Investment Funds as a movement of the Financial-Real Estate Complex in Brazil

Abstract

The notion of “complex” in Brazilian urban and regional studies was relevant in the context of agro-export and industrial economy in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, as it revealed social arrangements of urbanization in these historical moments. In the interpretation of contemporary urban transformations, it is argued that the notion of the “real estate-financial complex’, conceived in the Global North, must consider the specificities of each particular social formation. This work seeks to understand the formation and operation of a complex from the development of Real Estate Investment Funds (FIIs, Brazilian REITs). The main institutional frameworks of the instrument and the agents involved in its designs are investigated to problematize the complex’s constitutive essences that support the instrument and the transformations in space. The research identifies the dominance of national financial institutions, in articulation with global finance, over the FIIs industry and proposes the category of “financial-real estate complex”, which indicates the subordination of the interest of the real estate sector to the financial ones.

Keywords:
Financialization; Real Estate Production; Patrimonialism; Real Estate Investment Fund; Property