Size may get everyone through the door, but design is what makes them stay. The best family estates—like this $27.25 million, 15,000-square-foot Beverly Hills beauty—account for the small rituals: kids in the pool, parents at the kitchen counter, generations gathered around fire.
Carolwood Estates
Affluent families are moving back toward one another. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes because a compound in Aspen is easier than coordinating three separate holiday houses. Turns out the modern family compound—once mainly associated with dynasties, succession battles and the occasional Kennedy—is becoming one of real estate’s more strategic plays. Where a family heirloom once meant silverware or art, it increasingly looks more like acreage.
According to the National Association of Realtors, a record 17% of homebuyers purchased a multigenerational home in 2024, up from roughly 11% in previous years.
Needing to be nearby plays a role, particularly after the pandemic. But at the upper end of the market, sentiment alone rarely drives property decisions. “It’s a real estate play,” says James Harris of Carolwood Estates in Los Angeles. “If you can accumulate land with contiguous properties, it’s more valuable down the road.”
In Europe, where land is significantly scarcer than in the United States, that strategy has become especially pronounced. Families are assembling adjacent estates over time, creating compounds designed to remain within clans for generations. The appeal is partly emotional, partly financial. Land, after all, embodies the true luxury of being finite.
For architects, the challenge lies in balancing connection with independence. Together, but not too together.
That shift is reshaping how multimillion-dollar homes are being designed and built. In Los Angeles, buyers are snapping up neighboring lots and combining them into private compounds with multiple self-contained residences. Eager developers are responding with detached guesthouses, accessory dwelling units (standalone structures on the same lot, commonly known as ‘granny flats’) and increasingly flexible floorplans designed to accommodate several generations without requiring anyone to sacrifice privacy.
For architects, the challenge lies in balancing connection with independence. Shared gardens. Separate entrances. Private wings positioned just far enough apart to preserve domestic harmony. Together, but not too together.
A multigenerational vacation home changes the purpose of travel, making the trip less about escape than return. And with seven bedrooms on the doorstep of world-class golf, polo and dining, Villa 48 at Nayarit’s One&Only Mandarina has unmistakable magnetism.
LPR Luxury
There is one complication: planning regulations have not entirely caught up with how affluent families now want to live. One recently approved Ben Callery Architects project in Sydney includes a private wing for an aging grandparent, though technically the secondary kitchen could not include a sink or cooktop under local regulations. “The design and construction capability is there,” says Callery. “What’s needed is more flexibility and open-mindedness within town planning rules.”
The takeaway? A burgeoning category of luxury homes designed less for a single owner/investor than for a morphing family ecosystem.
Here are nine exceptional properties that fit the blueprint for multigenerational living around the world.
This 9-bedroom, 22-bathroom Beverly Park estate is already an exemplar of space, privacy and luxury. But combined with its neighboring plot of land and approved plans for a 29,000-square-foot home, it holds the keys to the ultimate family compound.
Carolwood Estates
In Beverly Park, perhaps the bigger flex is not the mansion itself, but the ability to build another one beside it. Purchased together, 73 and 74 Beverly Park Lane span roughly 4.5 acres within one of Los Angeles’ most scintillating gated enclaves. The main residence alone stretches 28,500 square feet, with nine bedrooms, a whopping 22 bathrooms and enough amenities to feel closer to a luxury resort.
Designed by Harrison Design with interiors by Mike Moser Studio, the home leans classic contemporary, with glam rooms, massage suites, a screening room and multi-room closets that feel distinctly Beverly Hills. Floor-to-ceiling glass keeps your gaze firmly fixed on the city and ocean views beyond.
But the real draw may be next door. The adjacent parcel comes with approved plans for another roughly 29,000-square-foot estate, creating the kind of sprawling compound opportunity that rarely surfaces in Los Angeles.
With generous grounds and a residence built for gathering, this Southern Highlands estate invites the full cast of grandparents, cousins, friends, and whoever else earns a place at the weekend table. Plus a cellar full of Australia’s finest wine.
Private Property Global
Set across 100 acres in New South Wales, the Yuruga estate leans fully into the romance of country living. Rolling hills, vineyards and timber detailing give the estate its pastoral charm—all just a 90-minute drive from Sydney.
The property includes a main residence alongside a separate three-bedroom guesthouse complete with its own deck and garage. Much of the bucolic estate unfolds across a single level, a detail that feels increasingly relevant as luxury buyers plan not only for children, but aging parents too.
At this sprawling Brazilian penthouse, the beach is not a destination. It’s the address.
Judice & Araujo
In Rio’s famed Ipanema neighborhood, this triplex penthouse, which sits within a building designed by the late, great Oscar Niemeyer, stretches across three levels with postcard-ready views of both the ocean and Sugarloaf Mountain.
Designed by Studio Arthur Casas, the 16,000-square-foot residence connects its floors through either a sculptural spiral staircase or private elevator, depending on one’s enthusiasm for cardio. Entertainment spaces, bedrooms, a wine cellar, gym, massage room and hydrotherapy area are distributed throughout the home, along with five staff bedrooms that make hosting several generations look remarkably manageable.
New York City is not exactly known for personal space. This rare full mansion—a Gilded Age gem—in Brooklyn’s Park Slope makes a persuasive exception.
Platinum Forbes Global Properties
Brooklyn is not generally where one goes looking for a family compound. Then again, most Brooklyn townhouses are not 32 feet wide. Built in 1887 by renowned Gilded Age architect C.P.H. Gilbert, the Kenyon House belongs to a rarefied category of New York residence: the intact mansion.
Across roughly 8,200 square feet, the Romanesque Revival home layers old New York grandeur with surprising liveability. Original mahogany paneling, oak pocket doors and 10 wood-burning fireplaces remain intact, while upper floors lead into loft-like living quarters with skylights and 12-foot ceilings. A separate garden apartment opens directly onto more than 1,200 square feet of outdoor space.
In Park Slope, where outdoor square footage is discussed with the reverence usually reserved for fine art, that alone may qualify as generational wealth.
Here, the family compound is not a playground so much as a pause button, set among the lushly green escape of a Costa Rican coffee estate.
Luxury Living Costa Rica
The Cedars Residence offers a version of compound living steeped in Costa Rica’s coffee-growing heritage. Set across highly fertile volcanic terrain, the estate includes an organic orchard, vineyard, fruit trees and a working coffee plantation. A property where ‘morning coffee’ becomes an unusually literal concept.
The main residence opens toward panoramic views of the Irazú and Barva volcanoes, while a separate three-bedroom guesthouse includes its own office space. Elsewhere on the property, additional structures could become an artist’s studio, workshop or hobby space depending on the family dynamics at play. Juan Santamaría International Airport is just 15 minutes away.
California is not only beaches and breaking waves. In the Sierra foothills, lake days beneath the pines feel every bit as native to the state, and this Bass Lake retreat makes them easy to reach from Fresno.
GUIDE Real Estate
Around 30 minutes from Yosemite National Park, this two-estate compound at Bass Lake was practically engineered for oversized family weekends. A private dock accommodates up to six jet skis, with direct access to one of California’s most popular boating destinations. Inside, expansive windows frame the pine-lined scenery, while the restrained interiors wisely defer to the outdoors, which is doing most of the heavy lifting anyway.
Summer camp, if summer camp came with waterfront real estate and considerably better wine.
At One&Only Mandarina, catered living removes the usual friction of family travel. No logistics spiral, no domestic negotiation. Just the good parts.
LPR Luxury
Overlooking the Islas Marías across the Pacific, Villa 48 at One&Only Mandarina was built for togetherness with a healthy dose of strategic separation. The seven-bedroom residence includes three primary suites, each with its own plunge pool, fire pit and mature Higuera tree. Additional guest rooms open directly onto the infinity pool terrace through sliding glass walls, effectively creating two distinct living zones within the home.
Outside the villa, the resort supplies enough distractions to keep even the most opinionated relatives occupied: polo fields, Michelin-recognized dining, horseback riding and a Greg Norman-designed golf course among them.
A home built for friends and family need not surrender its architectural ambitions. Villa Oak in Sotogrande, southern Spain, delivers the full house: sustainable design, serious architecture and enough room for everyone.
Visual render courtesy Rimontgó
Located beside a famed golf course, this zero-emissions residence by Fran Silvestre Architects is designed to disappear into its forest surroundings.
The eight-bedroom home is an exercise in neuroarchitecture—the carefully calibrated lighting, muted material palette and wellness-driven design are all meant to make you live a little better. The property’s pleasures certainly help. Not one but two swimming pools, a wellness zone with a gym and sauna, plus a wine cellar.
Even sustainability is handled with a certain panache: geothermal systems, solar panels and battery storage allow the villa to operate with zero net energy consumption. A family compound, certainly. Just one with better architecture than most boutique resorts.
For families who prefer their reunions with a more medieval-historic-monument silhouette, there is always a French château. Turrets for tout le monde.
Maison Junot
It would be difficult not to feel catapulted several centuries backward in this 14th-century château less than an hour from Bordeaux. Set across 276 acres near the historically significant hills of Castillon-la-Bataille, the estate leans unapologetically medieval: turreted towers, thick stone walls, arched passageways and even a private chapel tucked into one of the towers.
Inside, richly layered interiors of tapestries, dark woods and moody fabrics give the château the atmosphere of a particularly well-funded period drama. Across three floors, the 19th-century remodeled property includes 30 rooms alongside a swimming pool, tennis court and detached guesthouse for all the family members.
All before we get to the vineyard. Spanning roughly 59 acres, it produces Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon in quantities sufficient for the entire extended family to drink like minor French nobility—which, in this setting, feels highly appropriate.
Featured properties represented by members of Forbes Global Properties, the invitation-only network of top-tier brokerages worldwide and the exclusive real estate partner of Forbes.
