Bruno and Meredith Bonierbale moved to Peru for the potatoes. Eight years ago, Meredith, a plant geneticist from New York, was offered a senior post at the prestigious International Potato Center in Lima. Scientists trace the origin of potatoes to the Andean region and for Bonierbale, who had written her doctoral thesis on potatoes, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. It helped that she and Bruno, a Frenchman who works in the wholesale food distribution industry, were already living in Colombia.
But their move to the Peruvian capital wasn't complete until last year when they finally decided to buy a house in the city. What they discovered then was a housing market unlike anything they had known before.
"Most sellers just didn't seem serious about actually selling," says Bruno. "They wouldn't negotiate at all. I even offered the asking price once and was still rejected."
Homeowners in neighbourhoods popular with expatriates can operate this way because there are almost no other places where people such as the Bonierbales would want to live. Lima's centre is run-down and unsafe at night and it is surrounded by shanty towns that house the city's poor. Nicer suburbs, such as Miraflores and San Isidro, were once popular but they've grown less so in recent years due to a dearth of family houses and a coastal microclimate that guarantees eight months of grey, sunless sky as well as extreme humidity.
That leaves the neighbourhoods further inland at the edges of the Andean foothills, where the weather is sunnier, the air cleaner and the developments more upscale.
The Bonierbales settled on Las Lagunas de la Molina, a mini-suburb of large houses overlooked by impressive mountains. With palm trees and a lake, it feels like a tranquil oasis light years away from the bustling capital. After a long search, they found a three-storey, four-bedroom, four-bathroom home for 700,000 new sol (£120,000). The eight-year-old property has a swimming pool, maid's quarters and stunning views.
But that was the easy part. "I find it funny now when my American friends complain about bureaucracy," Bruno says. "They barely know what it is. Down here, it's an art form. A good sense of humour is essential."
On one occasion, he went to the town hall to have the house transferred into his name, only to discover that the address on the taxform was slightly different from the one on the purchase agreement because the local authority hadn't made a record of the street's name being changed a few years before.
"So we were put in a long line to wait to get to the window to change the address. When we got there, they showed us the form we needed to fill out but said we could only get one by submitting a request in writing to the mayor. Then theyhad to send an inspector out to check it was the same house. So it took about three weeks just to get our hands on the form."
Asa Wright wishes that Peruvian red tape was the worst of his problems. In March last year, the travel consultant from Michigan paid the equivalent of $75,000 for a three-bedroom apartment being built on the coast in San Pedro, 34km south of Lima. He was planning to spend part of the year there, while his Peruvian fiancée was living in Lima, and construction was supposed to be completed last August.
"I didn't want to spend more than $100,000 on a place I was only going to use occasionally [and] it seemed like a good deal," Wright says. "The same kind of beach unit in Florida would have cost me $1.2m."
However, some 15 months after he shipped some of his belongings to Peru, Wright was still waiting to move into his apartment. Apparently, the builders had to change their plans several timesto win approval from the local authority. "Every three months I come down here and they tell me it will take another three months," Wright says.
Another disappointment is the quality of the materials being used. "They showedme a home in the development and said the specifications would be the same,"he explains. "But insteadof wood floors and smart imported fittings, they have put down thin parquet flooring on top of unfinishedconcrete, and they areusing substandard sinksand cabinets."
The window fittings, he says, have already gone rusty. The maid's room - dimensions for which were omitted in the original plans - is too small for a bed. And the swimming pool, which was one of the most attractive features of the development, has been scrapped.
Wright says 18 others, many of them joint citizens of Peru and the US who want to retire in their home country, are in the same position.
He took the precaution of checking his contract with a local lawyer, who told him it was a standard sales agreement. But he now realises it didn't include a penalty clause. "The company has told me I could renegotiateto include a penalty butthey said they wouldn'thave any money to pay it," he says. Even so, he is initiating court proceedings.
In spite of his experience buying property in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand, Wright says hehas relearnt an importantlesson in Peru: "If it seems too cheap to be true, it probably is."
Bruno Bonierbale, who has navigated the local bureaucracy but is now having trouble finding dependable labour to remodel his house, echoes that sentiment. "The Peruvians have a saying," he says. "What starts out cheap ends up expensive."
Hal Weitzman is the FT's Andean correspondent
