Behind the scenes of the nearly 60% drop in the stock market index of one of the main real estate funds.

An unprecedented crisis in one of the leading real estate investment trusts (REITs) on the stock exchange has shaken the real estate market.

Listed in the IFIX index and known for its high dividend yield — which reached around 40% in the last 12 months —, the Cartesia Recebíveis Imobiliários FII (CACR11) has accumulated a depreciation of nearly 60% since the end of April, when it announced the suspension of dividends.

The loss in market value was R$ 230 million, absorbed by the more than 26,500 investors who held shares in the fund at the beginning of May. The justification given by the asset manager , Cartesia Capital, for halting distributions to shareholders was the "prolonged frustration of cash inflows" in projects within the portfolio.

The most significant default identified by the asset manager involves the Helvetia CRI (Real Estate Receivables Certificate), an operation with an outstanding balance of R$ 58.9 million. The CRI, which has Helvetia 5 Administradora de Imóveis as the debtor, is linked to Helvetia Le Jardin, a high-end horizontal development in Indaiatuba, in the interior of São Paulo state.

The CRI officially defaulted this week after Helvetia 5 failed to make the commercial note payments scheduled for May 22, 2026. However, the problems surrounding the operation are longstanding, with a series of waivers issued to avoid the early maturity of the debt dating back to July 2023.

Documents obtained by NeoFeed confirm this history. The initial breaches involved the lack of audited financial statements from Helvetia 5.

Later, the problem expanded to include a failure to meet sales targets and operational cash flow issues: in October 2023, R$ 1 million was transferred from the construction fund to the reserve fund to pay interest on the CRIs (Real Estate Receivables Certificates), "given the lack of incoming cash flow," the document states.

In the following years, the outstanding documentation for the transaction accumulated. In its 2025 annual report, Oliveira Trust , the fiduciary agent for the Helvetia CRIs, reported that it had not received proof of the allocation of the funds foreseen in the transaction since 2023.

According to CRI documents, Helvetia 5 was required to provide proof of resource allocation every six months, with a report detailing the use of funds, a measurement report, a works report, and a physical-financial schedule.

According to the trustee, the audited financial statements of Helvetia 5 for the periods 2022 to 2025, as well as the balance sheets of the trustees TAREF and Vila Nova Conceição, had also not been delivered.

According to sources close to the operation, as reported by NeoFeed , construction on the Helvetia Le Jardin project was halted in September of last year due to non-payment to SteelCorp , the construction company contracted to execute the project. According to the source, the payment delays began between June and August of last year.

The complete project involved the construction of 48 houses, but only 12 were built, and one of the project's phases, Bougainville, was still in the project approval phase at the Indaiatuba City Hall, according to monthly monitoring documents from the CRIs (Real Estate Registry Offices).

The transaction documents show that the CRI (Real Estate Receivables Certificate) had monthly interest payments and indicative amortization of 0.5% per month of the outstanding balance, in addition to a minimum cash sweep mechanism of R$ 500,000 if the construction fund exceeded 105% of the outstanding balance of works to be incurred.

In March 2026, the CRI monitoring report recorded receipts of R$ 886,900 from the debtor and payments of the same amount to the bondholders, comprising R$ 581,500 in interest and R$ 305,400 in principal amortization. However, the updated outstanding balance still totaled R$ 61.6 million, and the reserve fund appeared to be zero, below the minimum required of R$ 1.744 million.

Although the operation had shown signs of stress for years, the seriousness of the problem only became clear to CACR11 shareholders at the end of April, when Cartesia suspended the distribution of dividends.

Until then, the management company had been treating Helvetia in its management reports as an operation under monitoring, anchored in the expectation of mass sales of Helvetia Le Jardin units to an institutional investor.

In the 2025 and early 2026 reports, the sale to institutional investors still appeared as a solution under negotiation — initially expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025, then in the first quarter of 2026, and finally in the second quarter.

It was only in the April report that the manager stated that the strategy of selling the properties "did not materialize" and linked the suspension of dividends to the "prolonged frustration of cash inflows" in projects in the portfolio.

The negotiations

Cartesia never named the institutional investor behind the potential purchase of the properties. However, sources consulted by NeoFeed and documents obtained by the news outlet point to Nest Eagle FII, managed by Nest Asset, as the institutional investor behind the negotiations.

Nest Eagle is a company dedicated to purchasing luxury real estate for rental income and came under scrutiny from audit courts and the Public Prosecutor's Office last year after receiving investments from public pension funds ( RPPS ). Its largest contributions came from RioPrevidência , the state pension fund of Rio de Janeiro, and the RPPS of São Roque and Cajamar.

The same investigation revealed that, in February 2025, Nest Eagle shareholders approved the acquisition of properties with potential conflicts of interest at a meeting.

Among these properties was the authorization to purchase up to 20 houses in the Jardin D'L'Helvetia development, the same one linked to CRI Helvetia and which had SteelCorp, connected to a former partner of Nest Asset, as the contracted construction company.

However, the purchase of the properties was contingent on factors that did not materialize — among them, a level of fundraising considered satisfactory.

The start of negotiations for the mass sale of properties was reported by CACR11, which already held debt tied to the project, in its July 2025 management report.

Nest Eagle had already raised R$157.8 million in its first offering—almost entirely destined for RPPS (Brazilian pension funds)—and had a second offering underway when Cartesia began mentioning the negotiation of Helvetia Le Jardin with an institutional investor. The plan, this time, was to raise up to R$360.2 million for Nest Eagle.

In that same month of July, however, the investments made by RPPS (Regimes Próprios de Previdência Social - Public Pension Systems) in the fund's first offering began to be questioned by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Accounts of São Paulo, with the first case involving the RPPS of São Roque. In September, the RPPS of Cajamar, which had already invested R$ 25 million in the second offering of Nest Eagle, also began to be questioned by the MPC-SP (Public Prosecutor's Office of Accounts of São Paulo).

The second offering of Nest Eagle ended on October 8th, raising only R$ 28.9 million, compared to the initially projected R$ 360.2 million.

Even after the low fundraising of the second offering was confirmed by Nest Eagle, Cartesia reaffirmed in its October management report that the developer was "in direct negotiations with an institutional investor for the mass sale of the project's inventory units" and that it expected to conclude the negotiations in the fourth quarter.

"For this reason, the pace of construction was reduced to focus on the leisure and infrastructure area, since such a sale would require some customizations by the buyer," the manager stated. However, according to a source close to the operation, SteelCorp has already left the project.

The report also indicated that "sales of the development were halted at 23%, in a strategic decision that considered waiting for the completion of Phase 1 to sell ready-to-move-in units, which have a higher market value."

Already facing scrutiny from regulatory bodies, in November Nest Eagle submitted to its shareholders for ratification the purchase of up to 20 properties in Helvetia Le Jardin, which had potential conflicts of interest – a purchase approved in February. This time, however, 64.18% of the shareholders voted against the transaction.

Even so, in subsequent reports, Cartesia continued to treat the sale to the institutional investor as an ongoing negotiation. In November and December, the expected completion date for the negotiations was postponed to the first quarter of 2026. In February, the deadline was moved to the second quarter.

The turning point came in the April report, when, in explaining the suspension of dividends, the asset manager cited the "inertia of the corporate parties involved in the Helvetia CRI" in resolving the course of the venture, "originally conceived for the acquisition of properties by an investment fund focused on leasing high-end properties."

The report confirming the end of negotiations was released only after the termination of the real estate consulting contract between Nest Eagle and Viracondo Holding e Investimentos, on April 14, 2026.

Documents from CRI Helvetia itself also link Viracondo and Nest to the structure of the operation.

According to the contracts, notifications intended for Helvetia 5 Administradora de Imóveis, the debtor of the CRI (Real Estate Receivables Certificate), should be sent to arthur@viracondo.com.br, with a copy to imobiliario@nestam.com.br, email addresses belonging to the Viracondo and Nest Asset domains, respectively. The person responsible for receiving the notifications, according to the documents, was Arthur Gaz, COO of Viracondo.

The same address and contact information for Viracondo appear in the notifications addressed to TAREF and Vila Nova Conceição, partners of Helvetia 5 and trustees of the shares given as collateral in the CRI.

SteelCorp's offer

Although Cartesia only reported the end of negotiations for the mass sale to institutional investors in its April report, sources close to the operation claim that the talks had already been concluded at the end of last year.

Without the expected institutional exit, SteelCorp itself began negotiating a potential purchase of the venture to try to reduce losses from the operation. One of the conditions, however, involved the purchase at a discount of the CRIs (Real Estate Receivables Certificates) held by Cartesia.

According to sources who spoke to NeoFeed , the negotiations lasted about two months and ended approximately 40 days ago, after SteelCorp and Cartesia failed to reach an agreement on the debt discount. At no point did Cartesia inform its shareholders of the existence of the negotiations.

Contacted for comment, SteelCorp, Cartesia, and Nest did not respond to requests for interviews.