Luxury Miami condo developers have long partnered with carmakers, fashion houses and hotel brands to attract wealthy buyers. Now timepieces are entering the mix, with Swiss watchmaker Breitling betting its brand can help sell high-end homes in the city's increasingly crowded market for branded residences.
Breitling and its controlling company, Partners Group, plan to develop B Residences, a 70-story tower in Brickell, Miami's financial district. The project features more than 300 Breitling-branded residences and penthouses on a 1-acre site. Empira Group will develop the property, while Partners Group expects to invest $220 million.
The project reflects a broader national trend in luxury real estate, where developers are increasingly turning to consumer brands to distinguish projects and justify premium pricing. Once dominated by hospitality names such as Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis and Four Seasons, branded residences in Miami now include partnerships with companies from the automotive, fashion and culinary sectors as developers compete for affluent buyers.
A spokesperson for the development team declined to provide the project's address or sales information when reached by CoStar News via email.
The Miami development would be the first watch-branded condo project in the local market and expands Breitling's push into lifestyle and real estate ventures.
"This is a highly differentiated branded residences strategy, with the long-term private capital, development expertise, and brand coming from within the same group," Alfred Ganter, co-founder and chairman of the board of Partners Group, said in a statement.
Partners Group, based in Baar, Switzerland, owns a majority stake in Breitling and acquired Empira in 2025. The private equity firm oversees $185 billion in assets under management, according to its website.
Empira is a vertically integrated real estate developer with its North American headquarters in Miami. The company is completing construction of The Perrin, a luxury 310-unit apartment complex at 244 SW Ninth St., along with two luxury multifamily projects in The Roads and Coral Gables.
Miami helped popularize the branded-residence concept when the world's first Porsche-branded condo tower opened in 2017 and sold out. Since then, the city's luxury condo pipeline has become increasingly defined by brand partnerships, with developers enlisting household names to help projects stand out in a competitive market.
"Branded residences can carry a significant global price premium, particularly when combining the lifestyle appeal of an active global city such as Miami and the built-in marketing narrative of a heritage brand like Breitling," said Lahcen Knapp, founder and chairman of the board of Empira, in the statement.
B Residences is not Breitling's first real estate-adjacent venture. The company plans to open B Social New York, a private members club in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, next year.
Construction on B Residences is not expected to begin until 2028, with completion projected for 2031. In the meantime, Partners Group is offering both U.S. and international investors an opportunity to buy into the project.