A Brazilian oligarch who founded and controls an airline has been quietly scooping up prime residential development sites in Miami’s urban core, the Daily Business Review has learned. The buyer hopes to buy-and-flip his way to a profit as part of the current real estate boom.
José Afonso Assumpção, the 80-year-old founder and majority owner of the Brazilian airline Líder Aviação, spent much of 2013 assembling a parcel of land in Brickell just a few blocks west of the proposed Brickell CityCentre project, then crafting his vision for a massive, 66-story mixed-use condo there. Now, on the brink of selling that parcel for “almost double” what he originally paid, Assumpção has branched out to another white-hot Miami neighborhood, Edgewater, paying top dollar for a lot in the area in anticipation of further land value appreciation.
