(startupchile participant) I highly, highly recommend homechile. Fernando, the manager, speaks good English, was a big help in finding an appropriate place and has helped us multiple times with translation when issues like having our internet randomly go out have come up. Providencia is a nice centralized location and near the office. If I could do it over I probably would have tried to pick a place in Manuel Montt (Providencia) as it is walking distance from the office and also near most of the nightlife.

sure - email in profile. most appts here are unfurnished, i think (makes sense for local long-term use) which probably explains why homechile (which i didn't know about, thanks) exists. providencia is a nice place to live (i live there and i imagine it's similar standards to what people from the usa would be used to), but it's certainly not the lowest price area.

ps wasn't going to post this as a separate answer because it's 10 years old and i had a local job offer, but i found getting permanent residence to be very easy (i had arrived on a tourist visa, which can be renewed for up to 6 months). i can't remember if having the job offer was critical (i think it was the other way round - i needed the residency because employment would have been illegal on a tourist visa), but what surprised me was the need to show evidence of education level, so bring some kind of certificate!

Thanks!

From the Startup Chile FAQ, participants are entitled up to $600,000 CLP monthly spending on rental. Many had fully furnished apartments around Providencia with facilities like pool and gym (from HomeChile listings, apartments with such facilities are around 400k-600k). Providencia are also recommended because it is said to be safer.

PS: Another website similar to HomeChile is ContactChile (http://www.contactchile.cl)

ok, so now i'm curious - if they paid less for somewhere to live, would they have more money for their startup? i'm sure you can imagine that the programmers that they are hiring for $1m a month don't spend 60% of their wages on pads with gyms and pools...

Yes. As a single founder in the program I can claim up to 400 000 CLP, I currently pay 300 000. The difference is now available for me to use for any other purpose that is reimbursable.

From what I know, yes. But the total reimbursement is capped at $40k USD which includes salaries and rental expenses.