The real estate market in the city of São Paulo is by far the largest in the country. This year, up to the third quarter, 49,563 units were launched and 47,008 were sold, according to data from consulting firm Brain, specialized in the real estate sector. That’s almost six times the volume of new properties in second place, Rio de Janeiro, and almost four times the number of sales.
From January to September 2021, according to the latest data from the consultancy, São Paulo had an increase of 87% in the number of units launched and 44% in sales, compared to the same period in 2020.
What happens in the São Paulo market is reflected in other cities, but not homogeneously or instantly.
“São Paulo is like a crystal ball, there is a ‘delay’ [atraso] of about a year between what we see there and here”, says Juliano Melnick, president of the Porto Alegre developer that bears his last name.
According to data from Brain, the state capital had a growth of 115% in sales until the third quarter, compared to 2020. The basis for this comparison, however, is small, since in 2020 2,874 units were sold.
Melnick felt that the Gaucho market did not experience the sales boom registered in São Paulo. “In Covid’s first wave, Porto Alegre was one of the few capitals that brought the works to a standstill, and the market resented this,” he says.
When the sanitary situation began to improve, in the middle of this year, the economic downturn came, with the rise of the Selic rate and inflation. “The strongest wave that happened in São Paulo didn’t arrive with force here”, he affirms.
The company launched around BRL 950 million in projects until the third quarter, a volume higher than that registered in the same period in 2020, but it plans 2022 with caution.
If the economic and political situation, with the election approaching, gets worse, they may hold back releases. If the climate improves, the company has R$ 1.3 billion in land with projects already approved, waiting to be launched.
Focusing on medium and medium-high standards, the developer, which went public in 2020, has been investing more in condominiums in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, as a way of expanding its business. The results are encouraging.
Melnick says that, during the pandemic, they managed to readjust prices above inflation due to the high demand for this type of housing.
Other products that worked well in 2021 were the compact studio apartments, which attracted investors when office space leasing went into crisis. “In São Paulo, the Master Plan encourages building compact properties, there is an unnatural increase in supply. Here they were made because they thought the market was favorable”, explains Melnick.
For 2022, the executive projects a lower demand for the units, which lose attractiveness for investors in a scenario of high Selic, which benefits fixed income.
The studios were also highlighted in sales in the Northeast, a region where the developer Moura Dubeux, originally from Recife, operates in seven of the nine states.
There, the factor that boosted this segment was the second home, for buyers who wanted to spend a season on the beach or put the property for short-term rental.
“We have a line [desse segmento], the Beach Class, and what we did was to leverage it. The pandemic gave another volume to this product”, says Diego Villar, executive director of the company.
He also points out that the region is not experiencing a sales boom like the one seen in the capital of São Paulo, but the market situation is positive for the company.
After the wave of IPOs, which took place in 2007, many of them, with origins in the Southeast, expanded their business to northeastern states. With the economic crises of 2008 and 2015, the move was to withdraw investments.
“They pushed prices down, broke several other local developers, and we realized this in 2018, when the market was starting to grow again. We looked to the side and saw few competitors”, says Villar.
The situation is still like that. Salvador, for example, has only three months of inventory of units, which means that, if no property is launched in that period, there is no more offer of new apartments in the capital of Bahia. In Recife, the stock is less than eight months.
Fabio Araújo, managing partner at Brain consultancy, says that the entire country has low stocks — the average is nine months — which is a positive sign for 2022, marked by political, economic and health uncertainties.
“The sales speed will possibly drop compared to 2021, but it is different from when there is a product left over, because then companies start giving discounts and enter that vicious circle that existed between 2015 and 2017”, he compares.
The target audience in each operating region also makes a difference. The developer RNI operates in the last lane of Casa Verde and Amarela and a little above the program’s income, in the Midwestern states, in the south of Minas Gerais, interior of São Paulo, northern Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. Carlos Bianchoni , president of the company, credits the strength of agribusiness for the positive performance they are registering this year.
“We are talking about soy, corn, cotton, beef, pork and poultry farming, all of this is in the regions where we operate, and we have achieved a certain resilience”, he says.
Until the third quarter of this year, the company had a 26% increase in launches, compared to the same period in 2020.
According to Bianchoni, the company wants, next year, to return to being a major developer of housing subdivisions, a market that currently represents 40% of its activity, but which has already reached 95% in the past.
This means greater internalization of business. “It is impossible to find areas of 100 or 200 thousand m² in capitals.”
Investments, however, will be made calmly. “We are watching the movements very carefully, paying full attention to the inflation of materials and the purchasing power of customers,” he says.
In Rio de Janeiro, data from Brain show a 9% drop in the volume of units launched and an 18% drop in those sold until the third quarter of this year, compared to the same period in 2020.
However, Fábio Araújo highlights that the last quarter, not yet accounted for, is usually strong in sales. “Rio can be considered stable, it only takes one or two projects for the year to end positive,” he says.
The developer Cury, which has been operating for 12 years in the city, launched three buildings for the Rio Wonder Residences project between June and September, totaling 1,224 apartments. Two of them are 100% sold, according to the company.
Cury operates in the last range of Casa Verde and Amarela and a little above that, with units for the middle class.
“There is very large demand [na zona portuária], this is a neighborhood with a situation that perhaps does not exist in any other capital of Brazil, in a region with a large offer of land and next to the city center”, says Leandro Mesquita, commercial vice president.
The company wants to continue investing in the city center and now has incentives from the city hall, which launched the Reviver Centro program, with benefits for enterprises in the region. According to Mesquita, there are already projects planned for launch in the first quarter of 2022.
Other points of interest for the company in the region are the north of Rio de Janeiro and the neighboring city of Niterói.
For Mesquita, whose developer also operates in São Paulo, Rio has less competition, which creates business opportunities.
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