Argentina (AR) — civil law.
Nothing on this page describes United States practice. There is no certificate sold to an investor, no administrative sale, and no post-sale redemption window in Argentina. If you arrived carrying US assumptions, read falsos-amigos first.
Moneda y pago
The $ problem
In Argentine sources,
$means pesos (ARS).US dollars are written
U$SorUSD. This is not a stylistic quibble: abaseof$45.000.000read as dollars misstates the number by roughly three orders of magnitude at recent rates. Every currency figure on this wiki is explicitly labelledARSorUSD, and any figure you take from an Argentine source should be labelled before you use it.
Two currencies in one transaction
- Court figures are in pesos. The `base` derives
from the
valuación fiscal, which is a peso figure set by the provincial catastro. Theseña, thesaldo, and thecuenta judicialare in pesos. - Market value is quoted in dollars. Argentine residential real estate has for decades been priced, negotiated and — in private conveyances — physically paid in US dollars.
Any valuation exercise therefore crosses currencies, and the rate and date you use are part of the answer. State them.
The cepo cambiario and its lifting
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Oct 2019 – Apr 2025 | Individuals limited to USD 200/month in the official market, subject to conditions |
| 14 April 2025 | Cepo lifted for personas físicas. No restriction or surcharge on buying dollars in the official market |
| From Apr 2025 | Managed float with BCRA intervention between ARS 1,000 and ARS 1,400 per USD at announcement |
| 2026 | Individuals purchased over USD 36bn in the twelve months after the lifting; ~1.6m individuals bought ~USD 2.6bn in January 2026 |
The lifting was for individuals, not companies.
Restrictions remained in place for
personas jurídicas. If the acquisition vehicle is a company — foreign or Argentine — the currency analysis is different and isneeds_verification. Do not read “the cepo is over” as applying to a corporate buyer.
Current band levels, BCRA regulations and the position for legal entities move frequently.
Everything in this section carries a last_verified of 2026-08-21 and should be
re-checked against BCRA communications before acting.
Funding an auction bid
The binding constraint on a foreign bidder is usually operational, not legal: getting
funds into an Argentine account, in pesos, in time to meet the
`seña` on the fall of the hammer and the saldo
within the period fixed. Electronic portals typically require a guarantee in advance of
bidding, which pulls the funding deadline earlier still.
Plan the money before the auction, not after it. A postor remiso loses the seña and
may owe the shortfall on a re-auction.
Origen de fondos
Expect to evidence the origin of funds. A certificado de origen de fondos is part of
the ordinary documentary set for a foreign buyer, and anti-money-laundering scrutiny of
large real-estate payments is real. See registracion-cdi-cuit.