How we rate buildings

Every building page carries a Luxury Living score out of ten. It is our own rating, built from five things that decide what a tower is actually like to live in.

The point of it is shortlisting. Anyone can tell you a Sunny Isles tower is luxurious — they all are. What is useful is knowing which one is strongest on the axis you care about, because a building that is superb for a car collector and a building that is superb for someone who wants to walk to dinner are rarely the same building.

Amenities and wellness

Pools, spa and treatment rooms, fitness, dining, entertaining space, garages, beach service. Counted, not admired. A five needs genuine depth — a gym and a pool is not a five in this market.

Design and pedigree

The architect, the interior designer, the developer, and whether a brand shaped the building or simply lent its name. Both are legitimate; they are not the same thing, and the score says which.

Beach, water and views

Where the building actually sits. Direct frontage on the sand is the top of this scale. Across Collins Avenue from the sand is materially different, however the brochure phrases it, and the score reflects it.

Service and lifestyle

Concierge, valet, in-residence dining, staffing, and any hotel operator behind it. A brand licence that supplies a name but no staff does not score like a working hotel operation.

Location and what surrounds it

Dining, shopping, marinas, parks and the beach itself — what is genuinely walkable versus what is a drive, plus the run to both airports.

Each is scored out of five and the five are averaged into the headline number. Every score carries the reasoning next to it and says where the information came from — usually the developer's own published material, sometimes the Miami-Dade county record, sometimes the architectural or trade press. Where a figure comes from a developer, the page says so, because a brochure is a good source for what a building contains and a poor one for how it feels.

What we leave out, and why

Anything about who lives there. Not nationality, religion, ethnicity, age, family composition or income — not as praise, not by implication. Under the Fair Housing Act an advertisement indicating a preference on those grounds is unlawful, and in property marketing that almost never looks like a slur. It looks like an ordinary sentence about who a building suits. So we describe the building and the neighbourhood, and never the people.

Anything about a building's condition or its disputes. Inspections, reserves, assessments and litigation are real and they matter enormously — which is why they belong inthe guides and in a conversation about a specific unit, not in a marketing score. We do not publish allegations about someone's home.

Prices and availability. Both move weekly. Anything here that went stale would be worse than nothing.

Buildings that are not finished. Pre-construction towers get a page, because people are searching for them by name and deserve something accurate to read. They do not get a score. A sales gallery is not a service model, and announced amenities are announced.

It is an opinion, and it is ours. No building, developer or association pays to appear here, to be scored, or to be scored a particular way, and nobody is shown a score before it is published. If something here is wrong, tell us what and we will fix it and date the change.

Questions people actually ask

Why is nearly everything scored between three and five?

Because these are the best buildings in one of the most expensive residential markets in the country. A rating that spread them from one to five would be inventing differences that are not there. The useful signal is which axis a building is strongest on, not whether it is good.

Does a lower score mean I should not buy there?

No. It means the building is less strong on that particular axis. A tower scoring three on surroundings because it sits on a quiet stretch of beach is exactly right for somebody who wants a quiet stretch of beach.

Can a score change?

Yes. Buildings finish construction, amenities open, operators change. Every page carries the date it was last updated.

Who writes these?

Stefania Riverin, a licensed Florida real estate sales associate with NB Elite Realty, working the Miami condominium market. The research behind each page is hers, and so is the opinion.

Work with Stefania

Want a shortlist rather than a search?

Tell me what matters — the beach, the garage, the spa, walking to dinner — and I will come back with the three buildings that actually fit, and why.