Why More Brazilians Are Calling Florida Home

 In Brazil, rioters have taken over the seats of power, and the country's former leader has fled to a resort in Florida, where a huge number of fans have gathered to cheer on their former president. In the past few days, fans have come to Jair Bolsonaro's temporary home, a gated community with tall waterslides, to see him. He greeted fans with hugs and signs, and some wore "Make Brazil Great Again" shirts and took selfies with them. "I will always support him," said Rafael Silva, 31, who left Brazil eight years ago and now works as a floor installer in central Florida. On Monday, he stood outside Bolsonaro's rental home and said this. "He was the best for the country." Early in the afternoon, the small group of yellow-shirted fans dispersed as word spread that Bolsonaro was taken to the hospital with stomach pain. His wife, Michelle, wrote on social media that he was hospitalized for observation because of stomach pain linked to a stabbing in 2018 that has caused him to be hospitalized more than once before.

The Brazilian newspaper O Globo printed a picture of him smiling from his hospital bed

A hospital representative didn't answer the phone or text message right away. Before the angry protests on Sunday in Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, Bolsonaro had been seen many times in this central Florida community, walking through the aisles of a Publix supermarket, eating alone at a nearby KFC, and most of all, surrounded by groups of adoring fans. The Osceola County Sheriff's Office said it got a request from the Secret Service to provide a police protection for Bolsonaro when he arrived while he was still president, but he hasn't been surrounded by a large group of security guards. Many people who buy homes know that the process can be stressful. But it can be even more stressful for people who are buying homes in Tampa Bay from outside the U.S. or who just moved here.

This is true for Corina Lessa Silva, who moved from Brazil to the Tampa Bay area in the early 2000s and didn't know much about how to buy a house here. She is now the seller and founder of Tampa Bay Key Realty, a company that helps people from other countries buy homes. She told the Tampa Bay Times how her own story of coming to the U.S. helped her build her business and how the travel bans caused by the pandemic have hurt it. Some changes have been made to this text to make it shorter and clearer. I ran a travel business when I first moved here. The owners were from Brazil, and they sold plane passes to Brazil. When a certain number of years had passed, I chose to change careers. When my husband chose to buy a house, he told me, "You should get a license. That will help us learn more about the process." He is also from Brazil, and we didn't know any other Brazilian real estate agents. I was also just getting back into life in the U.S. So that's how I began. We bought our first home together after I got my license, which was also the first house I ever sold.

When you first start your real estate business, you probably have a network of people you like

You go through your information and call your friends. I didn't know many people here because I wasn't born here. That was all I had: a list of clients who went to Brazil and came back. They asked me about my license and I told them I could sell real estate. It started with a friend buying a house from me, and she told her other friends about me. All of a sudden, I'm only hiring Brazilians for this business. Because I knew their culture and could speak their language, they wanted to do business with me. I also knew the questions they would ask when they compared how real estate is done here and how it is done in Brazil. A lot of my promotion is on social media. All of my videos are on YouTube, and all of my Instagram posts are there in Portuguese. One of the agents we have today is from Russia and she loved what I was doing online. Her name is Kristina. She did the same thing online in Russian after that. It's been a few years, and she started with almost nothing. Now, Russians who come to the Tampa Bay area to buy things are the center of her business. When people from other countries buy homes, they have different goals. There will be some of them who are only interested in getting their money back. Because Miami is the place you know it's way out there and has a lot of ads for it. There are now more people who know about Tampa and know that it's cheaper, has a big metro area that's growing quickly, and they can make a lot of money there. But there are also buyers from other countries whose main goal is to send their children to college or to open a business here and move here one day. They think that living in the Tampa Bay area will give them more chances. The water in Tampa Bay is like the water in Miami, which is why many Brazilians come here to visit the beaches.

People from Brazil who are still in Brazil can't make any more sales

We did sell a few homes right at the start of the pandemic. In fact, one of the buyers has been waiting a year to see the condo in downtown Tampa she bought. She bought it before the pandemic, so she hasn't seen it. She bought it without seeing it first. As a result of the pandemic, many people have not been able to come, but they have still planned and dreamed. Our talks now happen over Zoom, and we have about four or five with people in Brazil every week. These people want to know how to move here, invest here, and start a business here. A lot of people will carry out their plans as soon as the borders are opened. This is because, sadly, the governments are handling the pandemic in a lot of different ways.

People around the world are lucky to be able to get vaccines and have the help we do. In Brazil, for example, people are not getting protected right now. People want bigger homes with more room, privacy, and backyards because of the pandemic. They also want to live in a better place and put their money in a safer place. I'm really looking forward to the end of this because after that, a lot of people will come here and spend.