One of the first questions people ask us when they are thinking about moving to Chile is, “Where is the best place to live?”
After more than 13 years of living here, our answer is: it depends on the life you want to live.
Chile stretches more than 4,000 kilometers from north to south, and moving from one part of the country to another can feel almost like moving to another country. You can live in one of Latin America’s largest metropolitan areas, in a Mediterranean climate in Central Chile, on the edge of the Atacama Desert, beside lakes and volcanoes in the south, or on an isolated piece of land in Patagonia.
We have traveled extensively throughout Chile, raised our family here, built a homestead, bought property, and helped other foreigners search for property of their own. One thing we have learned is that choosing where to live based on a beautiful photograph or a week’s vacation can be a big mistake.
You need to think about climate, healthcare, airports, shopping, schools, property prices, employment, rainfall, winter temperatures, roads, and how far you are willing to drive for everyday necessities. If you are buying rural property, you also need to think about water, electricity, internet, road access, and how isolated you really want to be.
So rather than simply giving you another internet list of the “10 Best Places to Live in Chile,” we are going to look at the areas we think someone considering a move to Chile should know about—the advantages, the disadvantages, and the kind of lifestyle each area offers.
Let’s start in Santiago, where most newcomers first arrive. From there, we’ll take a short trip north to La Serena and the Norte Chico, then turn south and work our way through the Central Coast, Biobío, the Lakes District, and eventually into Patagonia.
Santiago: The Place to Start if You Need Big-City Services
For many people moving to Chile, Santiago is the most practical place to begin. It is the country’s largest metropolitan area and offers the widest selection of hospitals, specialists, international schools, universities, jobs, shopping, restaurants, and professional services.
If you are coming to Chile for work, need regular access to specialized medical care, or have children who need an international school, Santiago may make sense even if your long-term dream is to live somewhere smaller.
But Santiago is not one single lifestyle. Neighborhoods vary enormously. Areas such as Providencia, Las Condes, Vitacura, Lo Barnechea, and La Dehesa offer very different surroundings from the historic center and other parts of the metropolitan area.
The tradeoffs are the ones you would expect from a major city: traffic, higher property prices in desirable neighborhoods, air pollution during portions of the year, and a faster pace of life. Summers are generally hot and dry, while winters are cooler and can bring periods of poor air quality.
Santiago does have one enormous advantage: access. Chile’s principal international airport is here, and most of the country’s major services are concentrated in the capital.
For someone who wants the conveniences of a major city, Santiago deserves consideration. For someone whose goal is acreage, livestock, a greenhouse, and a quieter rural life, we would look elsewhere.
La Serena and the Norte Chico: More Sunshine and Less Rain
North of Santiago, La Serena offers a very different climate and lifestyle. It is a coastal city in the Norte Chico, where the landscape becomes noticeably drier and sunnier than southern Chile.
La Serena appeals to people who want a milder, drier climate, beaches, and the services of a substantial regional city without living in Santiago. The neighboring port city of Coquimbo expands the shopping, healthcare, and employment options available in the area.
The surrounding region is also known for the Elqui Valley, agriculture, vineyards, and striking landscapes between the Pacific and the Andes.
The major consideration here is water. If you are looking at rural property, agricultural land, or a property that depends on a private water source, water availability and water rights deserve much more attention than they generally do in the wetter south.
For people who dislike the long rainy winters of southern Chile, La Serena and the Norte Chico may be worth a serious look.
Viña del Mar and the Central Coast: Coastal Living Near Santiago
Heading south again, the Central Coast gives you another option: living by the Pacific while remaining within reasonable reach of Santiago.
Viña del Mar is modern, urban, and resort-oriented, with beaches, high-rise apartments, restaurants, shopping, and extensive services. Nearby Valparaíso has a completely different character, with its historic hills, port, colorful neighborhoods, and older architecture.
This area can work well for someone who wants an urban coastal lifestyle rather than rural living. Santiago is close enough for occasional trips, and the Central Region provides access to major highways, healthcare, shopping, and airports.
Summer is an important consideration. Like other popular Chilean vacation destinations, the coast becomes much busier when people from Santiago arrive for the holidays.
If you are thinking about living here permanently, visit during both the busy summer season and the quieter winter months before deciding which community suits you.
Concepción and Biobío: Big-City Services Farther South
Concepción is often overlooked by foreigners considering Chile, but it is worth knowing about. It is one of the country’s major urban centers and the commercial and educational hub for much of south-central Chile.
One advantage is access to many of the things people often move to Santiago for—large hospitals, universities, shopping, professional services, restaurants, and a major airport—without living in the capital.
And you don’t necessarily have to live in downtown Concepción. The greater Concepción area includes communities such as San Pedro de la Paz, Chiguayante, and Talcahuano, giving you quite a range of residential environments. The surrounding Biobío Region also contains extensive rural areas, making it possible to live outside the city while retaining access to major services.
The location is another advantage. You are beginning to enter the greener part of Chile, but you haven’t yet reached the wetter climate we associate with Valdivia and Los Lagos. The Pacific coast, beaches, forests, farmland, and rural communities are all within reach.
There are tradeoffs. Greater Concepción is also an industrial and port-centered metropolitan area, particularly around Talcahuano, so parts of it feel very different from the picturesque lake towns farther south.
Earthquake and tsunami risk also needs to be understood, particularly when considering coastal property. The Concepción area was heavily affected by the enormous 2010 earthquake, and coastal communities were affected by the resulting tsunami.
For someone who wants to live farther south but still wants hospitals, an airport, universities, shopping, and the other conveniences of a major city, Concepción offers a combination that becomes harder to find in the smaller cities and towns farther south.
Pucón and Villarrica: Lakes, Mountains and a Major Tourist Destination
Continue south and you eventually reach one of Chile’s most recognizable landscapes: Lake Villarrica with the snow-covered Villarrica Volcano rising behind it.
Pucón has become one of the best-known tourist destinations in southern Chile. The attraction is easy to understand. You have the lake, volcano, forests, rivers, hot springs, hiking, skiing, rafting, fishing, and an enormous amount of outdoor recreation concentrated in one area.
Pucón also has a surprisingly good selection of restaurants, shops, and businesses for a relatively small community.
But you need to see Pucón in January or February before deciding you want to live there.
Summer tourism dramatically changes the character of the town. Roads become congested, restaurants and beaches fill up, and a quiet place during the off-season can feel completely different at the height of summer.
That doesn’t make Pucón a bad place to live. It simply means you should understand what you are buying into.
Villarrica offers another option. It is a larger year-round community and provides many of the same advantages without being quite as centered around Pucón’s resort atmosphere.
There is also extensive countryside outside both communities. For someone looking for land rather than a house in town, that may be more interesting than either urban center.
There is one other factor that should not be ignored: Villarrica is an active volcano. Living around volcanoes is simply part of life in portions of southern Chile. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t live there, but you should understand evacuation routes, hazard zones, and the specific risks associated with any property you are considering.
Valdivia and Los Ríos: A City Surrounded by Rivers and Countryside
Farther south is Valdivia, the capital of the Los Ríos Region.
Valdivia occupies an interesting middle ground between big-city Chile and rural southern Chile. It is large enough to provide universities, hospitals, shopping, restaurants, and professional services, but you can drive out of the city and quickly find yourself surrounded by farms, rivers, and forest.
Water defines Valdivia. Rivers run through and around the city, and the Pacific coast is not far away.
It is also very green for a reason.
It rains.
Anyone considering southern Chile needs to understand this before moving. Photographs of green pastures, enormous trees, rivers, and lakes look wonderful—and they are—but that landscape exists because southern Chile receives substantial rainfall.
You shouldn’t judge Valdivia only by visiting during a beautiful week in January.
Come back in July.
That is advice we give people about southern Chile in general. If you are considering living here permanently, see the area in winter before you buy.
For someone who wants access to a regional city while still being close to rural property and nature, Valdivia provides an interesting balance.
Puerto Varas and the Lakes District
This brings us into the part of Chile we know best.
Puerto Varas is one of the places foreigners frequently ask us about, and it is easy to see why. It sits on the shore of Lake Llanquihue with views toward the Osorno and Calbuco volcanoes. It has restaurants, cafés, shopping, healthcare, and other services, while Puerto Montt and the region’s principal commercial airport are nearby.
Puerto Varas has also changed enormously.
Growth has spread outward from the city, and areas that were once farmland now contain subdivisions, houses, and residential developments. Traffic has increased, and land prices around desirable areas rose substantially. The Puerto Varas of today is not the small southern town it was years ago.
That doesn’t mean we would tell people to avoid it. For the right person, Puerto Varas offers an unusual combination of services and access to rural southern Chile.
But we encourage people considering this area to look beyond Puerto Varas itself.
The Lakes District is not about one lake. The broader area includes Lake Llanquihue as well as other major lakes and lake communities throughout Los Lagos. Around Lake Llanquihue alone are communities such as Frutillar and Puerto Octay, with extensive rural areas between the towns. Go farther north or west and you reach Osorno and Río Negro. Head east and you reach Entre Lagos and the Andean foothills.
This opens up a much larger range of possibilities than simply searching for a house or a 5,000-square-meter parcel on the outskirts of Puerto Varas.
Rural Los Lagos: Looking Beyond Puerto Varas
This is where our perspective becomes different from someone writing about Chile after spending a few weeks traveling through the country.
We have actually spent more than 13 years living in rural southern Chile.
We have bought land, built a home and farm buildings, installed off-grid systems, raised animals, grown food, dealt with southern winters, maintained rural property, and learned firsthand that living in the country here is very different from looking at rural property on a real-estate website.
If your goal is acreage, agriculture, animals, a greenhouse, a large garden, greater privacy, or some degree of self-sufficiency, Los Lagos deserves serious consideration.
Rainfall is plentiful compared with much of Chile. The countryside supports pasture, livestock, and agriculture, and there are still large rural areas within reasonable driving distance of towns and cities.
But buying rural property requires much more investigation than buying an apartment.
Before buying, we want to know where the water comes from, whether electricity is already available, how the property is accessed, who maintains the road, whether internet service is available, how far the nearest hospital and stores are, and whether the land is actually suitable for what the buyer intends to do with it.
We also want to understand the legal side: property boundaries, subdivisions, easements, water, taxes, building documentation, and any restrictions that could affect the intended use of the property.
Those questions matter far more than whether the property has a spectacular volcano view.
We have seen people focus so much on the beauty of a property that they overlook the practical issues that will affect them every single day after they move in.
For rural buyers, the property itself is only half of the decision. Location and infrastructure are the other half.
Chiloé, Palena and Patagonia: How Isolated Do You Really Want to Be?
If you keep moving south, Chile becomes increasingly wild and increasingly isolated.
Chiloé offers a rural island lifestyle with farming, fishing, forests, small towns, and a distinctive culture of its own. It is presently connected to the mainland by ferry, with the Chacao Channel bridge under construction.
Farther south, Palena Province and the Carretera Austral take you into a completely different kind of Chile.
This is the Chile that attracts people who really mean it when they say they want to get away from everything.
The scenery is extraordinary: mountains, fjords, glaciers, rivers, forests, and enormous areas with very low population density.
But the isolation is real.
Road travel can involve ferries. Specialized healthcare may be hours away. Construction materials can cost more to transport. Weather can affect travel. Some properties are difficult to access, and trips that look short on a map can take much longer than expected.
The farther south you travel into Aysén and Chilean Patagonia, the more important it becomes to distinguish between wanting to visit an isolated place and wanting to live there 365 days a year.
For some people, that isolation is exactly what they are looking for.
For others, living an hour outside a city such as Puerto Varas, Osorno, or Valdivia provides plenty of privacy without giving up reasonable access to hospitals, airports, shopping, and supplies.
How Do You Decide Where to Live in Chile?
Before choosing a city or looking at property, make a list of what you actually need for everyday life.
- How much rain can I tolerate?
- Do I need to be close to specialized healthcare?
- Do I need an international or bilingual school?
- Will I need to find employment in Chile?
- How close do I want to be to an airport?
- Do I want an apartment, suburban house, or acreage?
- Do I want to grow food or raise animals?
- How far am I willing to drive for groceries and supplies?
- Am I comfortable living on a gravel road?
- Do I need reliable high-speed internet?
- Do I want neighbors nearby, or do I really want to be isolated?
- How important is climate compared with access to services?
Those answers will narrow Chile down remarkably quickly.
The person who needs international schools, specialized medical care, and employment opportunities has very different requirements from a retired couple looking for five hectares in the countryside.
Neither is wrong. They simply shouldn’t be looking in the same places.
Our Advice After More Than 13 Years in Chile
If there is one thing we would tell someone trying to decide where to live in Chile, it is this:
Don’t choose your new home while you are still in love with your vacation.
Visit several regions. Rent before you buy if you aren’t sure. Drive around the countryside rather than staying only in tourist areas. Go to the grocery store. Visit the hospital. Look at the roads. Find out how far you are from the airport and the things you use in everyday life.
And if you are considering southern Chile, come in winter.
Chile offers an extraordinary range of lifestyles, but the place that looks best in photographs isn’t necessarily the place where you will be happiest living every day.
Figure out the life you want first. Then find the part of Chile that allows you to live it.
Looking for Property in Southern Chile?
If southern Chile sounds like the lifestyle you are looking for, Chile Expat Family provides buyer representation and real-estate assistance, with a particular focus on rural and agricultural property. You can learn more about how we help buyers on our Real Estate Services page.
Still Deciding Whether Chile Is Right for You?
If you are still researching the move, The Chile Relocation Guide — Book One: Everything You Need to Know Before Moving to Chile brings together what we have learned from more than 13 years of actually living here and covers the practical questions to consider before relocating.