Before a single tower has risen, before the cranes have arrived, before the storied Mandarin Oriental hotel on Brickell Key is even reduced to rubble, which is slated to happen next month, two of the most expensive condominiums ever sold in mainland Miami have already found their owners.
Swire Properties has closed on both crown penthouse residences at The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Miami, each commanding $49.9 million. Sold to separate buyers within a two-week window, the nearly $100 million in combined transactions set a new benchmark for the mainland Miami market — not once, but twice over — registering the highest total sale price and the highest price per square foot ever recorded in the city, at approximately $6,300 per square foot.
The feat is all the more remarkable for its timing. The project isn’t expected to deliver until 2030.
The dual closings push The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Miami past $1.3 billion in total sales since launch. A staggering figure for a development that has yet to break ground, an event now anticipated for later this year. February alone generated more than $90 million in sales activity, signaling that demand for this particular address hasn’t so much as paused to breathe.
Each penthouse occupies the crown of the development’s 66-story South Tower, unfolding across two stories and nearly 8,000 square feet of interior living space. They are residences conceived at the intersection of private estate and five-star resort: rooftop terraces with private lap pools and built-in bars, panoramic views sweeping across Biscayne Bay, the Atlantic, and the Miami skyline, and interiors appointed with five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, three powder rooms, a library, a gourmet Molteni&C kitchen backed by a separate chef’s kitchen, a wine bar, a sauna, staff quarters, and private elevator entry. The scale is unambiguous. The intent — to attract the world’s most discerning buyers — clearly paid off.
To understand what makes this address so singular, you have to go back four decades. In the 1980s, Swire Properties did something that few developers have the vision or the capital to attempt: it built an island. Brickell Key, the exclusive enclave that juts into Biscayne Bay just off Miami’s Brickell Financial District, is a Swire creation from the ground up, master-planned as a private residential refuge in the shadow of the city’s skyline. Today it remains one of Miami’s most coveted addresses, defined by its walkability, its water views on every axis, and a sense of remove from the urban bustle that sits just across the bridge.
The Mandarin Oriental hotel, which long anchored the island’s southern tip, was for years among Miami’s only true five-star properties — the kind of address that quietly signaled to those who knew that you had arrived. Now, that landmark building is being swept away to make room for its successor. The implosion, scheduled for next month, will clear the site for what Swire envisions as its most ambitious project on Brickell Key yet.
In its place: two towers designed by globally acclaimed architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, encompassing approximately 300 residences and 150 hotel rooms, all operating under the Mandarin Oriental flag. The 66-story South Tower will house 228 private residences — including the two record-setting penthouses — while the 33-story North Tower introduces 70 private residences, 28 turnkey Hotel Collection residences, and 121 hotel guest rooms, weaving Mandarin Oriental’s legendary hospitality directly into the fabric of residential life. Interior programming brings together Parisian designer Tristan Auer for the South Tower’s common spaces and AD100 designer Laura Gonzalez for the North Tower’s private residences — a casting that reads less like a design brief and more like a curatorial act.
The penthouses don’t exist in a vacuum. They are the apex expression of a broader trend that shows no signs of cooling. Ultra-luxury closings above $10 million in South Florida reached their second-highest total on record in 2025, according to the MIAMI Association of Realtors, and early 2026 data points to sustained inflows from high-tax states — California and New York chief among them — as wealthy buyers continue to recalibrate where they plant their flags.
Swire’s footprint in Miami goes well beyond Brickell Key. The developer is also the force behind Brickell City Centre, the mixed-use complex that has become the commercial spine of the Brickell district — home to luxury hotels, condominiums, and marquee retail and dining brands. Simon Property Group acquired the property last year for $512 million, a transaction that underscored just how thoroughly Swire has shaped the neighborhood it helped build.
For Swire, then, the nearly $100 million in penthouse sales at The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Miami is not merely a sales milestone. It is a punctuation mark — the latest in a long sentence the company has been writing on this island, and in this city, for the better part of half a century.
Remaining South Tower residences are priced from $6.6 million; North Tower residences begin at $3.9 million.
For more homes like this, contact HL Real Estate Group: Seth@hlrealestategroup.com and 800-257-5661.
