Nessim Daniel Sarfati: Four Decades of Projects in São Paulo’s Corporate Real Estate Market

Nessim has been involved in landmark projects in São Paulo’s office market, from the consolidation of Faria Lima to logistics development in Cajamar, and today leads Barzel Properties.

Nessim Sarfati, founder and CEO of Barzel Properties

By: SiiLA News

03/19/2026

The Brazilian corporate real estate market has changed profoundly over the past four decades, and few professionals have followed this transformation as closely as Nessim Daniel Sarfati, founder of Barzel.

Throughout his career, Sarfati has witnessed São Paulo’s consolidation as one of the leading corporate hubs in Latin America. He has seen the creation of new business districts, the evolution of building quality standards, and the development of financial instruments that helped professionalize the sector.

The starting point of his career was at Cyrela, when the company was still taking its first steps in the corporate segment. At that time, the company had only three residential buildings under construction, far from the scale and relevance it would achieve in the decades that followed.

“I joined as a construction engineer. It was a very organized, very proper company. And, without exaggeration, it was a school. I learned a great deal there, and everyone was learning together,” he recalls.

Over the following years, he directly participated in structuring and expanding the company’s corporate development division, closely following the city’s growth and the transformation of regions that today concentrate some of the country’s main business addresses.

In the early years, it was necessary to learn quickly. Nessim explains that it was essential to understand who was leasing, who was buying, which regions were developing, and what type of product companies were actually looking for. It was also during this period that he began working with the main international real estate consultancies operating in Brazil—a professional relationship that would extend over decades.

Without the digital tools that exist today, Sarfati explains that he relied on maps and detailed aerial photographs of the city to track urban evolution and identify new development fronts. He would purchase images and analyze where new growth axes were emerging. This approach ultimately provided an important advantage in understanding the city’s evolution.

If real estate intelligence platforms like those developed today by SiiLA had existed at the time, they would have saved years of this manual analytical work.

Development

During this period, he participated in the development of several corporate buildings that helped consolidate high-end office standards in São Paulo. Among them are Faria Lima Financial Center, Faria Lima Square, Corporate Park, and JK 1455—projects that marked different moments in the expansion of the city’s corporate market.

Another project, JK Financial Center, delivered in 1999, also played a relevant additional role by participating in the structuring of one of the country’s first real estate investment funds (REITs), at a time when the sector was beginning to experiment with new financing and investment instruments.

“Over four decades, I had the privilege of participating in the development of several projects in São Paulo’s corporate market and closely following its evolution across different economic cycles.”

During this same period, he also took part in initiatives aimed at raising the quality standards of corporate buildings in Brazil. In collaboration with a select group of industry entrepreneurs and with academic support from the University of São Paulo, efforts were made to deepen the discussion around the criteria that define international-standard buildings. This contributed to consolidating the concept of A+ office buildings in the country and introducing the BOMA area standard.

Logistics

Another important chapter of this trajectory was the introduction of modern logistics real estate platforms in Brazil. Through his relationship with the founder of AMB Property Corporation—later renamed Prologis, now the world’s largest global logistics real estate platform—Nessim was responsible for bringing the company to the country.

To better understand the development model of logistics warehouses used internationally, he made several trips to the United States and Japan with Prologis, closely studying the operation and construction standards of these developments. Part of this knowledge was later applied in the implementation of logistics projects in Brazil, at a time when the sector was still in its early stages of development.

Barzel

After decades working in the development of corporate and logistics projects, he founded Barzel Properties, a company dedicated to the acquisition, development, and management of real estate assets.

Since its foundation, Barzel has had an institutional investor and partner, maintaining a highly qualified local team with whom it works in close strategic and values alignment—a partnership built over the years.

Today, Barzel has a portfolio of more than forty properties, including corporate buildings, logistics centers, and assets leased to major retail and industrial companies. Among the portfolio assets are properties occupied by companies such as Carrefour, Assaí, GPA, Amazon, and Shopee, in addition to corporate buildings in strategic locations across the city of São Paulo.

Among these assets are Thera Corporate—originally developed by Cyrela and later acquired by Barzel—and the building that once housed Odebrecht’s former headquarters. The company has also carried out relevant repositioning and refurbishment projects of corporate buildings, such as Condomínio São Luiz on Juscelino Kubitschek Avenue, as well as interventions in assets like Corporate Park, the C&A building, and other developments that have undergone modernization processes in recent years.

Today, Barzel is active in the development of new logistics and corporate projects. Among its most recent developments are a logistics center delivered in Ribeirão Preto in February and another in Porto Alegre in March, as well as the retrofit of the Citadel corporate building on Paulista Avenue, scheduled for completion in April.

At the same time, the company continues to develop new high-end office projects. Among them is Quantum, on Joaquim Floriano Street, with delivery scheduled for late October—continuing a trajectory of corporate building development that began decades ago.

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