When considering buying farmland in Uruguay, you may find that there are different terms to describe rural properties. Let´s see what the differences are:
An estancia is a farm with a residence for the owner, a house for the farm worker and large enough to be income producing. That leads to the question of what scale is needed to be self-sustainable or even better making a profit. In general terms, a cattle farm needs to be 500 hectares to provide enough income to sustain the farm and allocate a farm worker to do the cattle operations daily. Crop farmers can be 300 hectares of size in order to have sufficient income to maintain the house. There are not too many estancias in Uruguay as most landowners (international and domestic) are absentee owners who do not live on the farm and rarely visit the farm. Therefore, there is no need to maintain a residence of sufficient quality. But exceptionally, you will come across a traditional estancia for sale. Often, these properties are not published as the owners prefer to keep low-profile. You can find some in the section lifestyle.
Campo is productive agricultural land without a residence or often only an abandoned house without use. This is the typical rural asset nowadays. The landowner operates the land himself or hires a farm manager to carry out the agricultural activities. Maintenance is limited to soil conservation and the mandatory external fences. This is the ideal investment object as it does not have additional expenses unrelated to the agricultural activity. Therefore, the highest return on investment. You could invest in crop fields starting at 30 hectares. For cattle and forestry, it is always required to have more scale as it is important that a farm manager and contractor can cover transport cost. The term campo is also used in a wider sense for countryside, not related to a specific property.
Finally, chacra is the term that people in Uruguay use for small rural assets of 5 to 20 hectares. It can have a residence, but this is not always the case. Location is often more important than soil quality. Leisure or tourism is often the single objective. Since there is enough space, you will often find some horses or sheep, but there is no real agricultural use of the land. The expenses will always exceed the income from agricultural activities.
We offer income generating productive agricultural land (campo and estancia) and we can also manage these farms on your behalf.
