Buying
Property in Brazil ~ Page Two
Teresópolis
In The Serra dos Órgãos
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Getting
through Customs
Good for you
if you think it your moral obligation to avoid customs duty and taxes in
general. A tourist now can bring into Brazil something like $500 in gifts
and merchandise (not commercial), with exemptions for personal items, which
could include $10,000 worth of expensive tent, Gortex jacket, down sleeping
bag, a PDA, a P4 computer, a still and a video camera, a tuba, and so on.
Items usually subject to special attention (and penalties) include those
plants and seeds, 100 identical watches and any new high-dollar electronics.
The duty-free
shop in the Rio international airport is a bargain; you pay much less for
imported toys, French perfume and Jack Daniels and can use a credit card,
paying in dollars with no conversion fees. I always stop there to buy gifts
for old and new friends. |
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Money Transfer
and Exchange
In buying Santa
Edwiges, I was faced with the problem of transferring dollars to Brazil
and exchanging them there for Reals. (Transferring dollars there and getting
a fair exchange is much harder than in other places, like Europe.) I had
hoped to avoid the exchange problem by offering to pay in dollars, a deal
most Brazilians in the past, and now certainly all Argentines, would welcome.
But the seller, a banker (!) from Rio, wouldn't hear of it. So I began
to research the alternatives. Sure, my bank could wire (through Chase or
Citibank, if necessary) the $32,000 to a bank in Brazil, where they would
convert it into a cashier's check at a scandalous exchange rate, then charge
0.38% ($121) tax as an insult. Here's how the typical exchange rate thievery
works:
There are three
rates for changing money in Brazil. For example, on around April 15 of
this year:
Commercial
Rate (official tourist reamjob) = 2.29
Tourist
Rate (favoring Brazilian tourists ) = 2.24
Parallel
Rate (grey market and fair) = 2.36
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fair rate is the parallel rate, what you get on the grey market, at exchange
houses in the major cities, and at travel agencies throughout Brazil. This
is more or less the rate you would use to exchange with a friend or stranger
on the streets of Brazil. It is, for all practical purposes, the fair free-market
rate.
The tourist
rate represents a Brazilian government favor granted to rich Brazilians
who buy dollars for their annual family trip to Disney World. It is not
available to gringo tourists or to middle-class Brazilians, who mostly
just want to buy dollars as a hedge against government theft by inflation.
If they can’t find a tourist to exchange currency with, they will have
to buy dollars at the parallel rate plus a couple of points.
If you check
the rates in the Wall Street Journal, wire money to a bank in Brazil or
carry cash to the bank, you are quoted the commercial rate, which in my
case would have represented a exchange hit of some $950 over the parallel
rate. C2IT will do a convenient bank-to-bank transfer for the fair fee
of $10, but in using their service, I would still have been out the $950
+ $121. Traveler's checks, apart from costing 1% (= $320 in my case) are
changed at a bad rate and are not as readily convertible as cash, at least
in Brazil (Europe may well be different). |
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There
are three rates for changing money in Brazil
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I could withdraw
funds easily with a credit card at the commercial rate in many banks, suffering
the hit of $950. Or I could use (and often have) an ATM to withdraw funds
at many banks and praças throughout Brazil, with a limit of $600
per day. It would have taken me over 53 days to withdraw the funds in that
manner, and I would be exchanging at the same commercial rate in addition
to paying any fee (recently raised from $1 to $5 at some USSA banks) for
international ATM withdrawals.
As a result
of my research into the matter, I resolved to carry $32,000 in cold hard
cash dollars on my body to Rio de Janeiro and let the fun begin!
First I called
my bank to make sure they would have $32,000 in $100 bills, the highest-value
note now available in Amerika – a result of the damned drug wars and the
established USSA policy of confiscating its citizens' wealth wherever found.
(I remember seeing my dad carry a single note of $10,000 to pay off a mortgage
when I was about 10.) At my bank, the teller counted out the 320 bills,
kindly replacing those torn or with missing corners, which Latins sometimes
won't accept. I then slid all the bills into a money pouch that attached
with Velcro to my calf. I had prepared for this by calculating the thickness
of bills – some 0.8 inch per hundred – or some 2.5 inches in all for 320
of them. The wad fit, at least when I was wearing baggy pants.
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"In
real money (em dinheiro)?"
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had also prepared by calling US Customs at the Austin, Taxes airport, asking
them what would be involved in declaring the money. (You have to declare
fund transfers of over $10,000 on account of the same damned drug war.)
They said I just needed to come into customs in Austin and fill out their
form before boarding. I even downloaded the form from the web.
To no avail,
of course. Once in the Austin airport, they said I would have to fill out
the form in Atlanta, my port of international departure (and where I would
be in a hurry to make the connection). Of course, after having been de-shoed,
patted down and reamed out several times, I then had to proceed to the
international arrivals section of Hartsfield Airport and pass through another
security screening to get to customs! There I filled out the form declaring
that I was carrying currency (in public, surrounded by what looked to me
like freedom fighters or USSA treasury agents). I knew that if the bureaucrat
lost the document, I might end up learning Arabic with no access to a lawyer
in that jail in Guantánamo, so I requested a receipt as proof of
having submitted the form. She replied that she couldn't just give me a
receipt for the form, and instead offered me a photocopy of the form for
me to carry – a sure way to foil the Rio robbers! (Government is not only
invariably thieving, it's ineffably stupid.) Then, of course, I had to
pass through the same freedom-fighter checkpoint in the other direction
to get back to the international departure gates. Bin Laden's revenge goes
on and on! |
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Once aboard,
I dined and wined, and I slept with my cash cache all the way to Rio, secure
in the knowledge that every honest passenger around me was fully disarmed.
At Rio customs, a young woman asked me if I had anything to declare. "Nothing
except cash," I told her. Asked how much, I carefully answered "more than
$10,000." At that point she asked wide-eyed, right out-loud, right in the
Rio airport, "In real money (em dinheiro)?"
By this point
I was so sweaty-nervous that I'm sure they all figured I was a subversive,
and so, of course, they shunted me aside to check my baggage, which had
little of import value. But the wait only contributed to my nervousness,
since the other passengers had long since left the area and I remembered
that I was being met by friends who were surely waiting just as nervously
on the other side of the wall. I had begged them to meet me there, en masse,
with a car lettered "Brinks" on both sides. They were indeed totally frazzled
by the time we finally met, but we made it without incident from the airport
to Teré, to great relief and cheers all around.
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| I
had emailed and phoned my Teresópolis friends, asking them about
the possibility of their depositing my dollars in their bank account until
the day of real-estate closing. Depositing in a friend’s account, however,
turned out to be inadvisable for two reasons: first, because I'd have to
exchange prematurely and get hit with the usual 0.38% transaction tax and,
secondly, because my friends were state government employees who would
be suspected of embezzlement if a significant amount of money suddenly
showed up in their regular account. My friend simply recommended, "Bury
the money somewhere in the acres of rainforest." And (unspoken), "Don't
talk to anyone, including me, about it."
So I complied,
but not without continuing to dream and worry about the cache for 7 full
weeks. I especially panicked after awaking one morning to find some local
thieving dog – a real dog, not the usual bureaucrat – had run off with
one of my shoes! The neighbor kids did find the shoe, somewhat chewed up,
after I had already hobbled into town to buy a replacement pair. |
| My friend
simply recommended, that I bury the money somewhere in the acres of rainforest. |
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Typical
Brazil Prices
Expensive:
Gasoline:
$2.70 per gallon
Electricity:
$0.12 per kWh
Imported
BMW, Jaguar: $100,000 or more
Imported booze
(liquor, wine & beer), local phone calls (charged per-minute), in-country
long-distance phone calls, books and world-class periodicals and newspapers
all cost more then we Amerikans pay in the USSA. The latest hi-tech gizmos
(like Phillips screws and battery-powered saw/drill combos) are real hard
to find.
Not bad:
International
Long Distance: $0.05 per minute, weekends
Shoeshine:
$2
Caipirinha:
$0.60 to $1
Daily
Rio paper: $0.75
Local
bus fare: $0.45
Stone
mason: $20/day
Bottle
national wine: $3
Live-in
nanny/maid: $8/day + room/board
Resident
custodian: $40/month + housing
Bar
beer (600 ml): $0.70
Fixed-price
lunch plate: $1
Buffet
plate: $1.80/pound
Hooker
("ouvi falar"): $1 – $2
4 photomat
photos: $4.00
$30
shoes: $30
Greyhound
type bus: $3/hour
Filling
(incisor/bicuspid): $30
Tooth
cleaning & polish: $20 (done by the dentist!)
Prescription
drugs, while often counterfeit or contraband, are very cheap. For many
drugs, like Viagra and powerful antibiotics, no prescription is needed
(with Brazilian "gatinhas and piranhas" – rumor has it – Viagra is not
needed.) The pharmacist will advise you what drug to buy for the condition
you describe. Injections are given and the removal of "bichos de pé"
is done for a couple of dollars in a couple of minutes, right there in
the pharmacy.
You want a
nose job, tummy tuck, boob lift or liposuction? The world's best and most
experienced are practicing and teaching in Brazil. There seems to be no
excuse for an Amerikan to shop for medical or dental care in the USSA when
he can fly to Rio and pay less for more, unless, of course, he is a captive
victim of insurance "benefits", Medicare or Medicaid, which are worth nothing
in Brazil. And at my place in Teré, I offer Brazilian bikini-waxing
at no charge.
Law Enforcement
and Personal Safety
Amerikans inured
to our Police State will be amazed at the personal liberty accorded the
Brazilian. You can drive from Boa Vista on the Venezuelan border to Bagé
in the South without ever having to deal with a damned drug-sniffing cop.
You will, however, have crossed 663,846 speed bumps and will be on a second
set of springs and fourth set of shocks! Don't even think about making
the trip in a Kombi made of “maconha!”
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Law
Enforcement and Personal Safety
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In
the eight times I’ve traveled (mostly by bus, backpacking, camping by Kombi
and Amazon river-boating) through Brazil, I have been robbed at gunpoint
once, burgled about three times, had large rocks thrown at me once, been
run into by a bicyclist, infected with skin bacteria, Hepatitis A, bichos
de pé and intestinal parasites. To me, this seems about par for
the course. And I’ve recovered from everything except the exhiliration.
Brazilians generally worry more about personal safety than I do, and the
need to deal with security and keys is the curse of Brazil. Tall walls,
gates and window grates obstruct access and views, and ferocious dogs are
everywhere behind the walls and fences. My property, for example, came
with 17 different keys to gates and outside doors alone, which served to
drive me insane, In Teré, at least, it is impossible to buy two
padlocks keyed alike, and there is no such thing as a combination padlock,
let alone a set of four with like combinations. The new Walmart in São
Paulo is rumored to have them, though. I am considering importing garage
door openers with remote controls and keyless locks, electric strikes and
combination locks to use throughout Santa Edwiges. |
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This past
year, there were lots of murders, kidnappings and carjackings in Rio, far
more than were registered in Chicago, the Amerikans’ most dangerous big
city. 120,000 Cariocas fell ill with dengue fever, spread by mosquitoes
that bite in daylight hours, and dozens have died after contracting its
hemorrhagic form that kills much as ebola does. Rio had the hottest Summer
recorded, with daily temperatures like those of August in Austin, Taxes.
(Except that in Rio you can walk to Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, stopping
for beer or caipirinha all along the way, while, in Austin, you will die
of thirst walking to Barton Springs, where it's illegal anymore to have
any real fun once you get there.)
Much
More On Buying Real Estate In Brazil - Click Here To Go To Page Three
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