This is gross:

Five years ago, Rio de Janeiro’s “favela” hillside slums had such a bad rap that they were virtual no-go zones, where drug lords laid down the law and outsiders set foot at their peril.

But since 2011, police have seized control of dozens of favelas from drug gangs, and things have changed so dramatically that some of the slums are now seen as hot real estate investments — so hot, in fact, that two Europeans recently locked horns in a legal battle over a battered favela house. […]

In the Vidigal slum, middle-class Brazilians and foreigners who can’t afford chic Rio neighborhoods are snapping up properties wedged between tony [sic] beachfront areas like Copacabana and Ipanema.

“It used to be you’d say the word ‘favela’ and people would instantly think: drug trafficking, machine guns, grenades, kidnappings,” said Anderson Ramos, a real estate agent with V.D.G. Imobiliaria, Vidigal’s first…