"Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four." -Justin Welsh

Here's a question for you: Would you rather have the car of your dreams or would you rather live longer? (Maybe you don't care at all about cars and so this is an easy question, but bear with me, I'm sure you get the point.) This is a question that was posed to the audience at Elevate earlier this week and the entire room responded by saying that they would choose the latter. This is perhaps obvious. What good are material possessions if you don't have your health? But it's still an important frame of reference. And it's why Brazil-based developer AG7, who was at the conference, has centered their entire practice around "building wellness." Forget the fancy brands. Their buildings are focused on one thing: to help you live better and longer. This, to me, is a compelling value proposition. Because I think there's an easy argument to be made that there's no greater luxury than our own health and wellness.

Cover photo by Alex Perri on Unsplash

Elevate Miami, which I wrote about last month, just announced a number of new speakers and, more specifically, a number of new high-rise development projects that will be discussed at the conference. They are (not an exhaustive list):

• Dolce & Gabbana Residences, Miami

• Mercedes-Benz Places, Miami

• Aman and One High Line Residences, New York

• Indian Creek Residences & Yacht Club, Miami Beach

• Edition Residences, Miami

• AGE360, Curitiba, Brazil

What should be clear from this list is that Miami is like a different planet. It is one of the places where the richest people in the world go to spend their money, much of it on real estate. Because of this, you can think of this real estate as a luxury good, which is why so many of them are now branded.

In economic terms, a luxury good is typically defined as a good where demand increases -- more than what is proportional -- as incomes rise. For example, if a person's income goes up by 1%, but their demand for a particular thing goes up by 5%, then this thing would be considered a "luxury good," as opposed to a "normal good."

The technical definition is an income elasticity of demand that is greater than 1. More simply, this just means that as someone starts making more money, they will start spending a greater percentage of their income on luxury goods. This is in contrast to "necessity goods," where it doesn't matter how much money you make, you only need so much toilet paper, for example.

What all of this suggests is that as people from all over the world get rich, they are likely to want more branded residences in a place like Miami. However, the flip side of this dynamic is that as incomes fall, the demand for luxury goods should, in theory, also fall more than what is proportional. It works both ways.

So I'll be curious to hear -- from the developers at Elevate -- how things are going right now. We're at a time in the real estate cycle where everyone is rethinking their strategies. Or maybe, Miami truly is a different planet.