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We are looking for a place relatively close to an international airport for our frequent trips to visit my wife’s family in Brasilia, to replenish our American necessities on U.S. re-supply runs, for desired sojourns to Europe, as well as to minimize travel to this huge country for our friends and family. We want a location with sufficient infrastructure (shopping, restaurants, paved roads, hospitals, etc.), yet balanced with natural beauty. We want a location with good climate, and few weather-induced natural disasters. We want a secure place that has relatively low crime. And finally, although we want reasonable real estate prices, we are interested in a 350 square meters (about 3800 square feet) or larger four bedrooms house with all the modern conveniences on at least a 1000 square meter (quarter acre) lot to provide some level of privacy. We found the house prices that satisfy our criteria range from R600,000 (US$253K at $1 to R2.37) to R2,400,000 (US$ 1 million), although we did look at some houses in the R3.5 million range. Regarding financing a home purchase, Brazilian mortgages are out of the question with their usurious interest rates. We plan to buy our home with the proceeds off my 401K plan and the equity off our existing Stateside home. I have found other websites and articles that sufficiently explain the process of buying a home in Brazil, so I will not rehash it here. Prior to traveling to Brazil, my wife and I did a bit of Google searching on the internet for “imoveis,” Portuguese for “real estate” in Guaruja, Angra dos Reis, as well as smaller coastal communities such as Parati. I listed several useful links (some in English) at the end of this article, but the two we found most helpful and ultimately used their real estate agents to look at homes were www.casadapraia.com.br for Guaruja and www.angraimoveis.com.br for Angra dos Reis. Since most of the websites are in Portuguese, and few Brazilians speak English, learning the language is essential to be able to enjoy your experience in the country. I certainly have the advantage of being married to a fluent Portuguese and English (and Spanish) speaker, but I want be able to function in society without dependency on my wonderful wife. I also have the advantage that I am conversant in Spanish, but that language only takes me so far in Portuguese-speaking Brazil. The spelling and pronunciation are different for many similar words; there are have numerous, and unexpected variations in grammar styles; and many words are completely different. I took advantage of my one-hour commute to work each way for three months prior to our trip to practice my Portuguese in my car. The Rosetta programs are great interactive computer language training, but the Pimsleur programs are the most practical for conversational-only learning in the car. (Nowadays,
with everyone talking on his or her cell phone with an ear bud, the commuter
in the car next to you will not think that you are crazy ranting and raving
to yourself when you are practicing the conversation drills.) I liked
the Pimsleur method because it builds upon previously learned vocabulary.
I bought all three course levels, ninety compact discs. Although
the third level is “Advanced,” my experience is that if you can master
the lessons you will be an ‘advanced-beginner’ Portuguese speaker.
I can ask rudimentary questions, check-in at a hotel, return my rental
car, and order at a restaurant, but I have difficulty following the Brazilian
novellas and the news on television. There are two disadvantages
of Pimsleur. The first is that you will need to have a previous understanding
of romance language grammar, a childlike acceptance of the grammar Pimsleur
presents, or have to study a Portuguese grammar book. The other disadvantage
is that you will still have to spend time learning how to read Portuguese
and correctly pronounce what you have read. Be sure to purchase the
correct Portuguese Language course; Continental Portuguese of Portugal
is significantly different from Brazilian Portuguese and the good language
programs have separate courses for each. The program is relatively
expensive, but I think worth it. You can sell back your program to
a number of websites (Google for “Pimsleur Buyback”) when you finish if
you so desire.
Our first stop was Guaruja, a medium to small coastal city about an hour and half south from Sao Paulo on an excellent highway with numerous tunnels through lush coastal mountains. It has a large number of high-rise apartment buildings along the city center beach with the support infrastructure (stores, banks, etc.) ranging from six to ten blocks behind the apartments. We visited Guaruja in July (Brazilian wintertime), so there were not the throngs of Paulistas the real estate agents told us visit the city in summer. To the Southwest of Guaruja is the Paulista seaport city of Santos, which we steered clear of. To the North are the mountains, and to the East, along the coast, are the single-family homes we were interested in seeing. The Guaruja cityscape along the coast is pretty, lined with high-rise apartment buildings with the mountains as a backdrop. The city blocks behind the coastal area are standard and unspectacular two and three story buildings. There is very little of what would classify as ‘favelas’ in the hills beyond the city. Guaruja is relatively clean (we saw the sanitation department combing the beaches for litter in the evening) and safe with a visible police presence. There are several nice restaurants, which charged tourist rates of R25 to R75 per entrée. Certainly, if we lived there, we are confident that we would find descent and reasonably priced restaurants that cater less to tourists and more to local clientele. In Guaruja,
we concentrated our house hunting to the condominiums of Acapulco and Peninsula.
Condominiums in Brazil can mean an apartment or flat owned by the resident
in a high-rise building, but it can also mean an enclosed community of
single-family homes with restricted access controlled by security.
Our interest was in the single-family homes.
Two useful websites are www.acapulcoimoveis.com, which is a large listing of homes for sale and www.acapulcoweb.com, which describes the community. We found the homes pretty, well manicured, with plenty of security. We also looked at homes in a more established gated community called Peninsula. Although we liked the Acapulco homes, they lacked the gorgeous views of the ocean and Guaruja cityscape offered by the Peninsula homes. These homes are perched along the bank of the Peninsula jutting out into the ocean east of the city. They were often three and four levels terraced into the side of the peninsula; not on support legs like some of the California homes that slide down the hill in a mudslide or earthquake. Some of them had elevators. These homes were typically older and more expensive than the Acapulco homes. For those individuals
accustom to American homes, it may be useful to describe typical Brazilian
homes. Brazilian builders typically construct homes of plaster on
hollow bricks and tiled roofs. Windows are usually trimmed in varnished
wood. Most floors are marble, granite, or similar tile, some wood
and throw rugs, no wall-to-wall carpeting. We were surprised that
most of the used homes for sale included the furnishings.
Most homes
have maid’s quarters (some include bedroom, bath, and living room) next
to the laundry and kitchen. Customarily a ‘Casero’ and his family
will live there, with the husband tending to the exterior (garden, pool,
security, car, etc.), the wife caring for the interior (cleaning, laundry,
childcare, cooking, etc.), and possibly with their own children.
A R1500 per month salary is common for the Casero and his family.
As well as the living room, dining room and family room, the gathering or entertaining area was the outside deck. Some of the outside deck flooring was granite; others were wood. In addition to the pool, many residences had Jacuzzis, saunas, and sometimes a waterfall. All homes had a ’churrasqueiras’ or outdoor kitchen barbequing area; some included a pizza oven and outdoor beverage bar. I was surprised that new homes had mature landscaping with full size trees as opposed to the ‘starter’ vegetation typical of new American homes. Grass is similar to the Bermuda variety (no putting greens) without a sprinkler system. High plaster and brick walls for privacy enclosed most backyards. Some of the front yards were enclosed and included automatic vehicle gates. I do not recall seeing any garages, just carports that could often hold four vehicles. Most of the
homes we looked at in Angra dos Reis were on the water, some with wharfs.
Though they were beautiful, and tended to be less expensive, they were
rather remote. Residents of Angra are typically the actors, soccer
stars, and socialites from festive Rio, whereas Paulista industrialists
tend to make their vacation homes closer to Guaruja. The problem
is that Angra does not offer much attraction. The city center of
maybe 50,000 people is a drab locale primarily comprising of the service
industry that supports the upper class homeowners. The condominiums
of nice Angra homes are spread out from the city center along the coast
for some twenty miles towards Rio. Rio is a two hours drive past
the coastal condominiums, some farmland, and through a lower class suburb
from Angra dos Reis.
Our real estate agent explained that many people live during the week in Rio, or Barra da Tijuca, which is to the west of the older Rio de Janeiro zones, and then go to their Angra homes during the weekend. We drove to Barra for a quick look. It is a flat coastal land experiencing a wave of construction. High-rise apartments and sprawling shopping malls give the area a far more Americanized feel than the Rio city center. The large beaches of Barra da Tijuca are very popular. However, we are not too keen on commuting each weekend from an apartment in Rio, or Barra da Tijuca, to a country house in Angra dos Reis. Although four bedroom apartments facing the beach are reasonably priced at R200,000 to R800,000, my wife was concerned about the crime spilling out from Rio. Her concern was validated a week after we left when a Rio gang seized a Barra da Tujuca apartment building and robbed the residences. Another disadvantage of Angra is that you have to drive past Rio favelas to get to the airport. Last month, another gang blocked a tunnel on the airport highway and tried to rob everyone stranded in his or her cars. For some reason, much larger Sao Paulo, and its environs, has significantly less crime than Rio. I also read that crime is significantly declining in Sao Paulo. We are leaning towards retiring in the Peninsula Condominium of Guaruja, rather than Angra do Reis. Homes in Angra tend to be cheaper and right on the beach. However, Guaruja is safer. Additionally, all our necessities are available in Guaruja, a five-minute drive from Peninsula. Running errands or grabbing a bit to eat from the rural Angra condominiums is a forty-five minute drive to Angra dos Reis, or a one and half hour drive to Barra, near Rio. Both Angra and Guaruja has great weather and beautiful vistas, but we think there will be more to keep us entertained in Guaruja than Angra dos Reis. However, since we have ten years to decide our ultimate retirement destination, we plan to visit more sections of the long Brazilian coast; perhaps we will visit Florianopolis next year. We hope our
insight is helpful to other people considering moving to the beautiful
Littoral Norte or Costa Verde.
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