Mortgages fuel Brazilian housing boom

“In Brazil there are eight million families who do not have a house to live in,” says Mr Crestana.

“That means 30 million people, equivalent to the whole population of Argentina, do not have a house.

“So on the demand side we have nothing to worry about for the next 15 years at least,” he insists, pointing to how economic growth in Brazil has elevated some 30 million people into the country’s “lower middle class”.

“And now they want their own homes,” he says.

Own place

Sergio Oliveira is one of them.

Fourteen years ago he moved to Sao Paulo from the north-east of the country. Since then he has worked as a mason, building residential buildings.

“There’s a lot of work nowadays,” he says.

“If you are not happy with a job, it’s easy to find another one, so the contractors have to pay us better salaries.”

Consequently, after spending almost half his life building houses for others, Mr Oliveira has been able to buy one for himself.

“It feels really good to have a place of my own now,” he says.

“I used to pay rent and had to live in a very bad neighbourhood. Now I am paying a mortgage, but it is for something that will stay with me and my family.”

Growing ambitions

Antonio and Aparecida Duarens have also bought their own home, 22 years after they got married, though their story is different.

Rather than making it big in the civil construction industry the way Mr Oliveira has done, they have tapped into one of many government programmes aimed at giving low income families easier access to mortgages.

“Had it not been for the economic growth and the government programmes, it would have taken me much longer to buy my own house,” says Mrs Duarens, whose daughters Juliana, 21, and 19-year-old Tiago still live at home.

“We all have jobs here,” says Mrs Duarens, and so with their four salaries the family is able to pay 1,000 reais per month on their 20-year mortgage.

In the past, they used to pay 650 reais rent per month, so costs have certainly risen sharply, but their old place was much smaller and the rent money was lost forever, she reasons.

“Paying rent is horrible,” she says. “It seems as if you are giving your money away and getting nothing concrete in return.”

Owning their own home gives the family a “strong base to plan for a better future”, Mrs Duarens says, explaining how she has been studying to become a hairdresser and beautician to escape her job doing night shifts as a guard in a nearby factory.

“My dream is to open my own beauty parlour,” she says. “And my husband wants to buy himself a truck so can quit his job in the rubbish collection company and work for himself”, she says.