Almost 105 thousand square meters of land in prime regions of the city of São Paulo are in the portfolio of real estate agency Coelho da Fonseca. The destination? High-end developments that should yield R$6.5 billion in total unit sales when transformed into buildings.
The new business vertical, created in a partnership with the company that originates and sells areas with construction potential Orix, goes, in the company’s words, beyond traditional intermediation between sellers and buyers of properties and land. The company already has R$2.6 billion in areas in neighborhoods such as Pinheiros, Jardins, Perdizes, Moema, Vila Nova and Vila Mariana.
“We are setting up a very professional structure here in a market that is not very professional. We want to be almost an external data arm for new business for developers, a facilitator”, says the executive director of Coelho da Fonseca, Luiz Coelho da Fonseca.
Within the new structure are activities such as zoning analysis, product study, negotiation with owners, asset pricing and support in hiring construction companies and investors. The idea is to be able to find spaces, currently scarcer in upscale neighborhoods, capable of housing new buildings.
The company’s stance is both proactive, when identifying that certain lands may please developers or investors, and reactive, when interested parties themselves look for Coelho da Fonseca. Alex Lima, the founding partner of Orix, jokes that the business works like a “Tinder for the real estate market”, in reference to the application that connects people looking for relationships.
There is no restriction on the contract models that originate from “matches” between real estate agencies and developers. One option is an exchange: the real estate agency delivers the land in exchange for a share in the project’s future profits. Another alternative is to become a partner in the business or buy future units.
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“If it’s a good business, Coelho puts money in, we take our investors. Many developers that are not publicly traded like to work with Club Deal“, points out Lima.
For now, all deals closed by the company’s land structuring and sales arm were originated by the brokers themselves. A relevant part of the company’s assets, however, is its proprietary database, with more than 20 thousand properties that will serve as the basis for active search via information crossing, zoning analysis and availability for sale.
Coelho does the work like a little ant: in a recent case, the real estate company closed a deal with 54 owners. The work is to negotiate values, issues related to tenants, contract model on a case-by-case basis and come up with an advanced project for developers that has already been completely validated by architectural and legal teams, for example.
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High and medium standard… and the interest
More resilient to the high interest rate scenario, the luxury real estate market grew above the total market in the first half of 2025. Data from the Brain Intelligence Strategic consultancy point to a 228.2% increase in the number of vertical units (such as apartments) launched compared to the first six months of 2024, against just 28.7% in the sector average. Total sales potential, an acronym known as PSV, rose 231.7% in the first half of 2025.
“A developer without land is a factory without raw materials. If he doesn’t have land, he doesn’t do business, and the high standard continues with everything”, says Lima, from Orix.
Land in neighborhoods such as Pinheiros, Jardins, Perdizes, Moema, Vila Nova and Vila Mariana are already in the real estate agency’s portfolio, which does not ignore opportunities in the medium standard. The assessment is that the market has paid little attention to this range and developers who anticipate may come out ahead in the medium term as interest rates begin to fall.
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The market expectation, measured by the Central Bank, is that interest rates will fall to 12.13% in 2026, against a Selic that will close 2025 at 15%. The estimates are more optimistic than those captured in the last report, which collects the projection of market agents, at 12.25% a week ago.
