Portfolio strategy for family offices entering U.S. real estate
The first deal is rarely the hard part. The hard part is building a strategy that survives past the first deal.
The common starting pattern
Family offices — including many of the Brazilian and LatAm families we work with — often enter US real estate through a single opportunistic deal: a direct relationship, a familiar market (Miami is a common entry point for exactly this reason), an asset type the family already understands from experience at home. That's a reasonable way to start. It's a less reasonable way to build a durable allocation, because a strategy built around "the deal that came to us" tends to produce a portfolio with concentration risk the family didn't intend to take on.
What a real portfolio strategy adds
Moving from opportunistic to strategic means making deliberate decisions the first deal usually skips: target allocation across property types and geographies, a view on direct ownership versus JV or fund exposure, and clarity on whether the family wants operating control or a passive capital position. None of this is exotic — it's the same portfolio construction discipline institutional allocators apply — but it's frequently skipped by families whose US real estate exposure grew organically out of relationships rather than a plan.
The parts that are genuinely different for cross-border families
Beyond standard portfolio construction, cross-border families need a structure that actually works for their situation: tax-efficient entity structuring across US and home-country rules, a currency and repatriation strategy, and — often underweighted — a succession plan for US assets that accounts for different jurisdictions' rules on inheritance and gift tax exposure for foreign-held US real property.
Where we help
We advise family offices — including through our own cross-border relationships in Brazil and Latin America — on building an actual US real estate allocation strategy, not just sourcing the next one-off deal. That includes sourcing and underwriting opportunities, but starts with the portfolio-level questions most families haven't been asked yet.