Cost of living in Colombia?

Question

In general, how much is the rent in Bogota for an average apartment?

If you buy a house, can you pay like in the US, 15 30 years mortgage?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

To live in the most expensive areas it would probably be $600-700 a month.  

You can take out a mortgage but the interest rate is higher than in the USA.

Answer 2

Well, rent...for a nice one-two bedroom apartment in a decent zone, about COP$1,300,000, Monthly. If you are lucky, you can find bigger apartments for $300,000-$600,000 more. Buying? sure, loans are quite good right now (due to a boom in construction), so you can get nice loans to be payed in a lot of years.

Answer 3

Well, It depends of where you want to live. Bogota is divided in 6 estratos (classes), number one is the poorest and number 6 the richest. In your case I would recommend you from 5 to 6. According to the estratos the cost of living increase, all the services such as water, electricity, natural gas, TV, phone and Internet depends of it. The phone, the TV and the Internet are cheap in Bogota with an average cost of 40 or 50 dollars per month . The most expensive service is the water with a maximum average of 120 dollars.

Now, about the rent, the average cost of renting an apartment in Bogota in a good estrato goes from 700 dollars to 1,500 dollars. If you want to check, go to www.metrocuadrado.com(the web site is in Spanish).

About buying, the system is exactly like in the US, you can receive two types of mortgage:

*One to buy the house.

*One to buy the furniture for the house (optional).  

The real estate in Bogota is based on lofts, if you want a house you most buy it in the outskirts of the city or in the specific areas for houses.

Finally, If you give me more specific information I can look for you whatever you want. My e-mail is [e-mail].