Brazilians pouring into NYC real estate, say agents

Brazilian overseas property buyers are surging into New York says local agent Marcus Cohen, a broker at agency Prudential Douglas Elliman in the city.

Cohen told OPP this week that he has closed more than 15 deals with Brazilian buyers in the past two years, ranging from $5 million to $15 million.

The usually opt for apartments in Manhattan, he says. “For many, Manhattan is their dream town.” Popular locations, says Cohen, are the Upper East Side and the district around the Lincoln Centre.

The buyers are mainly finance professionals and commodity brokers in their 30s and 40s. They regard a Manhattan apartment as the ultimate status symbol, say local agents, and will often bring in their own architects and interior design teams.

The New York boom follows on from a boom in Brazilian buyers in Miami where wealthy Latin American buyers have been buying up hundreds of units in high end developments. At the W South Beach Hotel & Residences, around one-fifth of the buyers are Brazilian. They have purchased almost $50 million worth of units there.

Anthony Burns, senior vice president at iStar Residential has seen about a third of the units at his co-owned development in Paramount Bay, Miami, go to Brazilian buyers. And Alan Araujo, a Miami broker for Worldwide Development Services, told OPP that “Brazilians have been waiting years for this opportunity.”

Araujo has recently sold 12 units in the Epic development in Miami to a single Brazilian client, he says, adding that the same buyer also took an additional 17 units in the Infinity a month later, bringing the total investment to $20 million. The Brazilians “are in invasion mode,” he says.

http://www.opp.org.uk/news-article.php?id=6249