I ended up renting through apartmentsba.com on the premise that if I had any problems with my internet connection that I could talk to someone in English to try and get it sorted out. Apartments BA charge quite a fair bit more, but they do provide a high level of ’service’ for that. My rationale was 1) They’re cheaper than a hotel 2) they all speak English 3) They’re a full service agency so you talk to them about any problems rather than the landlord. A lot of the other apartment rental places are purely listing agencies for the landlord. I think bytargentina is like that (apologies if I am wrong). So even though you rent through bytargentina, if you have a problem with your stove or toilet or internet you need to call the landlord of the apartment.

If I was going over for six months I would probably look at other options. Have a look at the Buenos Aires part of craigslist. There are apartment rental places that list on there as well as expats looking for flatmates from time to time. These are still probably not as cheap as what a local pays. To understand you really need to read up about the whole issue with guarantia’s and the lack of a credit reporting system, and laws to favour the tennant (your best bet is google if you want to understand half of it).

Of course, with these cheaper options it makes it harder to ‘guess’ how good the internet connection will be. I’d just make sure I was close to some wifi’d cafe’s (hint: if you’re trying to work out distances in BA, the whole city is dead flat and I think its a 100metre grid system).

You do have to remember that you’re in ‘Argentina’ and you need to have low expectations of service to enjoy the place. To me that just makes it different rather than backward, and I’d happily go back in an instant.

I guess most importantly, do you have any suggestions on where to start my search for a nice pre-furnished apartment that won’t levy differential pricing on me for coming from a more affluent country?

Thanks again for all the helpful input.

First of all, thanks for the information you’ve written which has been very helpful.

From your writing, it seems like securing reliable, low-latency internet connection may be an issue. I’ve been thinking of one solution but I wanted your opinion on it. Based on your experience there, do you think it would be an option to pay a company there a nominal fee to secure usage of both a cubicle and their corporate (ergo probably stable) internet connection for 20hrs a week or so?

I’m very interested in your response, having lived there for some time doing similar work.

Thanks,
Amendmen7