Faena House Views and Floor Selection Guide: Which Orientations and Elevations Professional Athletes Should Target in Miami's Mid-Beach

Why Floor Selection at Faena House Deserves Its Own Strategy

This guide draws on the expertise of Denis Smykalov, Founder of Wolsen Developments, who has guided buyers through Miami's pre-construction market since 2012 — including developments like Faena House where timing and floor selection make a significant difference in outcome. At a tower where residences start at full-floor configurations and every detail from the Rem Koolhaas architecture to the Thomas Juul-Hansen interiors signals intentional luxury, the question isn't simply whether to buy — it's which floor and which orientation will serve you best over a ten- or twenty-year ownership horizon. For professional athletes, the calculus includes privacy, recovery-focused living, entertaining capacity, and the long-term asset performance that comes from owning a truly irreplaceable unit.

Faena House sits on a rare stretch of Mid-Beach oceanfront at 3315 Collins Avenue, flanked by the broader Faena District. The building rises eighteen residential floors above grade, meaning the spread between a lower residence and a penthouse-level unit is meaningful in ways that go far beyond aesthetics. Ocean views, city skyline visibility, wind exposure, natural light quality at different times of day, and even the auditory experience of the building change significantly as you move up the tower. Understanding these dynamics before you make an offer — or before your agent makes one on your behalf — is the kind of preparation that separates disciplined buyers from impulsive ones.

The Four Exposures at Faena House and What Each One Delivers

Faena House is oriented on a roughly east-west axis relative to the Atlantic, which means the primary exposures are east-facing ocean, west-facing Intracoastal and Miami skyline, north, and south. Each orientation creates a fundamentally different daily living experience. East-facing residences receive direct sunrise light over the Atlantic — if you are someone whose mornings anchor your training schedule, waking to open ocean from your bedroom is a premium that is difficult to overstate. The unobstructed water horizon from an east-facing unit also provides that genuine sense of remove from the city that serious athletes often prioritize for mental recovery.

West-facing residences offer the evening show: sunset over the Intracoastal waterway, the illuminated Miami skyline building against dusk, and the urban energy that makes this city distinctive. For buyers who are primarily in Miami for off-season entertainment, hosting teammates, sponsors, or family, west-facing terraces become an extension of your social space in the evening hours when you are most likely to be home. North and south exposures, while secondary, capture diagonal water glimpses on many floors and deliver balanced natural light throughout the day — these units tend to offer a value-per-square-foot advantage while still benefiting from the building's extraordinary common areas and brand cachet.

Low, Mid, and High Floors: How the View Profile Changes as You Ascend

On floors one through five at Faena House, the ocean view from east-facing residences is immediate and immersive — you are at beach level, which creates an intimacy with the water that some buyers find deeply appealing. The tradeoff is that neighboring structures within the Faena District and the natural curvature of the beach vegetation can interrupt the sightlines depending on the specific unit position. For athletes who value privacy and the ability to use the building's beach access without being in the visual field of passersby, lower floors feel more connected to the ground in ways that can compromise seclusion.

Floors six through twelve represent what most experienced buyers consider the sweet spot for value-to-view optimization at the building. You have cleared the visual clutter of adjacent rooflines, the ocean panorama opens substantially, and the city-side view begins to stretch meaningfully toward Brickell and downtown. These floors also benefit from the prevailing southeast ocean breeze without the intensified wind load that affects the upper five floors — relevant if you plan to use your terrace regularly for outdoor training, stretching, or simply reading between workouts. The mid-floors at Faena House represent an accessible entry point into the building's top tier of living quality without requiring a penthouse-level capital commitment.

Floors thirteen through eighteen are where the building's view profile becomes genuinely extraordinary. By the upper floors, east-facing residences deliver an unbroken Atlantic horizon that stretches to the vanishing point — on clear days, the curve of the earth is perceptible. West-facing upper residences see the full Intracoastal, the causeway bridges, and the downtown skyline in a panorama that is compelling at any hour. The full-floor and penthouse-level residences in this range have historically attracted a globally mobile buyer pool — professional athletes, entertainment figures, family offices — precisely because the combination of brand, architecture, and view elevation at this tier is genuinely non-replicable.

What Professional Athletes Specifically Should Prioritize When Choosing a Residence

Your life as a professional athlete involves a schedule that most buyers simply do not contend with: travel cycles that can keep you out of the residence for weeks at a time, a need for genuine acoustic separation when you are home and recovering, the physical demands of a body that requires space for stretching, cold therapy, and movement, and a social calendar that swings between complete solitude and large-scale entertaining. No single floor or orientation solves all of these needs, but the highest-floor, east-facing full-floor residences at Faena House come closest to addressing all of them simultaneously. The elevation provides the privacy buffer. The ocean orientation provides the psychological separation from the city. The floor plate — typically spanning the full building footprint — provides the space for both personal use and hospitality.

Privacy is not just a comfort consideration for athletes — it is a professional one. Being identifiable by neighbors in a building lobby, encountered by fans or media in common areas, or visible from the street is an occupational hazard that affects your choice of building and your choice of specific unit within it. Faena House's relatively low unit count — fewer than forty residences across the tower — means the owner pool is small, the staff-to-resident ratio is high, and the culture of discretion is self-reinforcing. Higher floors further reduce the probability of casual foot traffic near your door. When you combine this with the building's dedicated service infrastructure, the privacy argument for upper-floor selection becomes compelling regardless of your view preferences.

On the asset side, athletes whose careers involve contract renegotiation, trades, or free agency transitions benefit from owning Miami real estate that is genuinely liquid at the top of the market. Full-floor and high-floor residences at Faena House have historically transacted in a deep, globally competitive buyer pool, which means your exit options — whether you are selling in five years or twenty — are not constrained by the narrow domestic market. Selecting a floor and orientation that places you within the building's top tier of desirability is not just about your own lifestyle; it is about preserving your optionality in whatever direction your career takes you.

Corner Residences Versus Through-Units: The Dual-Exposure Advantage

One of the most consequential unit-selection decisions at Faena House is choosing between a corner residence and an interior through-unit. Corner residences capture two exposures simultaneously — typically ocean and either north or south — and benefit from a wraparound terrace configuration that allows you to move through sunrise light in the morning and then catch afternoon light from a different vantage. For buyers who are home during daylight hours in a way that most nine-to-five buyers are not — athletes in their off-season, or in-season athletes who train in the morning and are home by early afternoon — the ability to chase natural light through the day on a single terrace is a genuine quality-of-life differentiator.

Through-units at Faena House typically run east to west across the building, delivering both ocean and city exposures from a single residence. The living program in these units tends to organize around the east-facing primary bedroom and the west-facing entertaining areas, which aligns well with the athlete lifestyle: private retreat to the ocean side, social activation to the city side. The through-unit configuration also benefits from natural cross-ventilation when terraces on both sides are open, which is an understated luxury in Miami's climate and relevant for athletes who prioritize air quality and passive cooling in their living environment.

Timing, Market Position, and How to Approach a Purchase at Faena House

Faena House is a completed, occupied building — not a pre-construction offering — which means the inventory available at any given time is resale, and the pricing reflects both the original market positioning and the appreciation trajectory the building has experienced since its 2015 delivery. This is a fundamentally different transaction environment than buying into a development at launch. The upside is that you can physically inspect the exact unit you are purchasing, verify the view lines from every room, assess the condition of finishes, and make an informed judgment about the specific terrace orientation at a given time of day. There is no model-unit abstraction involved.

Because inventory in a low-count luxury building like Faena House is episodic rather than continuous, working with an advisor who has visibility into both listed and off-market inventory is critical. Sellers at this price point frequently transact quietly before a unit ever reaches public listing platforms, and the gap between the unit you want — specific floor, specific orientation, specific exposure — and the units that happen to be publicly available at a given moment can be substantial. Patience combined with real market access is the formula. For athletes whose decision timeline is compressed by a trade, a contract signing, or a relocation, having an advisor who can accelerate access to the right inventory without sacrificing selection discipline is worth considerably more than a discounted commission on the wrong unit.

From a financial structuring standpoint, residences at Faena House have attracted buyers who use the asset as a primary residence, a pied-à-terre, and in some cases a short-term rental through the building's managed program. The applicable structure for you will depend on your tax situation, your travel and usage patterns, and your overall real estate portfolio strategy — all of which are conversations worth having with your financial and legal advisors before you sign. What the real estate professional can speak to is the asset quality, the liquidity of the buyer pool, and the specific unit characteristics that position a given residence for optimal long-term performance.

Frequently Asked Questions