Billionaires drive up average Palm Beach home price to $14 million
A slew of billionaires — including more than 100 Wall Street firms — have decamped to South Florida in recent months, so it’s no wonder the median price of a single-family home in Palm Beach has surged to a staggering $14 million.
The median sale price on single-family homes in this affluent area reached eight-figure heights in September 2023, marking 117.1% year-over-year growth, according to data by real estate brokerage Redfin.
Median pricing, largely known as a more reliable way of tracking prices in the real estate industry, is the mid-point value of total samples.
In this case, that would be single-family homes, which are typically categorized as such when a house has no shared walls, one kitchen and at least two separate entrance and exit points.
Across all home types, Palm Beach — which sits about 72 miles north of Miami — experienced a more modest 1.8% increase from last September, with a median sale price of $2.15 million last month, according to Redfin data that was earlier reported on by the Daily Mail.
Such home prices make sense when taking into account the types of people that reside in the town.
At least 57 billionaires have strong residential ties to Palm Beach, according to Palm Beach Daily News’ analysis of the 2023 Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people — a record even for Palm Beachers, whose household incomes average more than $169,000, per the US Census Bureau.
Among the area’s wealthiest residents: hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman, cosmetics tycoon Ron Lauder and Cox media heiress Margaretta Taylor, just to name a few.
Billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn is a fellow Palm Beacher who recently relocated his Icahn Capital Management investment firm to the Sunshine State.
In August 2020, the firm — which manages $22.2 billion in assets — ditched its posh Manhattan digs atop Fifth Avenue’s General Motors Building in favor of a 14-story office complex in a Miami suburb.
Donald Trump’s main residence in Mar-a-Lago has become one of the most prominent Palm Beach abodes, especially after a New York judge valued the former president’s mansion at $18 million — a figure that left industry experts perplexed, telling The Post that they would list the estate at around $300 million.
Miami, meanwhile — which became a tax haven for many non-billionaire earners looking to move out of New York during the pandemic — saw the median price on a single-family home rise 7.7% in September from a year ago, to $599,000.
All home types in the area, which includes condominiums and co-ops, saw a slightly smaller year-over-year increase, to a median sale price of $568,570, according to Redfin.
The rush out of New York, in particular, made the median single-family home price in Manhattan slump more than 76%, to just over $1 million.
Redfin data showed that in May 2021, Manhattan home prices peaked at a median of $12 million.
Representatives for Redfin did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Miami became an especially attractive city for high-earners looking to save on taxes (Florida doesn’t charge state income tax) and exorbitant rent costs in other major US metros like New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
Financial information provider SmartAsset found that professionals raking in $650,000 per year in Manhattan would save $195,000 if they moved to Florida thanks to the state’s lesser taxes and cheaper cost of living.
Workers with a $650,000 salary in New York face an effective tax rate of 45% in New York — when you factor federal, state and local taxes — which drops to 35% as a Miami resident.
The same Manhattanite making $150,000 could save nearly $50,000 by decamping to Miami, according to the study.
A New Yorker’s cost of living would also be reduced tremendously if they moved out of Manhattan — where the average overhead is 137.6% above the national average.
