The V:House luxury condo project in São Paulo will have 303 units and cost about $70 million. Neurama

Late last year, Jorge Perez, the chief executive of the Related Group in Florida and long known as Miami's "condo king," launched sales at his first-ever condo project in Brazil, a cluster of five towers in São Paulo known as Parque Global.

Less than six months later, he already has moved on to his second Brazilian deal: Sales begin this weekend at a smaller condo development known as V:House.

Despite a slowdown in the Brazilian economy, American developers are betting that the real-estate market, particularly for luxury condos, still has legs. "Brazilians really see themselves as becoming one of the great economic powers of the world," Mr. Perez said. "And we want to be there at the beginning."

He said he was drawn to Brazil because it is one of the world's largest economies, and because he anticipates huge growth in the country from events such as the World Cup, to be held next month in Brazil, and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Mr. Perez and longtime business partner Stephen Ross, chairman of the New York-based firm Related Cos. and co-owner of the Miami Dolphins football team, established a partnership in 2012 called Related Brasil. They hired Daniel Citron, a former executive based in Brazil for New York real-estate firm Tishman Speyer, and committed $120 million to invest in the country.

In November, the partnership started sales at the first phase of Parque Global, a megaproject on the banks of the Pinheiros River that will have 672 condominiums and will cost an estimated $450 million. The project is expected to eventually include a hotel, offices and retail space. V:House, which will have 303 units and be located in São Paulo's Faria Lima financial district, is expected to cost about $70 million.

Annual home-price gains in São Paulo have slowed over the past three years, from more than 25% in 2011 to less than 15% in 2013, according a report released by Brazil's central bank last week. The average asking price per square meter for an apartment in the city was 8,003 reais ($3,613) in April, or about $336 a square foot, according to the FipeZap index, a measure of home prices produced by a think tank affiliated with São Paulo's state government. Apartments in Parque Global have sold for roughly $450 a square foot.

Parque Global is being built in a joint venture with Starwood Capital Group and Brazilian developer Bueno Netto Construction.

Condos in Parque Global are intended for well-to-do professionals and families, while V:House is targeted toward younger buyers who work in high-paying industries such as banking, advertising, technology and private equity, according to Ken Wong, head of international development for Related Cos.

For both projects, the partnership has hired Miami-based architecture firm Arquitectonica, which has designed condo projects for both Mr. Perez and Mr. Ross's companies in the U.S.

Mr. Perez, who also is an art collector, made his name building thousands of high-end condos in Miami during the last real-estate boom. In the crash, he lost more than $1 billion of his own personal fortune and had to give back several properties to lenders. Mr. Ross is best known for building Manhattan's Time Warner Center. Both began their careers in real estate as developers of subsidized, affordable housing.

The Related partnership plans to pay for the São Paulo projects using a combination of more than $100 million of the companies' own equity, buyer deposits and construction loans that haven't been finalized. The developers expect 70% of the cost of both projects to be paid for with construction loans.

In Brazil, buyers typically pay up to 60% of the cost of the home before construction is completed, making the projects less risky for both the developers and the buyers. Lenders in the country typically require that 30% to 40% of the units in a building be presold before making a construction loan.

Messrs. Perez and Ross "are very well known successful players in U.S. markets that have seen strong amounts of demand from Brazilians, especially in Miami and New York," said Joel Wells, who manages an emerging-markets real-estate fund for Alpine Funds, based in Westchester County, N.Y.

The Related partnership enters Brazil at an uneasy time. Presidential elections are set for the end of the year and the country's economy has slowed in recent years, expanding just 0.9% last year compared with 7.5% in 2010.

Sales of apartments in multiunit buildings in São Paulo rose 31% during the first nine months of 2013, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to Ernst & Young. Meanwhile, apartment prices are up 13% in the past year. But Viktor Andrade, director of real estate for EY Brazil, said more recent data suggest that the pace of sales is starting to slow. "Real estate is not the easy home run that it was three years ago, but it's still a good idea," Mr. Andrade said.

Mr. Perez noted that despite the slowdown, Parque Global has presold 80% of its units, and a month after launching sales for the first two planned buildings, the partnership started offering units in the project's third tower as presales.

"The market has cooled off a bit, but we think it's temporary," Mr. Perez said. "Will São Paulo be able to consume all this real estate over time? There's no question in my mind about it."

> via WSJ