The Links Estates at Fisher Island

A different owner, a different project

Until August 2026 this page described The Links Estates as a community of 12 mansions averaging 10,000 square feet, priced at an average of $33 million or about $3,300 a square foot, on lots of 0.3 to half an acre, with four homes presold and construction on the first “expected to begin this summer and be completed in early 2025”.

That was a fair account of the project as Heinrich von Hanau launched it through Fisher Island Holdings in June 2022. It is not the project today.

In 2024, Madar Group USA — the family firm of Jean and Alain Madar, run by chief executive David-Emmanuel Cohen — bought the sites from von Hanau for $40 million. Madar is building six spec mansions across a 2.5-acre development, marketed as The Mansions on Fisher Island, with homes from 8,500 to more than 18,000 square feet. Completion is now expected between the end of 2026 and the second quarter of 2027.

One transaction from the original phase is worth recording because it is a real, closed number rather than an asking price: in August 2022, two combined single-family lots totalling 31,619 square feet sold for $13 million, bought from Fisher Island Holdings by a private purchaser. That is roughly $411 per square foot of bare land on Fisher Island four years ago.

Why the ownership change matters to a buyer: you are no longer buying a lot from a land developer and building on it. You are buying a finished spec house from a developer who has designed, built and furnished it. Those are different purchases — different contracts, different warranties, different scope for customisation, and a different party responsible if something is wrong. Anyone who came to this page expecting the 2022 proposition should know the model has changed.

Testing the “no more land” claim

Every ultra-luxury development claims scarcity. Madar’s chief executive David-Emmanuel Cohen made a specific version of it: “There is no more land on Fisher Island” for single-family homes. That is exactly the sort of claim I would normally treat as sales language, so I checked it against the county roll.

On 26 August 2026 I pulled every parcel the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser indexes on Fisher Island Drive — all 782 folios — and grouped them by the county’s own subdivision names. The result:

• 766 of 782 folios (98.0%) sit inside condominium subdivisions — Palazzo del Sol and della Luna, Bayside Village, Seaside, the Oceanside buildings, Bayview, Marina Village, Palazzo del Mare, Harborview and the rest. Twenty-one separate condominium declarations.
• The remaining 16 folios are eight parcels in the Lindisfarne subdivisions, four in a commercial harbour-terminal plat, the island’s day school, and three unclassified parcels — one a utility site, one county-owned, and one a large commercial holding.

So the claim holds up. Fisher Island is, in the county’s own record, almost entirely a condominium island. Detached single-family housing on it is a rounding error, and there is no meaningful undeveloped residential land left to create more. That is an unusually strong scarcity position — and it is the single best argument for the pricing here.

The honest counterweight: scarcity supports value, it does not guarantee liquidity. A six-home market at $34 million to $57 million has very few possible buyers in any given year, and a seller who needs to move quickly in a soft market has no depth of demand to fall back on. Buy here because you want to live on Fisher Island, not because you expect to trade out of it easily.

What is selling, and for how much

The position as reported on 26 May 2026:

• Three homes under contract, with a combined asking price of $105.5 million — two at $36.5 million and one at $36 million.
• Two of those three contracts were signed within the previous 30 days. The first was signed back in 2024, so the pace clearly accelerated in the spring of 2026.
• Three homes remain available, starting at $34 million.
• The largest remaining home is asking $57 million for approximately 18,000 square feet on a half-acre lot.

Note what happened to the price band. The original 2022 marketing put the average at $33 million. The current entry price is $34 million and the top is $57 million. The rise at the top end is driven mostly by size — homes of 18,000 square feet rather than the 10,000-square-foot average originally described — so it is not straightforwardly a price increase per foot. Ask for the price per square foot on each specific house rather than comparing headline totals, because these homes are not the same size as each other.

Madar reported buyers as a mix of international and domestic purchasers, including Californians, and noted they skewed younger than expected — some in their forties. For a market historically associated with retirement-age wealth, that is a genuine shift worth noting.

One important caution about every number in this section: these are asking prices on homes under contract, not recorded sale prices. An asking price and a closing price are different things, and until these transactions close and are recorded, nobody — including me — knows what they actually traded for.

Why no price here can be verified yet

On finished properties I publish the recorded deed history from the county, because it is the only price data that cannot be presented selectively. It does not yet exist for these homes.

On 26 August 2026 I searched the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser for “Links Estate Drive” and every variation of it: the address index returns nothing. I then swept all 782 folios the county indexes on Fisher Island Drive and grouped them by subdivision. No Links Estates and no Mansions on Fisher Island subdivision exists on that street in the county’s records. There are no folios, no assessed values and no recorded sales for these homes.

That is expected rather than alarming — the houses are still under construction, with completion running from late 2026 into 2027, and the Appraiser adds new construction to the roll after it is finished. But it does mean that every figure on this page is a reported asking price from the development trade press, and none of it is a verified transaction. When these homes complete and their deeds record, this page will carry the real numbers.

For context on what the county can tell you: the August 2022 sale of two combined lots at $13 million for 31,619 square feet is a closed, reported transaction, and the wider Fisher Island condominium market has a deep recorded history I can pull for you on any specific building.

What to establish before you buy here

• Which house, and its actual measured size. The range runs from 8,500 to more than 18,000 square feet — more than a twofold difference. Compare price per square foot, not headline price.
• The completion date in the contract and the remedies if it slips. This project has already moved from “early 2025” to late 2026 or 2027 under a change of ownership.
• Exactly what is included — these are being sold as finished and furnished spec homes, so establish in writing what conveys, particularly furnishings, fixtures and landscaping.
• The builder’s warranty and who stands behind it, given the sites changed hands in 2024 and the current seller is not the party that originally entitled the land.
• Fisher Island’s own costs and rules — club membership, ferry and vehicle arrangements, and the island’s association obligations. These are substantial, ongoing and specific to the island, and they are separate from the house.
• What the surrounding lots will become, and the construction timetable for the remaining homes. If yours completes first, you will be living beside active building work.
• Recorded comparables for finished Fisher Island property — ask me and I will pull the condominium sale record, which is deep and public, as the only verifiable price anchor available today.

The Links Estates is a genuinely rare thing: new detached houses on an island that the county record shows is 98% condominium. That scarcity is real, and it is the reason for the price. The caution is simply that everything currently quoted about this project is an asking price on an unbuilt house from a developer who bought in two years ago, and none of it has been tested by a closed, recorded sale yet.

Thinking about The Links Estates?

Three of the six are gone and everything quoted here is an asking price on an unbuilt house. I will get you the measured size and true price per square foot on each remaining home, the full picture of Fisher Island’s ongoing costs, and the recorded comparables that do exist on the island.

ASK JOSH ABOUT FISHER ISLAND