The porteño merchants by occupation, investment patterns and life style were overwhelmingly an urban social group. They engaged in an urban occupation, lived in the very heart of the city, and invested heavily in urban property in the form of homes, shops and buildings. Commerce and investments provided the merchants with capital to undertake a life style commensurate with their local status. All facets of merchant life reflected the comparative sophistication and luxury enjoyed by this group.

Much information on the life of the merchants, information of both a quantitative and qualitative nature, is contained in the pages of the estate papers of deceased merchants. In addition to listings of urban and rural real estate, including descriptions and value, estate papers contained inventories of the personal possessions of the merchants and their wives. Dress, jewelry, silverware, crockery, books, furnishings, luxury goods, and slaves are documented in great detail in these pages. Dowry papers and capitales also contain information of much the same nature, and afford us a rich picture of the general life of the merchant class. Additional information, moreover, in the 1778 census of Buenos Aires is helpful in reconstructing the residential patterns of the merchant group.

The porteño merchants inhabited a city which in modern times would be little more than a rural town. In 1778 the total population of the city of Buenos Aires was 24,363.