Pandemic and high dollar make Brazilians give up on living in Florida

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – With the coronavirus pandemic and the devaluation of the Brazilian real (R$), the dream of living in the USA weighed on the pockets of Brazilian business people who had moved to spend extended seasons in Florida.

In the opposite of what was happening until 2019, international moving firms, such as IMT Logistics, observed a 60% increase in the flow back to Brazil.  Tiago Moreira, President of the company, recalls that “it was fashionable to spend a sabbatical in the U.S. with income in Real and student visa. Today, it doesn’t happen anymore.”

According to Moreira, this movement, which started in the first half of 2020, is led by businessmen in the 45 to 55 age group who went to the US with their family to “fulfill the dream of living in America.”

With the restrictions imposed due to the virus and the rise of the dollar, which appreciated almost 30% against the real in 2020 -from R$ 4.014 at the end of 2019 to R$ 5.189 in the same period last year-, it became expensive to maintain the standard of living in prime regions of Miami, such as Brickell Avenue and Key Biscayne Island.

Jacob Abdala, owner of Legacy Plus Realty, confirms the movement. “These are small business owners who calculated an expense of about US$20,000 per month, which would cost between R$80,000 and R$90,000. Only that went up to R$120,000 or even more, and the accounts stopped balancing.”

The budget became so heavy for these buyers that even the move back to Brazil suffered changes.

Moreira says that, in normal times, clients used to opt for the exclusive move, costing between US$12,000 (R$65,000, at this Friday’s exchange rate) and US$20,000 (R$108,000), but now, the shared mode, from US$6,000 (R$32,000) to US$10,000 (R$54,000), has become the favorite.

Another movement on the rise among Brazilian entrepreneurs is getting rid of real estate in the US, especially in Florida. In 2019, only 20% of Brazilian clients of Abdala’s real estate company expressed this desire. In 2020, the rate rose to 50%, and today, 70% of the owners want to sell.

According to a report by Florida Realtors, Brazilians were mostly known for their interest in acquisition, ranking second among foreign real estate buyers in the state, an association of real estate companies, published in February 2021.

At Elite International Realty, which also operates in Florida, the scenario is the same: during 2020, 60% of Brazilians sold their properties. Many factors drive the sudden interest: the lack of use of the properties due to travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the repatriation of money to take advantage of the high dollar, and the local market, heated by migrations from the north to the south of the country, which made the time to make a profit even more opportune.

“Half took the money, and the other half left the money in the US,” says Daniel Ickowicz, director of Elite. Abdala says that the portion interested in repatriating the profit among his clients is even higher: 70%.

The sale of the properties heated IMT’s business, which in the second half of 2020 increased by five times the number of storage sheds to store the clientele’s belongings who disposed of houses and apartments in South Florida.

“In the first half of 2020, the work was removal out and shipping, in the second, the main demand was to store,” says Moreira, who saw the company’s turnover grow by almost 50% compared to 2019, even though the number of moves from Brazil to the US plummeted by 70% last year.

One of the Brazilians who hired the services of moving to Brazil, a business administrator who asked not to be identified, says he took advantage of the capital from the sale of the property to invest in the two countries. Because Brazil is much cheaper than the US, he opted to return to São Paulo.

He, who lived for eight years in the Miami area, invests in real estate and plans to transform the profit obtained from the sale into dollars in the hope that the American currency will go back down “in one or two years”.

This hope is also nurtured by other Brazilians who dream of living in the USA, although for now, the plan remains in the realm of ideas. The demand for real estate in Florida by Brazilians fell 70% since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Abdala, from Legacy.

The Florida Realtors report confirms the drop: the participation of Brazilians in the real estate market in the US state shrank from US$3 billion in 2018 to US$1.4 billion in 2020.
Since April 2020, the flow of tourists in the United States has dropped from 5 million per month to fewer than 500,000, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO).

Among Brazilians, the reduction in 2020 was 41% from the previous year. The rate, however, is expected to rise again, driven mainly by the mass vaccination plan led by the Biden administration.

In Florida, the total number of people vaccinated is close to the 9 million mark, representing about 40% of the state’s population, according to a report published on Sunday, April 25, by the local health department.

The figure, however, does not discriminate against the number of vaccinated foreigners who have been visiting the state in search of immunization. Although the vaccination is allowed for residents from 16 years old, the lack of documents is not an impediment, especially not to exclude the percentage of illegal immigrants living in Florida.

Taking advantage of the loosened surveillance, with passport and (borrowed) address in hand, many Brazilians have faced a luxurious quarantine in Cancun or Costa Rica to enter the United States with a tourist visa and guarantee the vaccine dose.

The most recent case among celebrities is singer Anitta, who has a temporary residence in Miami and said she had already been immunized.