Returning Money from a Real Estate Deal to the Country of Origin

[Jose C. Santiago, Esq.]

It has become quite frequent the quantity of bank wires going out of Brazil related to the sale of real estate by foreigners nowadays. Due to the latest increase in value of the Brazilian Real compared, specially, to the American Dollar, foreign homeowners and foreign real estate investors in Brazil are selling their real estate in order to cash out not only the real estate equity made, but also the income created due to increase of the Brazilian Real.

For example, last week I had a client who purchased a property 2 years ago for R$200,000 at R$2.70 per US$1.00 or US$74,000 approximately. The same property built up an equity of 25% (which is the national average of real estate appreciation for the past 2 years in Brazil) bringing the price up to R$250,000 alone and dividing that figure by today’s current rate of R$2.08(commercial rate of dollar on 2/21/07) he got more than US$120,000 or 61% in total equity.

Having said, questions such, how do I send the money back and what are the restrictions of sending my money back, have become very frequent in my office.

In general terms it is a little more complicated than sending money into Brazil, but is 100% doable and safe. There are some requirements, for example, property must be in your name, your tax id (CPF) must be valid and in good standing and your tax income situation must be in good standing with Receita Federal as well. In the above example, my client had never renewed his CPF or done his tax declarations, (declaracao de isento) therefore these two things had to be done before we were able to send the wire to his account in the US. He spent US$40.00 in bank’s wire fees and received the money in the US within 24 hours.

Should you need additional information related to this matter, please feel free to contact me.

Jose C. Santiago
Licensed & Certified Title Attorney - Brazil
Paralegal & Licensed Real Estate Agent – USA