When the Sherry-Netherland apartment hotel debuted on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1927, it had the distinction of being the world’s first “branded” residence, in this case leveraging the reputation of Sherry’s, a popular restaurant that had operated about 15 blocks south until the early days of Prohibition. With a Gothic minaret, a vaulted lobby that nodded to the Vatican library, and each of the top 14 floors a single, elegant apartment, the property quickly made an impact in the realm of posh real estate.
Nearly a century later, the category is surging—up some 150 percent over the past decade, according to London-based commercial-real-estate brokerage Savills. Today, real-estate design firm and consultancy WATG Strategy says there are over 700 branded residential developments, with upwards of 100,000 total homes either completed or in the planning stages, around the globe. And Savills predicts that the sector will double in size by 2027, fueled by a surge of prospective buyers in both established locations— New York, Miami, London, Dubai—and emerging markets as varied as Oman, Poland, and Guyana.
What has changed in recent years— other than the sheer number of entrants into this increasingly lucrative sector, particularly at the luxury end of the spectrum—is the breadth of brands that want in on the action. The hotel companies that pioneered the concept are now joined by fashion and jewelry houses including Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Fendi, and Bulgari, as well as car marques such as Porsche, Bentley, and Aston Martin. Chris Graham, founder of Graham Associates, a leading consultancy in the field, calls a home with any of these designer labels a “trophy purchase.” He tells , “People are quite keen on living there. It’s quite a badge of
