How to Buy a Car in Chile (As a Foreigner)
She’s a beaut!
In this post, I will outline how we purchased a van in Chile. The basic steps are:
Search for a car, and then pick one you want.
Decide if you will pay someone to help you with the process or do it solo.
Start the paperwork, beginning with the RUT.
Pay for the car!
Now I will go into a bit more detail of how we did these steps. It felt complicated at first, but ended up being fairly straightforward.
#1- The Search
We started looking for a car about three months before our flights. The main ways we looked were via Facebook pages and websites of various companies in Santiago. The Facebook pages we used most were:
These pages gave us a good idea of what types of vehicles were available and how much people were paying for them. We decided we wanted a vehicle that was low profile so we could be more incognito. There are lots of camper vans available, but let’s be real—the streets are smaller and tighter here, and there are more height restrictions. Cars in general are also a lot smaller.
#2- We decided to use a company to help us buy a van. There are several in Santiago or the surrounding area. We reached out to a few, and had the best responses from Suzi Santiago CTW and OverAndes. Confusingly, there are two Suzi Santiagos, so be sure you know which one you are talking to.
These companies sell vehicles for travelers on their behalf. For example, after someone finishes their overlanding trip through South America, they can turn over their vehicles to the company and then fly back home. The company publishes details via their website, FB or both, and then helps the buyer with the whole process. They take a percentage of the selling price as their commission. It is a cool niche market!
After obsessively looking at both of their websites multiple times a day, we finally found a van through Suzi Santiago CTW that fit our budget and our goals. It was a VW Transporter, diesel and manual. So, we reached out to them and got a video tour of the van. After we saw the video, we knew we wanted it! (I am going to refer to Suzi Santiago CTW as SSCTW from here on.)
We made an offer, slightly lower than the posted price. Then, we waited anxiously to see if the sellers were going to accept it! A few days later, we were notified that our offer had been accepted. We paid a deposit via a transfer, through the website Wise. Then we just had to wait to get to Santiago!
#3- The paperwork was what convinced me I was glad to be paying a company to help us. Without them, I am not sure we would have gotten everything done correctly. Bureacracy is no fun to begin with, but it really gets hairy when you’re in a different country using your second language. If we didn’t speak Spanish, it would have been pretty much impossible.
The first thing we did was go to a notary to get a RUT. In our case, it was specifically to buy the car as a foreigner. It is similar to a social security number in the USA. A notary is an attorney who, in addition to performing his profession, has the power to publicly certify facts and actions that occur in his presence. We paid a small fee, and were told it would take a few days for me to get the RUT.
It should be noted here that we purchased the van under my name, because I am a citizen of the USA. Because Conrado is from Argentina, he is unable to buy a car in another country and then bring it into Argentina. Make sure to check where is best for you personally, based on your citizenship, to buy a car in South America.
#4- Pay for the car.
A few days later, I received the RUT. We had to go back to the notary and do a lot more paperwork that time. There were many pages of documents to sign and fingerprint. We went through it all pretty quickly, and at the end of it all we had been given a “poder” to drive the vehicle. You do not receive the title of the vehicle immediately, we were told it could take up to four months. However, with the poder you have the documentation that you have paid for the vehicle and the title is forthcoming.
There are some other documents that you need to make sure you have. They were all there for us, thanks to SSCTW and the notary. They were a great help.
We paid for the car by going to a bank with a representative of SSCTW and depositing cash into their account. We were told that most people use a bank transfer, but we had cash we wanted to use so went the old school route.
After that, the van was officially ours! We paid SSCTW a fee for helping us with the notary, and went to their lot to pick up the van. We had started the process on Monday, November 4, 2024 and had the van in our possesion by that Thursday. All in all it was a pretty quick and easy process, but one that I was glad to have had help with.