Thirteen years ago my wife and I bought an 80-acre ranch in Carmelo, Uruguay in South America.  

It’s out in the country, but only about 60 miles north of the great city of Buenos Aries in neighboring Argentina.

The old stone farmhouse was quaint and traditional (i.e., a little run-down) but we fell in love with it.

Then we replaced the front door.  And then…well, by the time we had finished with construction six years later, we had ourselves a hacienda in the Spanish Mediterranean/Santa Barbara style, with a main house, guest house suites, caretaker’s house, and assorted other structures.  We added a few horses, cows, chickens, dogs, cats and presto, our retirement ranch was complete.

It’s a great getaway because it’s summer down there when it’s winter in North America.  The mild climate, safety and stability, and the friendly people all led us to buy in little Uruguay instead of one of its giant but turbulent neighbors: Brazil to the north, or Argentina to the south and west.

Uruguay is the safest country in South America.  Property rights are secure for both citizens and foreigners; and the weather is pretty much the same as southern California, except that the rains are regular and there is plenty of water.

It’s a beautiful, peaceful place to relax when you really need to get away from it all, but it’s a long commute from California.

My search work, which I love, does not leave us as much time as we would like for the long trip down and back.  It’s a much easier trip for someone living on the east coast to connect to Montevideo or Buenos Aries from New York or Miami.

So, we’ve reluctantly decided it’s time to sell.

The links below will take you to a lot of photographs of the house, grounds, and surrounding area which will give you a much better idea of what it’s like.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have questions, or you can call our broker, Patrick Archer.

See: https://www.facebook.com/EstanciaTierraSanta

See: http://estanciatierrasanta.com/

Patrick Archer: patrick@investba.com

USA:  1.800.251.2720  URY:  598.98.822.048  Skype: patrickarcher

Public Endowments: Performance and Pay

The Best, the Rest, and Erik Lundberg – U Michigan, our pick for Public Endowment CIO of the Decade. 

This month we are pleased to bring you our annual survey of endowment performance at the Public Ivys, including many of America’s biggest, most prestigious, and best-endowed public universities.

We think the performance of these endowments ought to be of interest not only to the endowment and foundation community, but to the investment world at large.  They include some extremely talented people getting results which rival investment organizations anywhere. 

And, they are important clients for many for-profit money managers all over the world.  Since most of them are located far from Wall Street and the Northeast media corridor they tend to be overlooked, and we’re glad to shine a little light on them.