Real Estate Blog

Just how much money do the billionaires on Forbes’ latest list have? To put it into context, we created a list of billionaires who could afford to buy every home in certain cities.

Jeff Bezos, who took the top spot on this year’s Forbes list of billionaires, couldn’t afford to buy every home in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle. But he could almost scoop up every home in Washington, D.C., near the company’s forthcoming HQ2 in the Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, and he’d easily be able to purchase every home in Arlington.

That’s according to a Redfin calculation of the aggregate value of all single-family homes, condos and townhouses in U.S. cities with more than 1,000 homes, paired with net worth information from Forbes’ compilation of 2019 billionaires. To calculate the value of all homes in a city, we added up the most recent Redfin estimate for each home.

None of the world’s richest people could outright buy Seattle’s approximately 230,000 homes, worth a total of $182.9 billion. Bezos comes closest, with a net worth of $131 billion—certainly enough to purchase all of them if he took out a few loans. And if he earns an extra half-billion or negotiates some prices down, he could pick up Washington, D.C.’s 200,000 homes, worth a total of $131.5 billion. He could purchase Arlington’s $46.7 billion worth of real estate nearly three times over. Bezos could also hypothetically purchase the $129.9 billion worth of homes in Austin, which was on Amazon’s HQ2 shortlist.

Kylie Jenner, 21, is now the world’s youngest billionaire—whether she’s self-made or not. With a net worth of $1 billion, the KarJenner sister is far from being able to purchase all homes in her Calabasas, California hometown (worth a total of $12.9 billion), but she could take her pick of other small cities throughout the U.S. A few options where Jenner could buy up all the homes for just under $1 billion and maybe turn a few of them into vacation spots for her famous family? Waikapu, located on the Hawaiian island of Maui, or Occidental, a community in Sonoma County.

Below is a list of select billionaires (or billionaire families) paired with a city where they could hypothetically afford to buy every single single-family home, condo and townhouse. Many of the billionaires on the list could hypothetically afford to purchase every home in multiple cities (for instance, Warren Buffett could scoop up every home in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska a few times over); we are highlighting one close to but not above their net worth.

Billionaire/

Source of wealth

Net worth City Approximate number of homes/

Value of all homes

Jeff Bezos & family/

Amazon

$131 billion Austin, TX 280,000/

$129.9 billion

Bill Gates/

Microsoft

$96.5 billion Charlotte, NC 310,000/

$92.4 billion

Warren Buffett/

Berkshire Hathaway

$82.5 billion Nashville, TN 210,000/

$79.1 billion

Mark Zuckerberg/

Facebook

$62.3 billion Long Beach, CA 90,000/

$61.3 billion

Michael Bloomberg/

Bloomberg

$55.5 billion Baltimore, MD 310,000/

$52.8 billion

Sergey Brin/

Google

$49.8 billion Colorado Springs, CO 150,000/

$49.1 billion

Francoise Bettencourt Mayers/

L’Oreal

$49.3 billion Cincinnati, OH 240,000/

$48.9 billion

Jack Ma/

Alibaba

$37.3 billion Glendale, CA 40,000/

$37.3 billion

Jacqueline Mars/

Mars

$23.9 billion Madison, WI 80,000/

$23.3 billion

Elon Musk/

Tesla

$22.3 billion Escondido, CA 40,000/

$22.2 billion

Rupert Murdoch/

Media

$19.4 billion Myrtle Beach, SC 100,000/

$19.4 billion

Laurene Powell Jobs & family/

Apple

$18.6 billion The Woodlands, TX 40,000/

$18.4 billion

Giorgio Armani/

Armani fashion labels

$8.5 billion Nashua, NH 30,000/

$8.5 billion

Charles Schwab/

Charles Schwab

$8.3 billion South Pasadena, CA 6,000/

$8.2 billion

Ralph Lauren/

Ralph Lauren fashion labels

$6.9 billion Galveston, TX 20,000/

$6.8 billion

Jack Dorsey/

Twitter & Square

$5.1 billion Yorktown, NY 10,000/

$5.2 billion

Oprah Winfrey/

Media

$2.5 billion Dover, DE 10,000/

$2.5 billion

Michael Jordan/

Basketball

$1.9 billion Amherst, NH 5,000/

$1.9 billion

Sara Blakely/

Spanx

$1.1 billion West Ocean City, MD 3,000/

$1.1 billion

Kylie Jenner/

Kylie Cosmetics

$1 billion Waikapu, HI 1,500/

$968.5 million

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