Where the richest Americans live – from Elon Musk to Bill Gates

From Elon Musk to Bill Gates, the top spot on America’s richest people list is fairly predictable from year to year. But what’s more interesting than who has the most wealth is often how they spend it, especially when it comes to their homes.

Their properties range from a massive mansion bigger than the White House with a trampoline room to an island in Hawaii and beachfront lots in South Florida purchased for record sums. Using the latest Forbes 400 list published last month, Mansion Global took a peek at public records and published reports to highlight some of the properties owned by the six richest Americans.

1. Elon Musk

Ironically, the list of homes of the richest people begins with a billionaire who has publicly vowed to “never own a house.” Musk, who topped Forbes’ 2023 rankings as the richest person in America with a fortune estimated at $251 billion, suddenly announced on social media in 2020 that he was unloading all of his possessions.

“I’m selling almost all of my physical possessions. You won’t own a home,” the SpaceX and Tesla CEO wrote on Twitter – the platform now known as X, which Musk renamed after his $44 billion acquisition of the site last year.
The year after his pledge, he sold nearly $100 million worth of luxury homes between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, ranging from a historic French-style estate in Hillsboro to Gene Wilder’s former log-style farmhouse in Los Angeles’ Bel Air neighborhood. Amid the sell-off, Musk wrote on social media that he lives in a $50,000 home near the SpaceX rocket launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, which he rents from the company. Since then, plans have been unveiled for a futuristic glass building by Tesla’s Austin headquarters, which those working on the project described as a home for Musk, the Wall Street Journal reported in July.

2. Jeff Bezos

The founder and president of Amazon ranked second on the rich list with a net worth of $161 billion, and it is not surprising that he owns a real estate portfolio to match his bank balance.

Last week, the billionaire announced that he was leaving his old home in Seattle for Miami, where he recently spent more than $100 million on real estate acquisitions. In June, he paid $68 million for a waterfront home on Indian Creek, a man-made barrier island in Miami that has been dubbed a “billionaire’s hideout” because of its concentration of wealthy residents. Then in October, he reportedly snapped up the neighboring property as well for $79 million.

Bezos, 59, also owns a 14-acre Hawaiian estate on Maui’s La Perouse Bay, which he paid an estimated $78 million for in 2021, and a mansion in Beverly Hills known as the Warner Estate, which has been Jack Warner’s home since long time. The late former president of Warner Bros. – on which $165 million was spent in 2020.

On New York’s Fifth Avenue, he owns a number of apartments in a luxury historic building overlooking Madison Square Park, including a penthouse, which he snapped up with the two units below it for nearly $80 million in 2019. He’s also ranked 24th in List of the largest apartments in New York. A landowner in the United States because of the 420,000 acres he owns in West Texas, which is used by his space company, Blue Origin, according to its 2022 land report.

3. Larry Ellison

The co-founder of software company Oracle is the third-richest person in the United States with a fortune of $158 billion, according to Forbes, and holds the distinction of being the buyer of the most expensive home ever sold in Florida.

The 79-year-old billionaire bought the massive 62,200-square-foot mansion — which sits on 16 acres on a barrier island in Manalapan, just south of Palm Beach — for $173 million in June 2022 from fellow tech titan Jim Clark, founder of several Silicon companies. Valley companies including Netscape.

Clark and his wife, Christy, bought the home in March 2021 for $94.2 million, according to PropertyShark records, meaning Ellison paid a 45% premium, even though no major changes were made to the property. In addition to the main house, there is also a seven-bedroom guest house, two beach cottages and a manager’s house – all connected via a series of underground tunnels.

Last summer, Ellison listed a property in North Palm Beach, Florida, for $145 million, nearly a year after purchasing it for $80 million. Ellison also owns a collection of trophy homes across the country, such as Beechwood, a Gilded Age mansion once owned by the Astor family in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as estates throughout California, including along Carbon Beach in Malibu, around Lake Tahoe and in Silicon Valley.

He also owns 98% of Lanai Island, the sixth largest of the Hawaiian Islands with an area of ​​140.5 square miles.

4. Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, ranked fourth on Forbes’ list with a net worth of $121 billion.

The 93-year-old entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including Geico, Duracell, Dairy Queen and real estate giant Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

Despite his vast fortune, Buffett probably has the most modest personal real estate portfolio of anyone at the top of the rankings, and still lives in the same Omaha house he bought in 1958 for $31,500, which is now worth a relatively modest sum. – At least by billionaire standards – $1.44 million.

In 2018, he sold his beach house in Laguna Beach, California, for approximately $7.5 million. He bought the property in 1971 for $150,000 as a family retreat.

5. Larry Page

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, is ranked as the fifth richest person in America by Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $114 billion. Page most recently served as CEO of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, and although he stepped down from day-to-day operations in 2019, he, along with his co-founder Sergey Brin, remains a member of Alphabet’s board of directors and a member of Alphabet’s board of directors. . Shareholder control.

Page, 50, owns several neighborhood homes in Palo Alto, California. He purchased the famous Pedro de Lemos House — built and named after the American painter and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 — in 2005 for about $7 million, listing records show. The Spanish Colonial home spans just over 8,000 square feet and has six bedrooms, according to public records.

The billionaire also owns two properties behind the historic house. One of them, a mansion purchased in 2012 for $9.65 million, was destroyed in a major fire in 2021. The home was allegedly used as a “secret office” for a handful of employees. Page owns another nearby property, which he bought in 2008 for $12 million, according to real estate records. Page built an eco-friendly house on the site, powered by solar panels and built with materials that don’t emit harmful chemicals and paving that allows rain to seep through. The home’s dense array of solar panels is visible in Google Maps satellite images.

Page was said to have been living in Fiji during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and was able to enter through the “Blue Line” initiative, which allows owners of luxury yachts and private jets to enter with minimal restrictions, according to the New York Post. At the time, Page owned a 194-foot luxury yacht called Senses, which had a “private beach club” with a hot tub and sun beds, indoor and outdoor dining areas, and a helipad, according to Business Insider, which reported the sale of the ship 2021.

6. Bill Gates

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is the sixth richest American man, with a fortune of about $111 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Gates, 68, owns an oceanfront home in Del Mar, California, which he and his ex-wife, Melinda French-Gates, 59, bought in 2020 for $43 million through a trust linked to Pivotal Ventures, a company founded by French Gates. Committed to accelerating social change. The 5,800-square-foot residence underwent a recent renovation that included gutting it completely and adding solar panels.

However, Gates’ official “residence” is located in Medina, Washington: a house built in 1994 on more than 5 acres overlooking Lake Washington, according to property records.

The residence has approximately 50,000 square feet of usable space and has a total taxable value of approximately $146.75 million. Gates also owns a 341-acre island in Belize, according to reports, and nearly 242,000 acres of farmland across the United States. In an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit in February, he said, “I invested in these farms to industrialize.” More productive and creating more jobs.”

— V.L. Hendrickson, Liz Luecking, Casey Farmer and Becky Strom contributed to this article.