Where The Ultra-Rich Are Buying Their Next Homes

The world has always been different for protected species. Safeguarded against predators, inoculated against disease. Protected species live charmed lives—until the day, if such a day ever comes, we’re all overwhelmed by events beyond our control.

Happily, that won’t happen suddenly, if at all. The four horsemen always need time to saddle up. But, according to current commentators, events today are gathering into a perfect storm. Climate change, sudden pandemics, geo-critical political risks, and the still-unknown terrible beauty of AI. Some claim such things are merely well-thumbed pages in the long human diary, others that a civilizational shift is at hand.

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Let’s discount the miniature industrialists of paranoia. The nostalgia fanatics who miss the excitements of the Cold War and fallout shelters built from upturned dumpsters. The entrepreneurs selflessly selling $20,000 timeshares in fortified campsites in Nevada, with optional training in bushcraft.

Let’s consider instead how many HNW and UHNW individuals are now looking out beyond the shock-proof windows of their penthouses on Central Park, their Lake Como villas, their private helicopter pads in Hong Kong to where the horizon is beginning to shimmer in a haze of uncertainty. Many are sizing up their where-to-next options.

Which is where the super-prime real estate profession comes in. Time was, luxury meant a diamond or dinner at The Ritz (then, a little later, owning The Ritz). Now the very concept of luxury is being redefined. It no longer looks like a Patek Philippe Grand Complications wrist watch. Today what luxury looks like is: security, privacy, seclusion, and escape.

Protected by multiple layers of encrypted passwords and NDAs, Mark Zuckerberg’s new project on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, 2,400 miles from mainland America, is pushing privacy towards new boundaries. The perimeter boundary, for example, around the 1,400-acre construction site, is defended by guard towers. Unit workers are bussed in under instruction to not photograph the project, or face immediate dismissal. According to a report by Wired in 2023, publicly available planning documents indicate a land purchase of $170 million and a build cost of $100 million to complete 12 separate buildings with 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms centered around two mansions, across an area of 57,000 square feet which, for those unfamiliar with such dimensions, rubs shoulders with an average NFL field. Add an underground 5,000-square-foot bunker that has its own supply of energy and food. Wired calls it “an opulent techno-Xanadu”. No one knows what Zuckerberg will call it in the end, but the odds are shortening on Strangelove.

Back in the ordinary world of UHNW wealth, security, privacy, seclusion and escape are the priority search terms. Ken Jacobs, director of Sydney-based Private Property Global, believes Covid-19 was a watershed that created a seismic shift in people’s priorities. “For many, the pandemic resulted in a focus on mortality and reassessment,” he says. “Life balance was the clarion call. Alongside the most basic human trait of flight to safety is the fact that greater wealth gives greater options.”

While much noise on the predicaments of uncertainty emanates from the U.S., Jacobs is resolute in his analysis that the shift in clients’ priorities is playing out globally. “Here in Australia, I’m witnessing an increase in enquiries from a wide range of international buyers looking for safe havens. A small but increasing number of UHNW individuals are wanting escapes that are totally self-sustainable ahead of what they see as advancing mayhem.”

Such thinking began as the pandemic swept into 2021. Back then, the South China Morning Post reported that global enquiries from UHNWs seeking private islands had doubled in the past 12 months, while agents in French Polynesia were reporting a fivefold increase in interest. They were not alone. Since then, requirements—like the world events driving them—have become more multi-layered.

While a private island delivers isolation, it’s not the only solution for those seeking refuge from any impending storm. Professionals at the top of super-prime real estate know that UHNWs prize connection with like-minded others, because wealth is neither generated nor protected in a vacuum. Most UHNWs are not navel-gazers, because opportunity always sits beyond the status quo—which is, of course, only ever the current status quo. What they require from their trusted advisors in super-prime real estate is not just acute market knowledge but personal networks that open the widest range of property purchase options.

Expansive estates in New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and Costa Rica—locations where outstanding natural habitats provide salve not salvo, and political stability offers its own kind of wellness massage—are likely to continue attracting exploration from those with the means and the openness of mind to boldly go.

What’s certain? Trend forecasting itself is a game of uncertainty. But the conventional havens where wealth previously secured itself seem set to migrate. As the challenging future unfolds, and the global power axis tilts ineluctably towards the east, so does the eyeline of the visionaries following it.