hidden in the pattern: Argentina lifted the Cup in 1978 under a broke military junta, in 1986 with the Austral plan falling apart, and in 2022 with inflation pushing 100%.

The trophy has only ever arrived with the economy in tatters. Losing one with a fiscal surplus, sub-2% monthly inflation, and country risk at a Milei-era low might be the most bullish result in the history of Argentine football.

Argentina also lost the final in 1990 after winning in 1986, and many prosperous years followed in the early 1990s, with the single biggest difference with today being that most of that prosperity was built on a fiscal deficit.

Here is what is covered inside:

• The Sub-2% Print: monthly inflation under 2% for the first time since August, annual at 33% and heading for 30% by December, and why consensus now treats 2%-or-below as the new baseline.

• A Peso That Weakens on Paper Only: near 1,500 per dollar nominally yet almost 10% stronger in real terms since January, and why the euro and the yen tell you this is an energy story rather than an Argentina story.

• The USD 12.5bn Buying Spree: the BCRA already past its full-year reserve target, a USD 532m single-day record on July 15, and what the growing pile means ahead of the 2027 vote.

• Country Risk at 407bps: the lowest of the Milei era, Macri’s 342bp record within sight, and why the government still refuses to borrow at 8%.

• The 2026-27 Financial Program: USD 19.2 billion due this year against USD 22.9 billion lined up, a USD 3.7 billion buffer carried into a heavier 2027, and a baseline that assumes zero access to international markets.

• The BCRA Reform: six changes heading to Congress, from a single price-stability mandate to criminal penalties for financing the deficit with the printer, plus a ban on the Letras Intransferibles trick that drained reserves for a decade.

• Adorni’s Exit: the resignation that ended the sketchiest saga of the year, the 78% who wanted him gone, and the 10-15 point CABA dent LLA now has to repair.

• Bullrich Sidelined, Santilli Rising: the best-polling politician in the coalition pushed to the margins while the new Chief of Staff consolidates power, and the 2027 chessboard taking shape.

• Mara’s read: why institution-building in an election year is the real tell, and where the political risk moved after Adorni.

Onwards.

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The government promised to fight back. On July 1st officials called the ruling a “delirium” and would go to the Corte Suprema. Since then, silence. No outlet has seen the actual appeal.

This Patagonian rodent has.

A copy of the recurso extraordinario federal landed on my desk this week, which runs 36 pages and carries the signatures of Sebastián Amerio, the Procurador del Tesoro, the state’s top lawyer, his deputy Santiago Castro Videla, and counsel for the Ministry of Security and the DNM.

When the Procurador del Tesoro signs a brief personally instead of delegating it three floors down, the Casa Rosada considers the matter existential.

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