São Paulo Launched 26,700 Homes Nobody Bought. Rates Explain Why.
Property
Key Facts
—The pile. Unsold new homes in the city rose 40.3% in a year, to 85,200 units by December.
—The gap. Developers launched 139,700 homes in 2025 and sold 113,000, a shortfall of 26,700.
—The split. Mid and high-end launches rose 41% while sales in that bracket fell 11%.
—The engine. The subsidised Minha Casa Minha Vida programme now supplies 75% of new launches.
—The cause. Brazil’s benchmark rate stands at 14.25%, pricing the middle class out of mortgages.
—The clock. Stock would take eight months to clear in subsidised housing, eleven at the top.
A number circulating this week reads like a boom, and it is nothing of the kind. What grew by forty percent in São Paulo housing was the stack of flats nobody bought.
Developers in Brazil’s largest city launched one hundred and thirty-nine thousand seven hundred residential units in 2025, a rise of thirty-four percent. They sold one hundred and thirteen thousand.
The difference did not evaporate. It became inventory, and the stock of unsold new homes climbed forty point three percent in a single year to eighty-five thousand two hundred units.
Measured in money the divergence is sharper still. Launches were worth eighty-one point six billion reais, roughly fifteen point eight billion dollars, up forty percent, while sales rose three percent.
The two São Paulo housing markets
The headline numbers hide a split so wide it barely describes one market. Brazil runs a federal housing subsidy called Minha Casa Minha Vida, meaning My House, My Life, which lends to lower-income buyers at rates the open market cannot match.
Inside that programme, launches rose thirty percent last year and sales rose twenty-five. Outside it, in the mid and high-end brackets, launches rose forty-one percent and sales fell eleven.
Read that again. Developers built forty-one percent more of precisely the product that had stopped selling.
Why the middle disappeared
The answer is the price of money. Brazil’s central bank holds its benchmark rate at fourteen point two five percent, and mortgages priced off that rate are simply unaffordable to a salaried household.
A buyer poor enough to qualify for the subsidy borrows at roughly ten percent. A buyer just above the threshold pays what the savings-funded channel charges, historically eleven and a half to twelve.
Brasília noticed. In April the government widened the programme’s top tier to households earning up to thirteen thousand reais a month, about two thousand five hundred dollars, for properties worth up to six hundred thousand reais.
The effect has been to pull more of the market inside the subsidy rather than to revive the market outside it. By April the programme accounted for seventy-five percent of all new launches in the city, up from sixty-one percent across 2025.
Sales have now stopped growing altogether
The most recent figures make the point without commentary. In the twelve months to April, the city sold one hundred and fourteen thousand eight hundred new homes.
In the twelve months to May, according to the housing federation Secovi-SP, it sold the same number. Rolling annual sales have gone flat while one hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred units came to market over the same window.
At the current pace, the existing stock would take about eight months to clear in the subsidised segment, where liquidity is higher. In the mid and upper brackets it would take about eleven.
What São Paulo housing looks like now
The typical new São Paulo flat has become small and cheap. Two-bedroom units accounted for slightly over half of April’s launches and nearly two-thirds of sales, and homes between thirty and forty-five square metres did the same.
The dominant price band runs from two hundred and seventy-five thousand to four hundred thousand reais, some fifty-three to seventy-eight thousand dollars. That is the shape of a city building for the subsidy rather than for the salary.
For anyone renting in São Paulo or thinking of buying, the practical reading is that supply is abundant and negotiable, and time is on the buyer’s side. Longer selling periods mean more room to bargain, particularly above the subsidy ceiling.
Secovi’s president Jorge Cury argues that pent-up demand is real among households earning between twelve and thirty thousand reais a month, and that it waits on cheaper credit. He does not expect conditions to improve before 2027, which is an election year.
Is São Paulo’s property market in trouble?
Not in the sense of a crash, since subsidised housing is still selling briskly and would clear its inventory in roughly eight months. The strain sits in the mid and upper brackets, where sales fell eleven percent in 2025 even as developers raised launches by forty-one percent.
What is Minha Casa Minha Vida?
It is Brazil’s federal housing programme, offering subsidised mortgages at rates well below the open market to households under an income ceiling. Its top tier was widened in April 2026 to cover monthly incomes up to thirteen thousand reais and properties up to six hundred thousand reais, and it now supplies about three-quarters of new launches in São Paulo.
Is this a good time to buy in São Paulo?
Buyers have unusually strong leverage, with roughly eighty-six thousand unsold new units on the market and selling periods lengthening, particularly above the subsidy threshold. The obstacle is financing rather than choice, since mortgage rates track a benchmark held at fourteen point two five percent.
In depth
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