The latest cool amenity? A name brand
Market for branded luxury condo units is rising 12% a year
Chart a 10-mile path down the Miami coast, and the options for luxury shopping are endless. But from Fendi to Missoni to Porsche to Bentley, the branded products many shoppers are buying aren’t items you can take home. They are homes.
Branded real estate is surging: The market for name-brand luxury condominium units is projected to grow 12% each year between now and 2026, according to a report from global real estate consultants Knight Frank. Like blue jean makers and handbag designers, developers have long understood the power of a label, and today in nearly every major city, homeowners can shop residences from well-known hospitality brands like Four Seasons, Aman and Ritz-Carlton. Now more surprising brands are getting in on the trend, with purveyors of both luxury cars and couture looking to condos for their next frontier.
In Sunny Isles Beach, a sleepy, resort-heavy city within MiamiDade County, the towers with boldfaced names include a Porsche Design Tower, Residences by Armani Casa and the forthcoming Bentley Residences, which by 2026 will stretch toward the sky with an exterior of recessed glass in Bentley’s signature diamond-in-diamond quilted design, instantly recognizable to devotees of the automaker.
All of them were the brainchild of the same man: Gil Dezer, who for more than a decade has been quietly betting on this moment, expanding his brand partnerships as Miami’s housing values climbed. “The car brands of today want to be not just car brands, but also lifestyle brands as well,” said Dezer, who partnered with Porsche in 2012. “The same goes for everything from golf clubs to sunglasses. And we were fortunate enough to be able to get in on it for real estate.”
Dezer knew that for the project to be a success, he’d have to think outside the box.
“Porsche doesn’t exactly correlate with real estate,” Dezer said.
The building, which broke ground in 2014 and opened in 2017, has the same sleek, souped-up masculine energy
of the car shows Dezer frequented as a child with his father. There is no dedicated pedestrian access. Visitors arrive beneath a graphite-hued archway bearing the words “Porsche Design” in the automaker’s trademark 911 Porscha font. They can park and enter the airy lobby done up in the same bronze, red and black of Porsche’s logo, or continue in their vehicles into the building’s patented car elevator, called the Dezervator, which whisks both cars and drivers up 60 stories to units with sky-high garages.
That elevator — which deposits cars behind a glass wall in front of each unit — is “a highlight” of the building, Stefan Buescher, the CEO of Porsche Lifestyle Group, said in a statement. “It was a natural continuation to transfer our unique design principles to the world of real estate,” he said.
Dezer spent $480 million to build the Porsche Design Tower, where 132 units run between $4 million and $32 million. Ten percent of his outlay, he estimates, was on the production of the Dezervator alone. He calls it money well spent.
“I initially did it because I thought, ‘How cool would it be to have your Porsche or your Lamborghini or Bugatti in your living room?’ ” he said. “But what really happened is people starting buying units for the privacy. Because if you live in a condo, especially if you’re famous, the most annoying thing is driving through the front entrance or dealing with the valet. We avoided that.”
Brand recognition sealed the deal for Juan Pablo Verdiquio, 46, a Miamibased real estate developer who moved into a three-bedroom unit in the Porsche Design Tower in 2017. He now counts Lionel Messi, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz among his neighbors. As someone who owns a few Porsche cars, he felt this condo purchase came with a preapproved stamp of quality in Miami’s crowded market.
“There are thousands of new apartments built each year here, so going with a brand I knew felt like a way to preserve the longterm value,” Verdiquio said. “From a financial sense, I really liked that it was branded with Porsche.”
Carlos Rosso, a luxury Miami developer, said that homebuyers are increasingly embracing logic like Verdiquio’s when buying real estate, elevating the power of legacy brands that cross over into the residential space.
“We are all in the same market for buyers, and we are all trying to differentiate our products,” he said. “Every residential building needs to tell a story, and branding is a way to not have to explain what a building is all about. You’re associating yourself with a brand that’s already familiar.”
In 2014, Rosso also partnered with Dezer on Residences by Armani Casa, a 56-story condo tower just a stone’s throw from the Porsche Design Tower.
The building opened in December 2019. Giorgio Armani himself designed the tapestries, textiles and hand-selected the furnishings, and the result is an extreme yin to Porsche’s yang. Whereas the Porsche
Design Tower has a millionaire-meets-mancave vibe, all sharp edges and bold primary hues, Residences by Armani Casa is feminine and lush, with muted floral wallpaper and curved furnishings in taupe and gold.
Now Dezer is turning his attention to Bentley Residences Miami, scheduled to break ground later this year. The 62-story oceanfront building, he said, will take the amenities offered in the Porsche Design Tower and supercharge them: There will be four Dezervator elevators, garages that can house three or four cars and private outdoor swimming pools attached to each of the 216 units. Ocean-view residences will also have outdoor showers. Common spaces will include a Macallan Whisky Bar, a restaurant by Todd English and a cigar lounge. Units are priced between $5.5 million and $35 million.
For serious car collectors looking to translate horsepower to housing, Miami offers other options. In downtown Miami, the 391-unit Aston Martin Residences, currently under construction and scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, is nearly sold out.
The 66-story tower is shaped like a gleaming curved sail, with units starting at $6.5 million and climbing to $59 million for the triplex penthouse, which comes with your very own Aston Martin Vulcan, a rare $2.3 million hypercar.