Currently, New York City is home to the most billionaires. But is it where the richest people in the world live? The wealthiest among the Big Apple’s residents is Michael Bloomberg, with a net worth of $106.2 billion, per Forbes. But despite its reputation as a haven for the most well-off among us, New York City isn’t the primary residence for any of the richest people in the world. While one of the planet’s most moneyed figures famously keeps a modest dwelling in the middle of the US, others boast more lavish digs in coastal areas, purchased via record-breaking transactions. Unsurprisingly, many of the world’s most affluent (though not all of them) have portfolios filled with a number of spots to split their time between. Read on to learn more about where some of the richest people in the world have chosen to set down roots.
Elon Musk
In 2020, the Tesla CEO declared in a tweet that he would “own no house” and planned to sell nearly all his worldly possessions. The following year, Musk announced that his primary residence was a prefab abode in Boca Chica, Texas, rented via his astronautics company, SpaceX. Musk’s residence in the prefab home has not been officially confirmed by outside sources, though the prefab dwelling company Boxabl hinted in a promotional video posted two years ago that one of its houses was installed “for a top secret customer.” The Boxabl Casita that Musk reportedly calls home is in a transportable unit that measures in at approximately 400 square feet. It’s set up much like a typical studio apartment, complete with a fully equipped kitchen, bathroom, living area, and bedroom.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission are both currently investigating Tesla’s funding for a top secret plan known as Project 42, which is rumored to be a glass-wall home for the mogul near the company’s HQ in Austin, Texas.
Bernard Arnault
The 75-year-old French business magnate has built his fortune through the luxury brand conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (commonly shortened to LVMH). Arnault reportedly sold his $84 million Marmol Radziner–designed Beverly Hills mansion to himself, though the circumstances remain unclear. Back in 2012, Forbes reported that Arnault owned Indigo Island, a 135-acre paradise-like refuge in the Bahamas, as well as a ski chalet in Courchevel, France.
Arnault keeps a relatively low profile for his status as one of the richest people in the world, and he likes it that way. The tycoon said that he sold his private jet after users on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, took to tracking its location. “Indeed, with all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it,” Arnault said in an interview with an LVMH-owned radio station. “The result now is that no one can see where I go, because I rent planes when I use private planes.” Per a recent New York Times profile, the billionaire has not been received very warmly by the public. He explained that when his friend Warren Buffett walks around Manhattan, “he’s treated like a Beatle.” But when Arnault visits his stores in France, “I have to be careful,” he told the Times. “I don’t like this, but I need bodyguards.”
Jeff Bezos
The Amazon founder’s real estate portfolio has grown considerably in the past few years. Bezos dropped $80 million on three luxury New York apartments overlooking Madison Square Park, later adding two more units in the same building to his holdings. In 2020, he purchased the iconic Jack Warner estate in Beverly Hills for $165 million. The following year, he added a 14-acre compound in Hawaii to his portfolio for an estimated $78 million, apparently breaking a Maui real estate record in the process.
Impressive as it may be, this recent tear still does not cover Bezos’s entire portfolio. His primary residence over the past few decades has been a compound in Amazon’s home state of Washington. The estate is located in the affluent Seattle suburb of Medina (where Bill Gates also owns an abode). Bezos purchased the 20,600-square-foot and accompanying 8,300-square-foot structures for $10 million. In 2010, he bought the adjacent property: a Tudor-style home listed for $53 million. The sprawling waterfront mega-compound reportedly boasts multiple pools and access to Lake Washington. In the fall of 2023, Bezos announced his plans to relocate to Miami, where he owns three properties on Indian Creek Island, a man-made island in Biscayne Bay nicknamed the Billionaire Bunker, where his neighbors include Ivanka Trump and Tom Brady. He began his Magic City shopping spree with a three-acre property purchased in 2023 for $68 million and bought the Mediterranean-style mansion next door for $79 million a few months later. He bought his third Indian Creek Island mansion, a $90 million home, earlier this year and reportedly plans to live in the 2002 home while tearing down the other two neighboring properties.
Larry Ellison
Currently the fifth richest person in the world, the Oracle cofounder resides in Hawaii. Though he’s no longer the software company’s CEO after more than 30 years at the helm, Ellison still serves as the tech corporation’s CTO and boasts a net worth of about $142.8 billion. He reportedly retains ownership of homes in Rhode Island and California, and he broke a Florida real estate record last year with the $173 million purchase of his Palm Beach–area compound (subsequently recouping most of the funds in the $145 million sale of his nearby mansion about two months later). But the 79-year-old’s primary residence is still in Lanai, a Hawaiian island that is home to about 3,000 people. According to Bloomberg, Ellison’s 2012 purchase secured the Republican mega-donor 98% of Lanai’s 90,000 acres, and the lives of Lanai’s locals have been greatly impacted by his presence. Bloomberg reported that many residents both rent from the mogul and work for him, and a provision included in his residential leases states that “if you’re terminated from a job with any of his companies, you can be kicked out of your home too.” In a 2012 interview on CNBC’s Closing Bell, Ellison declared his plan to turn Lanai into a model for sustainable enterprise aimed at supporting locals in launching businesses.
Warren Buffett
The Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO maintains a modest residence in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. His massive net worth (currently at $131 billion) has not moved the 93-year-old to flee for more temperate climates or waterfront views. According to a CNBC report from earlier this year, Buffett’s 1921 abode located just minutes away from Berkshire Hathaway’s corporate headquarters is still fine by him: “I’m warm in the winter, I’m cool in the summer. It’s convenient for me,” he told BBC’s Evan Davis in 2009. “I couldn’t imagine having a better house.”
Buffett bought the five-bedroom dwelling for $31,500 in 1958, which amounts to approximately $330,000 in today’s value. “I’m happy there,” he said. “I’d move if I thought I’d be happier someplace else.”
Bill Gates
The Microsoft cofounder built his dream home overlooking Lake Washington in Seattle’s Medina area. Gates’s biographers nicknamed the 66,000-square-foot house Xanadu 2.0 after the estate in Citizen Kane. The massive residence was built by architects James Cutler and Peter Bohlin and boasts a trampoline room and a 60-foot swimming pool. Gates described the design process in his 1995 book, The Road Ahead. “My house is made of wood, glass, concrete, and stone,” he wrote. “It’s built into a hillside and most of the glass faces west over Lake Washington to Seattle to take advantage of the sunset and Olympic mountain views.” Naturally, the tech mogul also made sure his new home was cutting-edge. “My house is also made of silicon and software,” Gates wrote. “The installation of silicon microprocessors and memory chips, and the software that makes them useful, will let the house approximate some of the features the information highway will, in a few years, bring to millions of houses.”
Gates’s real estate portfolio was divided during his divorce from his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates. Together, their holdings included a $43 million home in Del Mar, California, an $18 million horse ranch in Rancho Santa Fe, California, a $12.5 million home in Indian Wells, California, and a property in Big Sky, Montana. Gates let go of another Medina property in April of 2024, putting his four-bedroom, three-bath midcentury-modern house on the market for just under $5 million. In addition to his multiple residences, Gates also owns 275,000 acres across the US, making him the 41st biggest landowner in the United States, according to the Land Report.
Mark Zuckerberg
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has built an impressive portfolio of real estate in California, beginning with a 5,617-square-foot home that he purchased in 2011 for a reported $7 million. The five-bedroom, five-bathroom home was built in 1903 and boasts a saltwater pool, a custom AI assistant, and a backyard pavilion. In 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, began buying four neighboring homes. They later renovated two of them, creating a 1.83-acre compound. The family also owns the Brushwood Estate and the Carousel Estate, two adjoining properties in Lake Tahoe, California.
Like Larry Ellison, Zuckerberg has spent millions on real estate in Hawaii. He began buying land on the island of Kauai in 2014 when he paid around $116 million for 707 acres. He and Chan then bought 89 acres for $45 million in 2017 and spent $53 million on 600 acres in 2021. A recent Wired investigation revealed details of his $270 million Koolau Ranch compound, which features over a dozen buildings with at least 30 bedrooms, a complex of treehouses, and a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker.
Steve Ballmer
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hangs his Clippers hat in the home he purchased in Seattle’s Hunts Point area for $1.33 million in 1987. The owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, who is worth $121 billion, bought an adjacent 3,790-square-foot home for $9.8 million in 2019. Ballmer and his wife, Connie, also own nine properties on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, north of Seattle.
When he purchased the Clippers in 2014, the LA Times reported that he planned to keep his residence in Seattle but intended to establish a second home in Los Angeles, but so far his only major reported SoCal real estate acquisition has been his purchase of The Forum entertainment complex for $400 million.
