Deu no New York Times, mas ninguém por aqui leu...

A imprensa de Natal é rápida quando o assunto é alimentar o “complexo de vira-lata”...

Qualquer nota ou comentário que fira os ouvidos sensíveis, logo são reverberados como ultrajantes ofensas e, quem as pronuncia, ganha adjetivos pejorativos e espaço que sequer mereceriam ganhar...

Mas...

Quando a cidade é elogiada pelo maior jornal do mundo e um dos mais independentes do planeta, tudo passa em branco...

Ninguém diz escreve nada...

Absolutamente nada.

Talvez, por que ainda provinciana e voltada para o próprio umbigo, a nossa imprensa resuma seus hábitos de leitura, apenas aos mesmos jornais, sites, blogs e revistas de todo o dia...

Na quinta feira passada, o New York Times (no rastro da Copa do Mundo), publicou uma matéria sobre nossa cidade, sobre o mercado imobiliário local, e apenas Aílton Medeiros em seu blog, tocou no assunto – uma pena!

Leia a baixo, a matéria na íntegra (em inglês, só para aporrinhar).

World Cup Already Casting a Glow on a 2014 Site

By NICK FOSTER

Published: November 11, 2010

NATAL, BRAZIL — When Julia Bakker, a teacher from the Netherlands, was looking for a retirement home in 2006 in the tropical north-east of Brazil, the World Cup soccer competition was not on her mind.

After “driving a rental car up and down the coast” of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Mrs. Bakker decided to buy a two-bedroom bungalow set back from the beach in the fashionable resort of Pipa, 85 kilometers, or 53 miles, south of the state capital, Natal.

But the choice of Natal as one of the 12 host cities of the 2014 World Cup finals, to be held in Brazil, has given a lift to the local economy — which was already benefiting from the country’s recent prosperity — and its real estate sector.

Host city status brings with it long-awaited public investment in infrastructure: new roads and repairs to existing ones, improvements to public transport and to waste treatment facilities. And the harbor of this city of just over 800,000 residents — many of whom are employed by the Brazilian military — will be dredged to accommodate large cruise ships.

Mrs. Bakker says she paid the equivalent of $60,000 for her property, with transfer taxes, notary’s fees and the estate agent’s commission adding another 10 percent to the price. Her plans to modernize the kitchen and bathrooms were put on hold for family reasons, but she has planted new flowers in her small garden and tidied the lawn.

“You can imagine how surprised I was to be offered 220,000 reals for the house by someone who got my phone number from a neighbor. In dollar terms, in four years it has doubled in value,” says Mrs. Bakker, referring to the $123,900 offer, which she refused.

These days, in Pipa’s crowded bars and restaurants, foreigners seem to discuss selling property just as much as buying it. Northern Europeans, and Scandinavians in particular, bought enthusiastically in Pipa four or five years ago, when the Brazilian real was typically trading at 2.3 to 2.4 reals to the U.S. dollar, and 2.75 to 2.95 to the euro.

Today, in spite of a 5 percent inflation rate, which is higher than that of the United States or the euro zone, the real is just 1.75 to the dollar and 2.27 to the euro.

Unprecedented levels of direct foreign investment in Brazil and high interest rates have been key factors in the real’s hardening against other currencies.

As a result, Mark McHugh, chief executive of Invest in Brazil, a property consultancy based the city of Fortaleza, also in Brazil’s northeast, estimates that the number of individual — as opposed to institutional — overseas buyers of residential property in northeast Brazil has dropped about 70 percent over the past four to five years.

They have been squeezed out of the market by an increasingly prosperous Brazilian middle and upper-middle class eager to spend on real estate.

“Wealthy nordestinos across the region are looking for holiday and weekend homes within, say, an hour’s drive of their main residence. In the past, high levels of inflation encouraged people to send money abroad. Now, Brazilians have the confidence to invest locally,” says Mr. McHugh.

Some developments are sprouting features designed specifically to attract Brazilian buyers. At the Polo Pitangui hotel and residential development 17 kilometers north of Natal, for instance, a plastic surgery clinic will operate alongside the more traditional attractions of a gym and a choice of restaurants.

But real estate agents operating in and around Natal take the view that Brazil is still a good investment for overseas buyers. They see more room for price increases in residential property and little indication that the market is about to slide anytime soon.

According to Aidan Rankin, an economics analyst with the Property Frontiers real estate agency in Oxford, England, Natal and the Rio Grande do Norte region in general have “huge potential for future growth.” The agency is selling properties in the area.

“Natal is the closest Brazilian city to Europe and a gateway to the country. It is also a city with a huge demand for quality, affordable housing,” he says.

Property Frontiers is marketing apartments in an 86-unit building in Natal’s upmarket Petrópolis district, where values have already increased by some 30 percent in the past two years, according to Mr. Rankin.

An apartment occupying 55 square meters, or 600 square feet, with two bedrooms, plus a secure parking space, is for sale for 180,000 reals. A dune-backed beach is little over a kilometer away.

In Pipa, the agency Synergy Imóveis is marketing a detached house with three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and 204 square meters of living space in the Ocean View condominium complex for 585,000 reals.