Renting an office in Argentina with US-dollar income

The short version

Four points carry most of the weight. The tenant on the contract should be the person or company that will use the space and pay for it. A dollar rent is legal, but the contract has to say how the dollars reach the landlord and how the rent moves over time. If no term is written, the Code supplies three years for an office. And if you leave early, the Code's default price is 10 percent of the rent still to run.

Start with offices for rent across Argentina on PlataStar to see what exists and in which buildings. If you only need a desk for a few months, the coworking and private-office comparison may save you a lease altogether.

Decide who the tenant is

A freelancer can sign as an individual. It gets less simple when a US company is paying. Under Article 118 of the Ley General de Sociedades, a company formed abroad may carry out isolated acts in Argentina and appear in court. To exercise its business here habitually, open a branch or keep any other permanent representation, it has to prove its existence under US law, fix a domicile in Argentina with the publication and registration the law requires, and name the person in charge. An office with staff in it looks much more like permanent representation than a one-off act, so a US LLC should not sign until an Argentine corporate lawyer has said how.

The usual alternatives are an Argentine entity, which a lawyer would have to set up, or an individual tenant whose rent the company reimburses under an arrangement your accountant approves. Whichever you pick, put the same name on the contract, the invoices and the payment records. A lease in one name paid from another person's account is the kind of mismatch that causes trouble when something goes wrong.

A lease does not settle your immigration status or your tax registration, either. If you still need a tax ID, the CUIT and CUIL guide for Americans explains what it is and when it comes into play.

Dollars in the contract, and what they can be indexed to

Article 1199 lets the parties set rent in pesos or in a foreign currency, as they choose, and says a tenant cannot insist that the landlord accept a currency other than the one in the contract. A dollar clause therefore means dollars: you cannot decide in a given month to pay in pesos at that day's rate unless the landlord agrees, and then the conversion method belongs in the contract. Write the payment route into the contract too, whether that is a bank transfer, a deposit or cash handed over against a receipt, and keep a receipt for every payment.

The same article lets the parties adjust the rent using any public or private index they name, provided the index is expressed in the same currency as the rent. For a dollar rent that points to a dollar-based index or to fixed steps written into the lease, not to a peso inflation series. If the chosen index stops being published, the Code falls back on a similar official index: INDEC's for rent in pesos, or the one that does the same job in the country that issues the currency. Ask your lawyer which option you can live with, and write down the exact index, the dates and the way the new rent is calculated.

Add up the real monthly cost

The rent in the listing is one line of the bill. Expensas are the building's shared charges, and in an office building they can cover cleaning, security, lifts and common areas. Ask for the last several monthly statements instead of a rounded estimate, and ask whether any extraordinary charge has been voted or is planned. Then add electricity, internet, parking and anything the landlord says is excluded. You can line the numbers up in PlataStar's total occupancy cost calculator before you compare two buildings.

Ask whether the quoted rent includes IVA, the value-added tax, and let your accountant say who bears it between your tenant and the landlord.

Deposits and guarantees are the other cash outlay. Article 1196 lets the parties set the amount and currency of a security deposit and how it is returned, and lets them agree how often rent is paid as long as the period is not shorter than a month. A guarantee is a separate matter. Some landlords want a garantía propietaria, meaning another person's Argentine property stands behind your obligations. Others accept a surety insurance policy, a seguro de caución, or other proof. Find out which one this landlord will take, and get the answer in writing before you pay any reservation.

See the building at your working hours

Argentina keeps the same time all year, so US daylight saving moves your day by an hour twice a year. A 5 p.m. call on the US East Coast is 7 p.m. in Buenos Aires on US standard time and 6 p.m. on US daylight time. The same call on the West Coast lands at 10 p.m. or 9 p.m. Visit the building at those hours. Is the air conditioning still running, does reception stay open, can a visitor get up to your floor, do the lifts keep working?

Measure the space against the people who will sit in it. The space calculator on PlataStar is a quick way to sanity-check how many square meters a team needs. Ask whether the listed area counts common areas, and walk the layout with your call room in mind.

An unfurnished floor can need lighting, power points, data cabling, cooling and furniture before anyone can work in it. Get a contractor's written scope and settle in the lease who pays, who owns the improvements at the end and what you have to remove. If the works delay your move-in, the contract should say whether rent starts on the signing date or on the day you can use the space.

Price the exit before you sign

Write start and end dates into the lease. If you leave the term blank, Article 1198 fills it in: two years for permanent housing, local custom for temporary lets, and three years for everything else, which includes an office. That is a fallback, not an obligation to sign for three years.

Article 1221 says the tenant may end the contract at any time by paying the equivalent of 10 percent of the rent still to run, counted from the date of notice to the agreed end date. As arithmetic, ending a three-year lease with two years left means paying about 2.4 months of rent. Indexed rent makes the remaining total less certain, and whether a contract can set a different formula is a question for your lawyer, since the article was rewritten by DNU 70/2023.

Leaving also means handing the space back. Photograph the office on the day you receive it, list what the landlord installed and settle who removes the cabling and partitions you added. The deposit return should be a clause with a date and a currency, not a courtesy.

If no lease on the market fits yet, post your office requirement on PlataStar with the area, the neighborhood and the dates you need. A precise brief saves viewings of floors that were never going to work.