[LINK] "Brazilians Buy Miami Condos at a Discount as Real Climbs 45%"

[rfmcdonald]

Last week I noted that the strong Canadian dollar was encouraging Canadians to buy real estate in--among others--the California community of Palm Springs. Today Bloomberg BusinessWeek observes that the strong Brazilian real is encouraging Brazilians to buy condos in Miami.

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.

[. . .]

U.S. housing prices have fallen to 2003 levels as foreclosures depress values and unemployment hovers around 9 percent. Miami-area homes are selling for 51 percent less than their December 2006 peak, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Only Las Vegas and Phoenix had bigger price declines.

In Rio’s exclusive Leblon enclave, near the city’s Ipanema district of bossa nova fame, apartments sell for an average $1,058 a square foot ($11,388 a square meter), according to Sindicato da Habitacao do Rio de Janeiro, or Secovi, the city’s real estate association. In Miami’s South Beach, the average condominium price was $354 a square foot during this year’s first quarter, said Condo Vultures LLC, a Bal Harbour, Florida, real estate brokerage and consulting firm.

“Five years ago, it was the other way around,” Studnicky said in a phone interview. “Miami was trading for $500 to $1,000 a foot. Rio was trading for $300 to $500. It has absolutely switched.”