Luxury home prices are falling nationwide—except in Florida, where billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin have spent hundreds of millions

Luxury home prices across the United States have declined year over year for 31 consecutive months, according to a Realtor.com report published Monday. Florida is the notable exception, where new wealth inflows and constrained supply are keeping prices elevated even as they fall nationally. The national luxury entry point, the asking price marking the top 10% of listings, fell to $1,197,014 in October, down 2.3% from a year earlier. Declines were steeper at the top of the market: the top 5% threshold fell 4.1%, and the top 1% dropped 6.2% to about $5.1 million.

Florida has attracted substantial wealth for years. According to the article, the state took in a net $137 billion in income from other states between 2019 and 2023, and additional billionaires have moved ahead of proposed wealth taxes in California and Washington. Billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Ken Griffin, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have spent hundreds of millions on South Florida estates. Citadel founder Griffin relocated his hedge fund from Chicago to Miami in 2022 and paid $106.9 million for a Coconut Grove estate that year. Bezos has spent $237 million on three properties on Indian Creek and reportedly paid $69.5 million in September for an oceanfront estate in Golden Beach through a Delaware LLC. Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan closed on a $170 million Indian Creek estate this year, and Page spent about $173.4 million on two Coconut Grove properties.

Market conditions in Florida reflect this demand. Naples led the nation with a 9% increase in its luxury threshold to about $3.75 million, the only one of the 10 most expensive luxury markets where prices climbed, and its priciest listings sold a median 27 days faster than a year earlier. Realtor.com senior economist Anthony Smith wrote that million-dollar inventory is shrinking in most of Florida's gaining markets, and that "smaller pool of available homes may be helping support prices, even as luxury thresholds fall nationally." Raffles is building 35 homes in Coconut Grove starting at $4.5 million, with Mast Capital as a partner on the project. Under Florida's newly approved Amendment 3, the annual cap on taxable-value increases for second homes will drop from 10% to 5%, a change experts said matters most to owners with multiple properties.

Elsewhere, luxury markets continue to unwind pandemic-era gains. As of May, the typical luxury market had retained only 59% of the run-up that occurred over roughly 24 months, according to a June Realtor.com report. In October, San Jose's luxury threshold fell 12.1% year over year, New York-Newark-Jersey City dropped 11.3%, and San Francisco fell 7.1%. Realtor.com attributed San Francisco's slump primarily to tech-sector layoffs, out-migration and a smaller pool of buyers.