By Mark Seavy

The real estate industry is building out its licensing business.

Miami, New York, and Dubai are hubs for development, for example, with branded hotels, restaurants, and apartment buildings. And Meredith Corp.’s Better Homes & Garden has a long history of licensing deals, most recently with Realty Holdings Corp.’s Anywhere Real Estate.

But recent expansion comes as consumers gain a greater affinity for IPs, with a focus on “living the brand.”

The market for branded residences, which includes hotel brands, is sizeable. At the Future of Hospitality’s recent Branded Residences Forum (BRF), Global Branded Residences founder Riyan Itani discussed the more than 1,789 licensed projects—784 of which have been completed—with hotel operators like Marriot, Accor, and Four Seasons. These deals focus on licenses including everything from Armani (Sunny Isles, FL) to Lamborghini (Balneario Camboriu, Santa Catarina, Brazil).

Additionally, the market for branded residences is forecast to grow 120% over the next five to six years, Itani said. And while North America is home to 34% of global projects, that figure is projected to decrease to 24% over the next several years as other regions gain ground. In Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for example, there are 165 residential projects, 60 of which have been completed with hotel brands (66%) accounting for the majority, Itani said.

“The unit buyers are associating themselves with the branded concept going forward and are ready to invest in these residences,” Yadhu Mittal, SVP for Strategy and Compliance at Dubai-based BNW Developments, said at the BRF conference. BNW is building the licensed FashionTV Acaia 228-residential apartment complex that’s slated to open in Dubai in Q2 2028 under an agreement with brand owner Michel Adam Lisowski.

Elsewhere on the licensed side, The Lagardère Group’s Elle brand licensee Vertical Development has plans for a 189-unit residence tower in Miami, with construction to start in Q2 2026 and the building set to open the following year, said Viola Nigroni, Head of Licensing at Elle and Elle Decor, Americas. About a third of the tower has been pre-sold, she said.

That development is in addition to 14 Elle villas planned with a group of licensees for Peru and a residential complex in Dubai that is being built with ANAX Development. The Elle brand will join a broad array of auto brands already attached to residence towers in Miami, including Porsche (2017), Mercedes-Benz (2027), Aston Martin, and others. The 391-unit Aston Martin condominium complex (all pre-sold) was opened by licensee G&G Business Developments in April 2024. Construction of the development began in 2019.

Meanwhile, private equity firm IVEST has funding in place and is nearing a property marketing-related deal for residences in Dubai. That’s in advance of real estate brand licensing becoming “the norm” within five to 10 years, Sam Bremner, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at IVEST, told Ion Analytics.

“All over the world, developers are leveraging lifestyle brands for their buildings,” Bremner said. “If you look at almost any category of consumer products, typically the growth rate is in the single digits. But licensing within those categories often grows at double the rate, sometimes more, so we specifically look for categories where licensing is becoming much more important to that category.”

The growth rate of branded residences in recent months has also caught the attention of Disney, which was among the early developers of the concept. Plans first surfaced in the 1960s with EPCOT in Florida, but those were shelved after Walt Disney’s death. They were replaced by Celebration, FL, which opened near the Magic Kingdom in 1996. Disney later divested control of most of the town, which had a population of 11,178 as of 2020.

The multimedia giant resumed development of planned communities with Storyliving by Disney, which opened the Artisan Club at Cotino in Rancho Mirage, CA on October 23. The first of 1,900 residences (which range from 2,200 to 3,900 square feet and are priced starting at $1 million), are expected to open in early 2026. Asteria, a 1,500-acre community with 4,000 homes in Pittsboro, NC, is slated to open in 2027 under a co-development agreement between Disney Imagineering and DMB Development. It will feature Disney-inspired programming, like storytelling dinners and classes with Disney artists.

“I think having the units is a way to express who you are and that is what is pushing people to buy into creating communities,” Nigroni said.