The founder of Facebook is the latest tech billionaire to buy a home in Florida. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife bought a home in the gated island community of Indian Creek, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is among those who have homes there. Both of Google’s two founders also appear to have recently made moves for homes in Miami — Larry Page has purchased property in Coconut Grove, while Sergey Brin reportedly has a purchase contract for a home on Allison Island in Miami Beach.
What do these multi-million dollar purchases by these billionaires tell us about the local housing market?
To put it simply: taxes and temperature. Florida continues to be a beneficiary of low taxes relative to other states like California where many of these tech executives are moving from — and pretty good weather.
These tech founders operate on a different level than most of us. It is not unusual for them to own several homes, oftentimes spending tens of millions of dollars for waterfront mansions here. With their riches, they probably aren't as sensitive to their property taxes or property insurance bills like the rest of us.
These deals make headlines because of the big prices and the big personalities of the buyers. They are just the latest evidence that the so-called wealth migration to South Florida is still happening. And it’s not just tech billionaires.
The Miami Association of Realtors found over 55,000 workers from out-of-state moved to South Florida in 2024. They were predominantly leaving California, New York and Texas.
And they came with bigger paychecks.
Floridians moving within Florida earned about $62,000 a year. The out-of-state workers moving to Florida earned a median paycheck of $101,000.
To put it another way — for every dollar earned by someone moving to Florida from out of state, a Floridian moving earned about 62 cents.
These higher paychecks added over $5 billion dollars in earnings to the region, according to the realtors group.
What has been the impact on the housing market?
Demand for single family homes has remained strong, especially for higher priced homes.
More than half of the money spent buying homes last year was spent on single family homes of at least $1 million dollars. That is a record high share of the market.
To some degree, that can be the result of the rising prices of single family homes across the region. After all, the median price of a home sold in December was over $600,000. Five years ago, it was closer to $400,000 dollars.
READ MORE: Florida relied on immigration for almost all of its population growth last year
Florida's population growth slowed considerably last year with fewer people moving here from someplace else in the U.S. and fewer people moving here from overseas. But — and this is key — the population kept growing. The impact of the slower growth on the housing market remains to be seen.
More granular population data is due from the Census Bureau in March which will include how populations of individual counties may have changed. Last year there were at least two forces at play with Florida's population trends: the increasingly affordability challenge, especially of housing, and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, including efforts to cancel Temporary Protected Status of tens of thousands of immigrants living in Florida.
But even if South Florida's population growth slows or stops, South Florida home building has not kept pace with past population growth.
In 2024, the region’s population was up by about 275,000 people. Only a little more than 16,000 building permits for privately owned housing units were issued.
President Trump recently signed an executive order banning large investors from buying single family homes. He said it was an effort to help affordability. However, the prevalence of corporate-owned homes is highly dependent on location.
The Government Accounting Office found institutional investors owned about 5% of single family homes for rent in Miami. They study was conducted in 2022. Those big investors made up a larger portion of the rental home market in Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville.
Underpinning housing demand is the job market. The regional job market remains strong even as new job growth has slowed. The South Florida unemployment rate in December was 3.5% — one of the lowest among the largest metropolitan areas in the country.
