Branded Residences in 2026: Eighteen Brands Tested on What They Publish, and Why None of Them Passes

Eighteen hotel brands were tested on what they publish about owning a branded residence, and none of them passed: the highest score is One&Only Private Homes at 31/100, ahead of Aman (23), Ritz-Carlton (22), Nobu (18) and Mandarin Oriental (17), against a pass mark of 60 fixed before any data was collected. Not one brand publishes a service charge, a residence fee, a brand licence fee or the formula behind any of them. Not one publishes what happens to your costs, your contract or the name on your building if the brand walks away. This is a category that Knight Frank counts at 903 schemes and more than 170,000 units worldwide, growing towards 300,000 units by 2031 - and at brand level, it discloses nothing.

Verified 22 September 2026 · each brand's own residences, ownership and portfolio pages · Knight Frank Global Branded Residence Survey 2026 · company and press sources · every figure re-read at source

Branded residences compared: eighteen brands scored out of 100

Score breakdown by criterion

Two patterns decide this table. The first is that 35 of the 100 points — fee transparency and brand exit — are unavailable to everybody, because not a single brand publishes anything against either. A perfect score on the other four criteria would still only reach 65. The second is that what separates the top of the field from the bottom is portfolio housekeeping, not disclosure of substance: Mandarin Oriental scores 14 of 15 for maintaining a list you can check, and Four Seasons, the brand that invented this category in Boston in 1985, scores 4 because its own two pages give two different portfolio totals. Being able to count the buildings is the easiest thing on this rubric, and half the field cannot do it.

What a branded residence actually costs to own

Nobody will tell you, and the gap between the eighteen brands is only the difference between saying nothing and saying almost nothing. One&Only publishes the single fee sentence in the entire category — "under one clear management fee, One&Only will take care of all the administration" — and attaches no number to it. Every other brand omits the topic entirely: no service charge per square foot, no brand licence fee, no worked example, no range.

Two things follow for a buyer. The recurring cost on a branded residence is the number that determines whether the asset works, and it is routinely a multiple of an unbranded equivalent in the same building type — so the absence of any published benchmark means you cannot sanity-check a scheme's figure against anything before you are deep in a sales process. And the brand fee and the service charge are different things, often charged by different parties under different agreements; no brand in this index distinguishes them publicly, so a single "management fee" quoted to you may or may not include the licence cost of the name. Ask for both, separately, in writing. See also our luxury hotel brand hierarchy for how these names sit against one another on the hotel side.

Four Seasons vs Mandarin Oriental vs Ritz-Carlton: how the big names compare

On disclosure the order is Ritz-Carlton 22, Mandarin Oriental 17 and Four Seasons 10 — and the brand with the longest history in the category is the one that publishes least reliably about itself. All three are silent on cost, so the separation comes from rental terms, title and whether you can verify the portfolio.

Two cautions when comparing the three. Marriott's own disclaimer, published on its St. Regis pages and applying across its licensed residential brands, states that "Marriott does not own, develop, sponsor or serve as sales or marketing agent" for these projects — which is the clearest statement anywhere in this index of what a hotel brand's involvement in a branded residence actually is, and it is worth reading before assuming the hotel company stands behind the building. And Four Seasons' Residence Clubs are a fractional product, not whole ownership; they appear under the same brand umbrella and are a materially different thing to buy. Background on the service cultures behind these names: Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and Aman.

What happens if the brand leaves

Not one of the eighteen brands publishes an answer, and it is the risk that defines the asset class: the premium you pay is for a name that is attached by a contract you never see, for a term nobody discloses. It is not hypothetical. One de-flagging is documented and completed, and one is being threatened in public right now.

Two questions to put in writing before exchanging on any branded residence. How long does the brand licence run, and what are the renewal terms — a twenty-year term on a home you intend to hold for thirty is a material fact. And what happens to the service charge if the brand leaves: the building still needs staffing at the standard it was designed for, and an unbranded building with branded running costs is the specific failure mode this disclosure gap hides. Neither question is answerable from public material for any brand in this index.

How big the branded residence market actually is

903 schemes at the end of 2025, around 1,088 by the end of 2026, and more than 170,000 units worldwide — a market that has tripled in a decade and is forecast to reach roughly 1,800 schemes and 300,000 units by 2031. The figures come from Knight Frank's Global Branded Residence Survey 2026, published in mid-September 2026, and are reported here from coverage of that survey rather than read in the report itself.

Two things worth holding against those numbers. The projection that non-hotel brands — fashion houses, car makers, designers — reach almost 40% of supply within two years matters for this index, because a car marque has even less reason than a hotel group to publish a service charge, and no hospitality operation behind the name. And the growth rate is the argument for the disclosure gap mattering more each year, not less: a category adding roughly 130,000 units by 2031 on terms nobody publishes is a consumer-information problem that scales. For the adjacent question of buying access rather than title, see our destination club index; for living aboard rather than ashore, our residential ships and yachts page.

The eighteen brands assessed

Every brand below was measured on the same rubric from its own published pages, and none is named to an index position because none cleared the pass mark. Scores are shown in full precisely because there is no ranking to award: this is a scorecard of a category, not a shortlist.

Three rules before buying a branded residence

1 · Get the service charge and the brand fee as two separate numbers, in writing, before you exchange. No brand in this index publishes either, and they are frequently charged by different parties under different agreements. A single quoted "management fee" may or may not include the cost of the name on the door, and the difference compounds over a holding period. Ask for a worked example at your unit size, and ask what has happened to it over the last five years at a comparable scheme in the same portfolio.

2 · Ask how long the brand licence runs and what happens when it ends. This is the single largest unpublished variable in the category and the reason Trump Toronto could become St. Regis Toronto and Amanyara's owner can credibly threaten to take the flag down. The building keeps its running costs when the name goes; the premium attached to the name does not necessarily survive. Get the term, the renewal mechanism and the fee consequences of termination.

3 · If you intend to rent it out, get the split, the owner-use cap and the blackout dates before anything else. Ritz-Carlton is the only brand of eighteen that even runs a rental page, and it publishes none of the three. An owner-use cap is what turns a home into an investment product you can only occupy on the operator's terms, and it is negotiated at scheme level where you have least visibility of the market norm.

What changed for branded residences in 2026

The category grew, a major brand opened in London, and the clearest brand-exit threat in its history went public — while disclosure stayed exactly where it was. Knight Frank's Global Branded Residence Survey 2026, published in mid-September, put the market at 903 schemes and more than 170,000 units with roughly 1,088 schemes expected by year end. Six Senses made its London debut at The Whiteley on 1 March 2026 with 14 branded residences inside a 139-residence development, IHG's first in the city. On 27 August 2026 it was reported that the owner of Amanyara is suing Aman and Vladislav Doronin and has threatened to rebrand the resort, the most public brand-exit dispute the sector has produced. And in July 2026 WorldHotels launched its first branded residences in Ho Chi Minh City, 74 villas and 424 apartments — a mid-market operator entering a category that was, until recently, the preserve of the names in the table above.