A gold rush is underway in and around Miami Beach, a one-mile-wide strip of barrier island. Financial and technology professionals are vying for land on the fenced-off man-made islands facing Biscayne Bay and with unobstructed views of downtown Miami.
With few luxury properties on the market—only eight single-family homes in Miami were listed for more than $50 million at the end of February—buyers are offering whatever amount of money it takes to convince a reluctant homeowner to part with their trophy. Sales often take place off-market and are negotiated on padel courts, on private yachts and at La Gorce Country Club, where the golf club’s initiation fee is $1.2 million. Buyers include the world’s richest billionaires, including boldface names like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos, as well as financiers like hedge fund manager Nick Maounis.
“The coming of all these titans of the universe is like a stamp of approval,” said Nancy Batchelor, a Miami real estate agent with Compass.
This buying spree comes against the backdrop of a frozen American real estate market that has seen sales stagnation and price declines due to high interest rates, a glut of overpriced inventory, and great economic and global uncertainty.
According to Redfin, the median home price in Miami was $610,000 in January, down 7.2 percent from a year ago, with homes staying on the market an average of 115 days. Even the purely luxury homes that cost between $10 million and $30 million remain on the market for months. But at the top there is a battle for the best country you can have.
For most Americans, “there’s just tremendous uncertainty in the economy right now,” said Steven Durlauf, director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago. However, “a small number of people with unimaginable wealth are willing to use it.”
In March 2025, Michael Ferro Jr., chairman of Merrick Ventures, a private equity firm, purchased a 2.5-acre estate on Star Island for $120 million. In April, Mr. Maounis, the chief executive of Verition Fund Management, bought a nine-bedroom mansion with a Guggenheim-inspired spiral staircase on La Gorce Circle for $74.25 million.
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Mr. Page have both turned their attention to Miami. In December and January, Mr. Page spent a total of $173.4 million to purchase two properties in Coconut Grove, including a 4.5-acre waterfront property. And in January, Mr. Brin made an offer on a $50 million estate on Allison Island, a gated community off Miami Beach, The Real Deal reported. On a recent afternoon, moving trucks full of furniture parked outside the Allison Island address.
On Monday, Meta boss Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan paid $170 million for a mansion under construction on Indian Creek Island, the most expensive home sale in Miami-Dade County history, the Wall Street Journal reported.
These wealthy newcomers often target not just one property but adjacent properties as well, offering their neighbors whatever price it takes to get them out and build huge estates with multiple homes, tennis courts, pools, fountains and manicured gardens. On the Venetian island, a homeowner recently told an interested buyer that she was considering a move for $12 million, even though the property was valued closer to $7 million. The buyer “literally pulled out a checkbook and said, ‘I’ll buy you out right now for $12 million,'” recalls Julian Johnston, a Corcoran associate broker who witnessed the exchange.
The neighbor accepted the deal.
Todd Michael Glaser, a Florida developer, compares this era to the Gilded Age, when the country’s wealthiest families, with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Rothschild, settled in sprawling “cottages” that resembled the estates of the British aristocracy.
“It’s exactly the same thing that’s happening now,” said Mr. Glaser, who bought a 2.3-acre waterfront property on Miami Beach’s exclusive North Bay Road for $105 million in July. He is building a house to sell for $300 million.
Nowhere is the land more valuable than in Indian Creek Village, a man-made island sealed off from public access by a fenced bridge. Known as the Billionaire’s Bunker, the island has a few dozen homes, a country club and a private police force that monitors the community on sea and land as well as a network of surveillance cameras.
Its residents include President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner; retired NFL quarterback Tom Brady; and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns three homes there. The house Mr. Zuckerberg bought is a few doors down from two of Mr. Bezos’ properties.
The richest Americans have accumulated enormous wealth in recent years while the wealth of most Americans has stagnated. The net worth of the top 0.1 percent doubled since 2020 to a total of $24.9 trillion in the third quarter of 2025 and now accounts for 14.4 percent of total household wealth, according to the Federal Reserve.
When demand is high from buyers with unlimited budgets, prices become almost meaningless and rise to the amount required to convince a seller to move. “If your value is no longer even billions but hundreds of billions, that’s just a rounding error for you,” said Jeff Miller, a Miami luxury real estate agent with Sotheby’s International Realty.
Five years ago there were no sales of homes over $50 million. They accounted for over 7 percent of the market in dollar volume terms in 2025, according to Jonathan J. Miller, director of markets at StreetMatrix, a hyperlocal market data site. “It’s not that prices have gone up,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s because prices have reset because the rich have recalculated as an asset class.”
Some real estate agents point to high taxes in California and New York as key reasons for growing interest in Florida, which has no income tax. A ballot initiative in California, if passed in November, would impose a one-time 5 percent wealth tax on the state’s billionaires.
But it’s not clear how many billionaires, who typically own multiple homes, plan to put down real roots in the state.
“You can have many houses, but only one home,” said Alan M. Witlen, a tax attorney and partner in Withers’ Los Angeles office who has advised clients leaving California. While many customers are thinking about changing their place of residence, few take the necessary steps to prove they have moved, such as: B. moving cars, art and wine collections and placing their children in local schools.
But some do.
“We saw a record number of applicants,” said Patrick J. Coyle, president of the elite Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami. “I don’t know when this will stop because I thought it would subside at some point and it hasn’t yet.”
Carrollton, an all-girls school, has waterfront property, prompting some parents, particularly in Miami Beach, to drop off their children by boat. You can’t.
In a city where traffic can grind to a halt during rush hour, water is the preferred mode of transportation for a privileged few. Mr. Bezos, who now lives in Florida, often arrives on a private jet, followed by a helicopter ride to a helipad in Biscayne Bay, said Robbie Everhard, a captain who takes Mr. Bezos from the helipad to land in a speedboat.
Because business is conducted through a dense whisper network, finding available homes for sale is as much an art as it is a matter of numbers. Real estate agents spend weeks figuring out a homeowner’s preferred liquor before delivering them a bottle of Dom Pérignon or Macallan along with a handwritten note telling them a buyer is interested. They often wait for an older homeowner to die, and it is often the heirs who sell.
An $85 million home is being built on Sunset Island with a double-story infinity pool, bathroom windows that turn opaque on AI command, a spiral staircase and a $150,000 chandelier that hangs from the third floor to the living room.
However, the home next door offers unobstructed views of downtown Miami, making it even more desirable. The current owner invested four years and over $20 million in construction. It’s not on the market, but a potential buyer recently offered it $100 million to move.
He declined the offer.