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Voici un article tire d' un forum de langue anglaise sur les pieges a eviter pour qui souhaite acheter terrain ou maison a Florianopolis.
L'auteur a vecu plus de 20 ans au Bresil.
S'il vous faut la traduction faites moi signe!

Brazil: Property in the South

By Cipriana Leme
My article is really a continuation to the article written by Richard Conti last week. In my case, however, I am referring to properties in the South which are almost as sought after as those in the North.

I live in Florianopolis and propose that foreign investors in Brazil organize a form of boycott as most Brazilian investors seem to have done.

The prices in the South are absurd and, as Richard wisely mentioned, they also seem to be based on greed rather than common sense. Nonetheless, there are other problems concerning real estate in the South.

Firstly, the land is useless, especially in beach/coastal areas. It is mostly sand and rock, making it difficult to build anything. In the area where I live, foreigners are innocently buying land while the natives snicker behind their backs, relieved they could finally get rid of that useless piece of land. In some areas, it is swamp covered by earth and sand, or too rocky to build anything on. When building, this problem eventually gets in the way and you end up spending fortunes to fill the land with earth or on foundation work.

Secondly, in the coastal area of Florianopolis land was taken not bought (posse) as in most countries in the Americas. People divided the available land into lots and built their houses on them without paying a penny for the land. Land was not donated, it was taken. Families built their houses on this land and ended up all living next door to each other. The land has never been legally divided into lots so they are literally stuck with one another. When one of them decides to leave, they try and sell the lot at an incredibly high cost but have no legal documents for it (no documents that grant the owner total rights over that property). As it would be impossible to kick everyone out of their houses or to knock all the houses down, the local government then issued what they call Titulo de Posse, which is a document that gives them the right to live on that land but does not give them the right to build, meaning that they cannot build anything else on the land other than that which is already there (illegally), namely their houses.

I have witnessed first hand the headaches (and heartaches) some foreigners have had trying to build something else (renovate or enlarge the house) on the land they have acquired. If you want to be sure you can build, you need a Titulo de Propriedade, which amazingly less than 10% of properties have.

The final problem is overpricing. Real estate agents in Florianopolis are aware that they are overcharging (sobrevalorizando) the properties but prefer not to sell them for their real value. They are the ones that suggest these ridiculous prices to property owners and tell them it‘s worth waiting because they will make "hundreds of thousands" on property they never even paid for to start with. On the other hand, land or properties under 100,000 Reais are sold like hot cakes.

As Richard suggested, it is time to be very careful and, if possible, abstain from buying until things settle. Brazilian‘s are getting greedy with the flood of foreigners coming here to buy land and all want a piece of the pie. When they realize how absurd their expectations are they will eventually have to lower the prices and offer better quality property.