Miami's Brickell Area Revived by Foreign Buyers

The dismal housing market seems to have no silver living, except for the news coming out of Downtown Miami, particularly the Brickell corridor. It's been a beacon of the luxury condominium market since the early 1980s, when South Americans started snapping up units as second homes.

The area was not immune to the hard hit at the end of the last decade, when recession sent the real estate market into a nosedive. Recently though, Fortune International Realty, one of the area's defining real estate agencies, is hitting its stride again.

Its president and principal broker, Edgardo Defortuna, told HousingWatch: "Most of the sales we are reporting now, 70 percent to 80 percent of them are foreign buyers from the Latin American market, including Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil, where in some cases the political situation is dismal, but the economy is doing well."

Fortune's expertise with foreign buyers is why they are credited with making a significant contribution to the internationalization of Miami and its reputation as a global business, trade and vacation hub.