u/Lopsided-Finger-6446

I ran a historical/mathematical analysis of Brazil’s presidential runoffs rather than just looking at headline polls.

First, the historical fact: under Brazil’s current two-round presidential system, the candidate who finished first in the first round has never gone on to lose the runoff.

That would normally favor Flávio Bolsonaro, who finished the 2026 first round ahead of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, roughly 47% to 45%.

But the historical percentage movements between rounds tell a more complicated story.

My analysis looked at 4 things:

1. First-round top-two normalization

If you simply remove all eliminated candidates and normalize only Flávio and Lula’s first-round votes, the starting point is roughly:

Flávio Bolsonaro: 51.3%
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: 48.7%

So on pure first-round arithmetic, Flávio begins with about a 2.6-point normalized advantage.

1. Third-party voters

Only about 8% of the first-round vote went to candidates outside the top two.

That is important because 2026 looks much more like 2022 than elections such as 1989 or 2002, when huge portions of the electorate had to redistribute between rounds.

The relevant 2026 third-party bloc includes voters who backed candidates such as Renan Santos, Augusto Cury, Ronaldo Caiado and Romeu Zema.

These voters are not one ideological bloc.

Caiado and Zema voters would reasonably be expected to lean more toward the Bolsonaro side based on their political positioning, while other minor-candidate voters are more mixed. Some will also abstain or vote blank/null rather than move cleanly to either finalist.

That means simply assigning the entire third-party vote to Flávio because several minor candidates are on the center-right would overstate the transfer.

1. What happened to third-party voters in previous runoffs

Historically, the first-round leader’s normalized top-two share often falls in the runoff.

1989: -10.9 points
2002: -5.4 points
2006: +7.0 points
2010: -2.9 points
2014: -3.7 points
2018: -6.0 points
2022: -2.0 points

The important comparison is 2022.

The third-party pool in 2022 was about 8.4%. In 2026 it is about 7.9%.

That makes 2022 the closest modern historical comparison by pool size.

Applying the 2022 redistribution mechanically to 2026 takes the first-round leader from 51.3% normalized to roughly 49.3%.

1. Incumbency

There have been only 3 direct cases in the modern runoff era where a sitting Brazilian president personally reached the second round:

Lula in 2006
Dilma Rousseff in 2014
Jair Bolsonaro in 2022

All 3 increased their raw vote percentage between rounds.

Using the top-two normalized comparison, the incumbent shift was approximately:

Lula 2006: +7.0 points
Dilma 2014: -3.7 points
Jair Bolsonaro 2022: +2.0 points

The median incumbency effect is therefore about +2 points.

The most structurally similar case is actually 2022, because Jair Bolsonaro was the sitting president and entered the runoff in second place — exactly where Lula is now.

When I apply that approximately +2-point incumbency effect to Lula’s current normalized starting point of about 48.7%, the model lands almost exactly here:

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: 50.6%
Flávio Bolsonaro: 49.3%

That is my final projection.

Why could I be wrong?

The biggest reason is the historical fact I started with: no first-round presidential leader under Brazil’s current system has ever lost the runoff.

The second problem is that this is a tiny historical sample. There have only been 7 presidential runoffs, and only 3 involved an incumbent president.

Third, voter transfers are not mechanical. Someone who voted for Caiado, Zema, Cury or Santos is not obligated to behave like a similar bloc from 2018 or 2022. Endorsements, campaign events, turnout and abstention can change the result.

Fourth, Flávio begins with a real first-round advantage. If the center-right third-party vote consolidates behind him more strongly than my model assumes, the result changes quickly.

So the historical precedent points one way, while my percentage-transition model points narrowly the other way.

My final projection:

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — 50.6%
Flávio Bolsonaro — 49.3%

Hey, I’m looking to connect with private lenders who lend their own money or operate a small private lending business where they make the credit decisions internally.

To be specific, I’m not looking for another institutional hard money lender, loan officer, broker, correspondent, or someone who is going to submit the deal to a larger lending platform. I work on the institutional lending side myself. I’m specifically trying to build relationships with individuals deploying their own capital or a small pool of internally controlled capital who can look at an unusual deal and make the decision themselves.

My strategy is primarily off-market land where we create most of the value before we actually acquire the property through subdivisions, plats, or entitlements.

Deal 1: Double Close

Purchase price: ~$600K
Pre-close entitlement spend: Up to ~$100K
Strategy: Entitle for 12 residential units while under contract
Expected entitled value: ~$1.2M–$1.5M
Need: Transactional funding for the A-B/B-C closing

Ideally, by the time I need the capital, the entitlement work is substantially complete and I already have the end-buyer PSA. I’m basically looking for someone who can fund the acquisition for the double close.

Deal 2: Land Wholetail

Purchase price: ~$80K
Pre-close subdivision/plat spend: ~$5K–$7K
Strategy: Split one parcel into two conforming buildable lots while under contract
Expected value: ~$75K–$85K per lot
Combined exit: ~$150K–$170K
Need: High-leverage, short-term acquisition financing

Here, most of the subdivision work is done before closing. Instead of forcing a double close, I’d rather take the property down, finish the plat, market the individual lots to builders, and hold it only through the disposition period.

On these wholetail transactions, I’m much more sensitive to leverage than pricing. I’m open to paying higher interest and points for higher leverage because most of the value creation happens before I borrow the money and the loan is primarily bridging the disposition period.

Again, I’m specifically looking for private individuals or small private lending operations deploying their own capital and making their own decisions internally. If that describes you, I’d be interested in what maximum leverage and typical terms you would consider for deals like these.

I have a vacant residential lot under contract for around $30K. The lot itself is under 10,000 SF, so we're not talking about a large site.

There used to be a small house on the property that has since been demolished. From what I can determine, it was a pretty simple older Cape Cod style home, roughly 1,200 SF, single story, and it did not have a basement. The structure was above grade.

Based on nearby land sales and builder activity, I believe the vacant lot is worth roughly $45K–$50K. I had a builder interested around $40K, but they're now raising a concern that asbestos-containing material from the former house may have been left behind during demolition. They're suggesting remediation could potentially cost around $25K.

I'm trying to understand whether that is a realistic concern and cost for a property of this size.

I completely understand that an older house could have contained asbestos in siding, flooring, roofing, insulation, etc. What I'm having trouble understanding is how a roughly 1,200 SF above-grade house with no basement, on a lot under 10,000 SF, turns into a $25K asbestos soil-remediation problem after the structure has already been removed.

For anyone who has actually dealt with something similar:

How likely is meaningful asbestos contamination in the soil after demolition of a small above-grade house like this?

If asbestos-containing demolition debris was left behind, what does remediation normally involve? Are we generally talking about identifying and removing localized contaminated material, or can the entire site realistically become an environmental remediation job?

Would you get independent testing before entertaining any price reduction?

And most importantly, does ~$25K sound like a realistic remediation exposure for a property like this, or does that sound more like a worst-case number being used to renegotiate the land price?