Which Billionaire Could Buy Your City?

Kylie Jenner Could Buy an Entire Community in Maui—See Which Billionaire Could Buy Your City

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Updated on October 6th, 2020

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
Dana Anderson

Dana Anderson

As a data journalist at Redfin, Dana Anderson writes about the numbers behind real estate trends. Redfin is a full-service real estate brokerage that uses modern technology to make clients smarter and faster. For more information about working with a Redfin real estate agent to buy or sell a home, visit our Why Redfin page.

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