Lindenberg revives neoclassical style as São Paulo luxury market cools
Adolpho Lindenberg Filho
Anna Carolina Negri/Valor
A traditional developer of high-end buildings in São Paulo, Lindenberg has watched the market change and become increasingly crowded with competitors vying for customers who once seemed unfazed by interest rates or mortgage lending conditions—a situation that no longer holds.
The company built its reputation on neoclassical-style buildings inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, common in São Paulo’s affluent neighborhoods. In 72 years of operation, it has built more than 700 buildings, most of them in the city. In recent years, it has also developed more modern-looking buildings, with spacious balconies designed for outdoor cooking, dining, and entertaining, the so-called gourmet balconies prized by Brazilian buyers.
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In early August, the company decided to return to the neoclassical style with a development that pays tribute to founder Adolpho Lindenberg, who died at age 99 in 2024. The project, in Moema, in southern São Paulo, sold 72% of its R$1.2 billion total potential sales value just over a month after its launch, said CEO Adolpho Lindenberg Filho.
In this case, the neoclassical style has been updated. The gourmet balconies remain, along with an amenity area designed around current tastes, with an ice pool for post-workout recovery, a tennis court, a 25-meter lap pool, and dry and steam saunas. Each unit also comes with four to six parking spaces. “Our second building had 420-square-meter units in the central Higienópolis neighborhood, with two parking spaces. Today, if you say a unit has two parking spaces, you won’t sell anything,” Lindenberg Filho noted.
For developers operating in the high-end segment, the market is no longer the same. “There was Gafisa, plus three or four other [competitors]. Today, you can count 20 or 30 companies,” he said.
The family-owned company has changed as well. The Lindenberg group has shed businesses adjacent to its development operations, including a land development company and a shopping mall business. It has also scaled back construction work for third parties. Last year, the company, which has been publicly traded since 1976 and has a free float of just 6%, sold a 47% stake to rival Eztec through a R$130 million capital injection by the Zarzur family’s developer. The two companies already had a history of joint projects.
All of this has made Lindenberg a leaner company. “In the 1970s, we launched one building a week. It was a different era; we had 3,000 employees,” he said. “Today, we have 160.” Some construction work is outsourced. The company aims to operate at a scale of three to four projects a year, “at most,” with a total potential sales value of R$1 billion to R$2 billion in the 2020s.
Buying land in sought-after neighborhoods and building high-end properties is expensive—even more so given today’s cost of capital. Lindenberg has been making its projects feasible through partnerships, either with Eztec or financial institutions, although this means giving up a significant portion of the returns. That is the case with the Moema development. Kinea, an asset manager that is part of the Itaú Unibanco group, owns 70% of the project and provides the funding for construction. “People worry about what the ‘funding’ is,” Lindenberg Filho said. “It gives you a sense of security.”
The project’s commercial success runs counter to statistics for the high-end segment and for Moema. The neighborhood has the largest inventory of new mid- and high-end residential units for sale in the city, accounting for 17% of the total, according to a survey by Itaú BBA’s real estate team based on data from Secovi-SP, São Paulo’s real estate industry association. There are R$11 billion worth of properties awaiting buyers.
The executive attributes the project’s sales performance to the name itself, which evokes the company’s founder, as well as the promise of appreciation. “Neoclassical buildings age very well; they are more structured projects. Modern designs can sometimes go out of style,” he argued.
Another factor is the price. Lindenberg is selling the units for about R$37,000 to R$40,000 per square meter, putting the smallest apartment, at 331 square meters, at about R$12.2 million. Properties in neighboring developments completed several years ago are selling at higher prices, according to Arthur Capela, the company’s commercial and marketing director.
Together with Eztec, the company is also venturing into the compact-home market, including studio apartments, although it remains wary of the segment. “How can they sell so many studios in São Paulo?” Lindenberg Filho asks. His surprise is understandable: the compact-home market has seen new launches outpace sales, leading to a buildup in inventory. Location appears to be the differentiating factor for projects that continue to sell well.
Developing studios on its own, however, is not in Lindenberg’s plans, the executive said. For the Moema project, the company did not want to mix compact and high-end units, nor did it want an active frontage, meaning retail stores on the ground floors of the buildings.
A company survey found that even hotels were viewed negatively by high-end buyers because they would increase the flow of people around the development, even if the entrances were separate.
These features have been adopted by the high-end segment to diversify and make projects more dynamic. Some developments have been successful, but buyers appear to be seeking a return to a more conservative style of development—closer to the neoclassical buildings that define São Paulo’s cityscape.
