Brazilians Buying Big in the Big Apple

New York brokers take note! Brazilians are on a buying spree. New York is not only teeming with Brazilian tourists, with their booming economy and loads of cash, Brazilians are also (quietly) snapping up condo and apartment units in Manhattan. In fact, they have become regular clients of higher-end brokers in New York and Miami.

According to Marcos Cohen, a Brazilian broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, a lot of people think of Manhattan as their dream town. In the past two years, Cohen had closed more than 15 deals for Brazilians who paid anywhere from $5 million to more than $15 million for Manhattan apartments. A lot of these Brazilian buyers in New York are professionals. They are in their 30s and 40s and are connected to the commodities or the finance sector, which is the reason why many Brazilians have become rich after a flurry of I.P.O.’s in their country in recent years. They favor addresses in Midtown near Lincoln Center or along Central Park on the Upper East Side. They also look at full-service buildings with their own concierge services.
Once they find an apartment, Brazilians tend to bring in their own architects and interior designers. One São Paulo-based architect who is well known in Brazil, Fernanda Marques, is now doing 3 projects for Brazilians: 2 in New York and 1 in Miami.

This phenomenon is not only found in New York. According to brokers and developers, Brazilians are also buying hundreds of units in high-end development projects in Miami. At the W South Beach Hotel & Residences, about 20% of the buyers since 2010 are Brazilians; they have bought 31 units with total value of almost $50 million, according to David Edelstein, a co-owner of the project. At Paramount Bay, almost one-third of the buyers for the past six months are Brazilians. Buying apartments in Miami (and in New York) is actually a cheaper venture for Brazilians than buying units in Rio de Janeiro, where apartment prices are increasing rapidly ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2014 World Cup. Prices in this magical city by the sea rose by 20 percent from April to October last year.

For a lot of Brazilians, this is a dream come true for them. After experiencing decades of economic crises, Brazil’s economy is now the sixth-largest in the world. Economic reforms have given them stability with steady money flowing in due to high commodity prices and demand from China. Recognizing this trend, American brokers and lawyers are now eager to do real estate transactions with Brazilians and are making more frequent trips to Brazil. They are also accelerating their marketing efforts in certain society publications in Brazil.

Jeisa Chiminazzo is now a resident in New York City's TriBeCa neighborhood. For the Brazilians who are now residents of these two states, hearing a familiar accent is no longer a unique experience for them. In fact, it had started to feel like a homecoming for them. But for Jeisa Chiminazzo, a 26-year-old Brazilian model who purchased a $1.65 million, two-bedroom TriBeCa loft in 2009, there is one downside to this. According to her, one cannot gossip in Portuguese anymore as it is very possible that a fellow Brazilian will bump into you and understand what you are saying.