Carvalho Hosken, Construcap and traditional landbankers: strategic repositioning for 2026

The sale of the entire Ilha Pura planned neighborhood to BTG Pactual, through Enforce, in June 2024, marked a turning point in Carvalho Hosken's trajectory — and, by extension, in the business model of Rio de Janeiro's major traditional landbankers. The transaction, confirmed by NeoFeed and ADEMI-RJ, signaled to the market that the era of patrimonial landowners holding large plots for decades without significant financial pressure had entered a new chapter. What is now taking shape is a profound reconfiguration: century-old companies are cleaning up their balance sheets, seeking partnerships, and moving closer to structured financial capital.

This Market Radar analyzes how Carvalho Hosken, Construcap, and figures such as Helio Seibel and Alberto Guth form a thematic cluster that illustrates the transition from patrimonial real estate in Brazil toward active asset management.

Carvalho Hosken: from Ilha Pura to Grand Quartier

Over decades, Carvalho Hosken built one of Brazil's largest private land banks, concentrated in Barra da Tijuca and its surroundings. Ilha Pura, the Olympic Village for the 2016 Games, was its most emblematic project — and also the most challenging in terms of commercial absorption. The decision to fully divest the development to BTG Pactual represented a deliberate strategy of deleveraging and capital release.

The sale of Ilha Pura to BTG was not a forced liquidation, but a repositioning: Carvalho Hosken traded idle inventory for the capacity to launch new projects with well-capitalized partners. The transaction transferred the commercialization risk of a mature asset to financial capital and allowed the developer to redirect efforts toward its future pipeline.

The first visible outcome of this new phase is Grand Quartier, a development launched in the Rio2 complex in partnership with Patrimar, as reported by Monitor Mercantil and Sinduscon-Rio in October 2023. The partnership with a listed, professionally managed developer marks a shift in approach: Carvalho Hosken, historically self-sufficient in developing its own land, now shares risk and capital with market operators.

How does Rio's new Master Plan put pressure on major landowners?

Complementary Law No. 270/2024, which established Rio de Janeiro's new Master Plan, came into effect in January 2024 and brought direct implications for holders of large urban plots. Two instruments stand out: the Onerous Grant of Building Rights (OODC), now applicable citywide, and the reinforcement of mechanisms to combat idle land, including the possibility of Progressive Property Tax (IPTU Progressivo) over time.

The combination of universal Onerous Grant and Progressive Property Tax substantially raises the carrying cost of inactive land banks, forcing patrimonial landowners to develop, sell, or seek partnerships. For companies like Carvalho Hosken, which hold extensive land in Barra da Tijuca and the Centro Metropolitano, the new regulatory framework alters the financial equation of holding undeveloped land.

According to analysis by GRI Institute, this regulatory pressure, combined with a high interest rate environment, creates a structural incentive for traditional landbankers to accelerate the development of their assets or seek financial vehicles that enable monetization.

Construcap: infrastructure, concessions, and diversified operations

It is important to contextualize Construcap's role in this cluster. Unlike Carvalho Hosken, Construcap does not operate as a residential landbanker in Rio de Janeiro. Its activity in the state capital focuses on infrastructure and industrial projects, while the conglomerate's real estate arm — organized through Grupo Cap — operates predominantly in São Paulo.

What places Construcap in this analysis is its diversification strategy toward long-term asset management. A key milestone was winning the concession for the Aparados da Serra and Serra Geral National Parks, as reported by O Eco based on BNDES data in 2021. The transaction demonstrated the company's willingness to shift from a purely construction-based model to asset management with recurring revenue streams — in this case, natural and tourism assets.

Construcap exemplifies a distinct strand of patrimonial repositioning: instead of monetizing urban land banks, the company diversifies into infrastructure concessions and tourism assets, generating recurring revenue outside the residential real estate cycle.

This strategy parallels the broader movement of traditional builders and developers seeking revenue predictability in a volatile macroeconomic environment.

What role does structured financial capital play in this transition?

The transition from the patrimonial model to financial asset management does not occur in a vacuum. It depends on sophisticated capital vehicles capable of pricing and absorbing the risk of underutilized land banks or unsold inventory. In this context, two names from the cluster under analysis gain relevance: Helio Seibel and Alberto Guth.

HS Investimentos, led by Helio Seibel, operates in the real estate sector through structured credit and stakes in asset managers such as VBI Real Estate, according to ANBIMA data and HS Investimentos' own institutional information. This positions Seibel as a link between financial capital and real assets — a sophisticated intermediary who facilitates the transfer of asset ownership from patrimonial companies to investment funds and capital market vehicles.

Alberto Guth, in turn, has a track record linked to turnaround processes and urban development in a broad sense, although specific recent statements about the 2025 residential market were not available for this analysis.

Market projections, based on the precedent set by the Carvalho Hosken/BTG transaction, indicate that special situations funds — such as those managed by Angra Partners or Enforce/BTG itself — will be the primary vehicles for unlocking land banks of indebted patrimonial companies or those with underutilized assets in the 2025-2026 horizon. This trend reinforces the growing role of structured financial capital as a catalyst for sector transformation.

Barra da Tijuca and Centro Metropolitano: the high-end pipeline for 2025-2026

According to projections from Sinduscon-Rio and market analyses compiled by GRI Institute, Barra da Tijuca and the so-called Barra Olímpica will account for the largest volume of high-end launches in Rio de Janeiro in 2025 and 2026. Two factors drive this projection: the reduction of available inventory in the area — accelerated by the Ilha Pura sale — and the emergence of new projects in Centro Metropolitano, an adjacent area with large undeveloped plots.

For traditional landbankers holding land in these regions, the launch window coincides with the regulatory pressure from the new Master Plan and the availability of financial capital interested in development partnerships. The convergence of these factors creates conditions for an acceleration of development activity in Rio's western zone.

What changes in the business model of traditional landbankers?

The current cycle demands a redefinition of the patrimonial model. The assumptions that sustained the accumulation of land for decades — relatively controlled real interest rates, absence of punitive urban planning instruments, and continuous land appreciation — no longer hold in their original form.

The new paradigm requires traditional landbankers to pursue at least one of three strategies: develop in partnership with well-capitalized developers, as Carvalho Hosken did with Patrimar on Grand Quartier; divest assets to special situations funds with the appetite and capacity for active management, as in the Ilha Pura/BTG transaction; or diversify into recurring revenue-generating assets, as Construcap did with national park concessions.

In all three cases, the common denominator is financial sophistication. Landowners who fail to connect with capital markets, structured credit, or institutional partners will likely be penalized by the Onerous Grant, Progressive Property Tax, and the opportunity cost of holding idle assets in a high interest rate environment.

GRI Institute closely monitors this structural transformation of the Brazilian real estate market. At the club's private gatherings, leaders from developers, funds, and asset managers regularly discuss land bank monetization strategies and the evolving dynamics between patrimonial and financial capital — discussions that are set to intensify as the cycle progresses toward 2026.