Brazilians Buy Miami Vacation Condos at Bargain Prices as Real Gains 45%

John Gittelsohn and Jose Sergio Osse, Bloomberg

6/21/2011

Frederico Azevedo went to Florida looking for a second home. He left with three, paying $300,000 and $500,000 for condos in two Miami towers, and $1 million for a unit at the Trump International resort in nearby Sunny Isles.

“I bought one to use as a vacation home and the other two as investments,” Azevedo, 39, president of Construtora Altana Ltda, a housing-development company, said in a telephone interview from his office in Sao Paulo. “It’s actually very cheap in Miami compared to here.”

Surging real estate prices in Brazil and the currency’s 45 percent gain against the U.S. dollar since 2008 are sending Brazilians to South Florida in search of bargain vacation homes and property investments. That’s helping bolster Miami’s condo market, with total sales increasing 79 percent in the first five months of 2011 from a year earlier, according to data from the Florida Association of Realtors released today.

In the Miami area, Brazilians bought 9 percent of homes and apartments sold to international buyers in the 12 months through March 2010, behind only Canadians and Venezuelans, according to the Miami Association of Realtors. Since then, “anecdotal evidence certainly points to a significant increase,” said Lynda Fernandez, a spokeswoman for the group. In May, international clients bought about 60 percent of existing houses and condos and 90 percent of newly built homes, the association reported today.

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