Loading ...Article - In Brazil, Sun and Sand Beaches Lure Buyers to Recife
- Boa Viagem, south of the downtown area of Recife, Brazil, in 2003.
RECIFE, BRAZIL — Luca Sinesi, 36, came here for the first time in 2003, with no idea that this beach-fringed port city would become his permanent home.
Boa Viagem, south of the downtown area of Recife, Brazil, in 2003.
“I left the city in 2005, but I missed it so much I was back within six months,” said Mr. Sinesi, an Italian who is now Brazil field director for the British charity International Service. “Recife has a way of life which sets it apart from cities in the south of Brazil.
“Neighbors know each other, help each other, and share living spaces,” he said. “It is common to see people playing music or singing together on a street corner or in a bar, or playing football long into the night in the local square.”
The city, the second-largest urban center in northeastern Brazil, after Salvador, has just over 1.5 million residents. About 2 million more call its sprawling suburbs home.
Mr. Sinesi lives in Olinda, an adjacent city, but the two-bedroom unit that he rents for 400 reals, or $790, a month has views toward the high-rises of Recife’s affluent beach districts. They are riding the wave of a residential real estate boom, funded by fortunes made from regionally produced commodities, particularly ethanol — a bonanza that has been affected only slightly by the global economic downturn.
The focus of the boom is the 6.5-kilometer, or 4-mile, stretch of seafront in Boa Viagem, south of Recife’s downtown area. Almost all of the family homes that once fronted the Atlantic have been, or are about to be, replaced with residential towers.
The district’s white-sand beach, though narrow and at risk from erosion in parts, is undeniably gorgeous. Waves break on offshore reefs (recifes in Portuguese, which give the city its name), leaving sheltered, natural pools next to the beach that are perfect for swimming.
The coastline may be postcard perfect, but levels of poverty and serious crime remain a significant problem for locals and foreign residents alike. According to the advocacy group Pernambuco Bodycount, there were more than 400 murders in Recife during the first five months of 2009.
Boa Viagem is mostly calm, but the city in general has acquired a national reputation for violence that it may find difficult to shake.
Still, new apartments with uninterrupted ocean views are selling in the district for an average of 5,000 to 7,000 reals per square meter, or $244 to $342 a square foot. Those prices generally are unchanged since early 2008.
At the top end of the market, almost all of Recife’s first 3-million-real apartments have been sold. Units in the glass-and-steel Brennand Plaza building, which is nearly completed, will have four en suite bedrooms, all with sea views; 112-square-meter, or 1,200-square-foot, reception rooms; staff quarters; and five parking spaces each.
Marcos Roberto Dubeux of Moura Dubeux, the company developing Brennand Plaza, says the district’s mushrooming luxury developments are the natural result of a regional economy that has prospered in recent years — and the fact that “Avenida Boa Viagem is the most exclusive address in north-east Brazil.”
According to Mr. Dubeux, the fact that wealthy Brazilians from the region are keen to invest in Boa Viagem is giving confidence to the small but growing number of overseas investors — led by Italians and Portuguese.
Other factors include a new $4 billion oil refinery scheduled to open in 2010 in the nearby port facility of Suape and the new U.S. and British trade missions.
Steven Harper, 62, a semi-retired engineer from Boston, Massachusetts, bought a one-bedroom apartment a block from the seafront in Boa Viagem in 2004. “It’s worth 120,000 reals now — that’s twice what I paid for it,” said Mr. Harper, who spends part of each North American winter in Recife.
Mr. Harper decided to buy in Brazil after working a series of oil-industry contracts in the country. “Apart from the climate and relaxed lifestyle, what I like about Boa Viagem is the ease of access,” he said. “Recife’s international airport is just a 10-minute taxi ride away from my building.” There is direct service to Recife from the United States, Portugal and France.
According to Alessandro Teixeira, president of Brazil’s Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, Brazil’s north-east now has the infrastructure — modern airports in particular — to attract both foreign and local buyers when the global economy turns around.
“We are improving our way of doing business very quickly,” he said. “Ten years ago Brazil did not have a proper mortgage market. Reduced taxes on construction materials now make it cheaper to build.”
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