Miami Real Estate Guide for Brazilian Buyers

Last verified: August 20, 2026 against the MIAMI REALTORS 2025 Profile of International Home Buyers, the Florida Realtors International Real Estate Profile, the NAR 2026 International Transactions report published July 29 2026, Federal Reserve H.10 exchange rates through August 14 2026, and current IRS and Banco Central do Brasil rules.

Brazil sits in the middle of the Miami foreign-buyer table, not at the top of it and not at the margin. Where you sit on that table decides how much competition you face for a unit, what a developer will concede on price or finishes, and whether a lender treats your file as routine or as an exception. So the honest version of the ranking is worth more to you than a flattering one.

Where Brazilian buyers rank in Miami right now

Three separate reports cover this, they cover different geographies, and they are not all from the same year. Getting the vintage right matters more than getting the biggest number.

South Florida as a whole took $4.4 billion of foreign residential purchases in 2025, up from $3.1 billion in 2024, across 5,300 properties, up from 4,000, according to MIAMI REALTORS. Foreign buyers accounted for 15 percent of South Florida residential dollar volume against 2 percent nationally and 5 percent for Florida overall. Miami-Dade alone carried 73 percent of the region's foreign buyer count and $3.2 billion of the volume.

At state level, Florida Realtors put international dollar volume at $10.4 billion, with Brazil third at $762 million behind Canada at $1.9 billion and Colombia at $925 million. Brazil slipped from second to third in dollar volume for the first time in several years even though its own total rose, which tells you the ranking moved because other countries grew faster, not because Brazilian buying fell.

On the 2026 report question, plainly: the national NAR figures for 2026 exist and are on this page. The South Florida and Florida country-level splits for 2026 do not exist yet. MIAMI REALTORS publishes its international profile on a calendar-year cycle and released the 2025 edition in January 2026, so the Brazil-specific South Florida numbers above are 2025-vintage until the next edition lands. Anyone quoting you a 2026 Brazil share of Miami sales today is quoting something that has not been published.

The national picture is 2026 and it is soft. Foreign buyers purchased $45.3 billion of U.S. existing homes from April 2025 through March 2026, down 19.1 percent from $56.0 billion, across 67,100 properties, down 14 percent and the second-lowest count since tracking began in 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors 2026 International Transactions report published July 29, 2026. Median foreign-buyer price was $465,000 and 48 percent paid all cash, against 28 percent of all existing-home buyers. Florida stayed the top destination state at 20 percent of all foreign buyers.

The real against the dollar, and what it does to your deposit

The real closed at 5.2388 to the dollar on August 14, 2026, against 5.4137 on the same date in 2025, per the Federal Reserve H.10 release and its historical series. That is roughly 3.2 percent fewer reais per dollar year over year. On a $1,000,000 contract the difference is about R$174,900, which is real money but is not the thing that should drive your decision.

The thing that should drive it is the short-run move. In the same week the H.10 series shows 5.0995 on August 10 and 5.2388 on August 14, about 2.7 percent in four business days. On a $150,000 deposit installment that swing is roughly R$20,900. Pre-construction pays in installments over two to four years, so you are not exposed to the rate once, you are exposed to it five or six times on dates you already know.

NAR's own July 2026 release describes the year as high prices and tight inventory outweighing a favorable exchange rate. That is the correct framing. A better rate has not been enough to offset price on its own, and it will not be enough to rescue a bad unit either.

I do not forecast the real and neither should anyone selling you a condo. What I do is line the deposit calendar up against the FX plan before contract, so each installment is either funded, hedged through your bank, or knowingly left open. That is a decision, not a prediction.

Structure the ownership before you choose the unit

Brazil is not on the IRS list of countries with a U.S. estate tax treaty. For a non-resident who is not a U.S. citizen, the estate of the decedent must file Form 706-NA when U.S.-situated assets exceed $60,000 in fair market value at death, per the IRS. The top federal estate tax rate is 40 percent. A Miami condo held in a personal name is a U.S.-situated asset. That is the whole problem in three sentences.

The fix is a structure chosen before you sign, not after you close, because unwinding a title later can trigger transfer tax and documentary stamps you would not otherwise pay. Which structure is right depends on your Brazilian tax residency and your family's succession plan, and that is a question for a cross-border accountant, not for a real estate agent. Our LLC structuring guide for foreign buyers lays out the options, the filing burden each one carries, and where the trade-offs actually sit.

Financing, and how much of it Brazilian buyers actually use

Cash is the majority position but it is not universal. About 51 percent of South Florida international transactions were all-cash per the MIAMI REALTORS 2025 profile, against 47 percent nationally at that time, and NAR's 2026 figure for all foreign buyers is 48 percent. So roughly half of foreign buyers here are financing something.

Two routes are open to you without a U.S. credit file. Foreign-national mortgage programs typically want 30 to 40 percent down and price above a domestic conforming loan. Debt-service-coverage loans qualify the property's rent rather than your income, which suits a buyer whose earnings are documented in Brazil and awkward to translate into a U.S. underwriting file. Our DSCR loan guide for foreign buyers covers the ratios and the reserve requirements.

If your Brazilian bank has a U.S. private-banking arm and you are already a client there, start with that desk. Not because the rate is always better, but because they can already see the relationship history that a U.S. lender cannot, which usually shortens the document cycle by weeks.

Pre-construction deposits, priced in reais

A Miami pre-construction contract is a payment schedule, not a purchase. The structures I see run about 10 percent at contract, another 10 percent at a defined milestone such as groundbreaking, a further installment as the tower rises, and the balance at closing, with total deposits commonly landing between 30 and 40 percent before delivery. Florida gives a 15-day rescission window on the developer's offering documents, and that window is the one part of the schedule you cannot recover later.

Put that in reais and the exposure gets concrete. A 10 percent installment on a $1,200,000 contract is $120,000, about R$628,700 at the August 14, 2026 rate. Miss one and the consequences are contractual, not negotiable, which is why our guide to defaulting on a Miami pre-construction deposit exists at all. The full sequence from reservation to closing is in the step-by-step buying process guide.

What Brazil asks of you, and the number most pages get wrong

The annual CBE declaration to the Banco Central do Brasil is required when your total assets abroad reach US$1,000,000 or the equivalent in other currencies on December 31 of the base year. A great many English-language pages still quote US$100,000. That was the old threshold and it is out of date. Check the current figure on the Central Bank's own CBE page before you assume you are below it, because a single Miami condo can put you over the line by itself.

Brazil taxes residents on worldwide income, so Miami rental income and capital gains are reportable on your annual DIRPF, and the U.S. return comes first in the sequence because the foreign tax credit runs in that direction. Every international transfer is executed by a licensed institution and registered with the Central Bank, so the paper trail exists whether or not you assemble it. Assemble it anyway: the CBE and DIRPF filings are built from your purchase contract, your closing statement and your FX contracts, and reconstructing those three years later is miserable work.

FIRPTA is an exit problem, not an entry problem

Buyers of U.S. real property interests must withhold 15 percent of the amount realized when the seller is a foreign person, per the IRS. Buying a new unit from a U.S. developer does not trigger it. Selling that unit later, as a foreign person, does. The withholding is not the tax, it is a deposit against the tax, and the refund cycle can run long past the closing. Our FIRPTA withholding guide walks the rates, the exemptions and the refund timeline.

Where Brazilian buyers concentrate, and why those five

The pattern is stable enough to plan around. Aventura holds the largest established Brazilian community, with the schools and services that make a family relocation workable rather than theoretical. Sunny Isles is the waterfront tower market, which is where the branded pre-construction inventory sits. Brickell draws younger Brazilian professionals and the cleanest rental math. Bal Harbour is the high-end low-density option. Coconut Grove suits families who want a neighborhood rather than a tower.

Product choice follows from that. Per the MIAMI REALTORS 2025 profile, 51 percent of South Florida international buyers bought condominiums against 15 percent nationally, 63 percent bought in central or urban areas, and 71 percent intended vacation or rental use. If you are buying a single-family house in a suburb you are the exception in this cohort, and you should expect the comparable data to be thinner. The neighborhood guides break each of these down street by street.

What I tell a Brazilian buyer

My advice on structure is that it comes first, always, and that it is the one part of this you cannot fix cheaply later. When a Brazilian client asks me to start with buildings, I ask instead who will hold title and what happens to it if they die, because the answer changes which price band even makes sense once you price the estate exposure honestly. Buyers who take that seriously in month one almost never call me in year three about a title problem.

On timing, I do not tell clients to wait for the real. I tell them to fix the deposit calendar first and then decide, installment by installment, what they are willing to leave exposed. A buyer who understands their own payment schedule negotiates better than one who is watching a currency chart, because they know exactly which dates they can move and which they cannot.

"Decide who owns the title before you decide which unit you want. That order is the difference between a clean file and an expensive repair."Gerardo Gonzalez, Licensed Real Estate Agent at Compass

Brazilian buyer? Reach out. I work in Portuguese, and I would rather answer the structure question before you fall in love with a floor plan.

Related reading

• Complete Miami guide for foreign national buyers
• Miami real estate tax guide by country
• Miami foreign buyer flow report 2026
• EB-5 visa and Miami real estate investment
• The true cost of owning a Miami luxury condo

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