In 2024, U.S. home sales were at their slowest since the 1990s, except at the high end of the market, where extremely wealthy buyers remained mostly unaffected by the state of the economy. That year, there were at least seven sales of single-family homes priced at $100 million or more, up from five in 2023 and nearing the 2021 record of eight such homes, according to housing market platform Realtor.com. Over the past decade, nine-figure home sales have steadily increased, evolving from a rare occurrence in 2014, when there were just four such sales, to a consistent trend, with 27 recorded in the past four years.
That the wealthy are buying big-ticket homes in new markets such as Aspen speaks to how much their coffers have grown in recent years, due in part to stock-market growth. At the beginning of 2020, the total collective net worth of the top 1% in the U.S. was $30.356 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. By the second quarter of 2024, it had grown to $46.7 trillion.
“The rich are getting richer and they’re diversifying,” said New York luxury agent Donna Olshan. “The concentration of wealth in certain areas like New York is no longer. They’re buying all over the place.” Read more
