According to the Wall Street Journal’s Candace Taylor, an immense influx of global wealth in the U.S. market created a new market for “ultra-luxury” home properties in the 2010s, which ramped up the sales of single-family homes and condos priced at $50 million or more.
Today, because so many buyers are wealthy enough to withstand the most severe economic swings, this new sector largely acts independently from the broader real-estate market. So while the number of sales are falling in many luxury markets across the country, six homes in the U.S. have closed for $100 million or more so far in 2019—the highest number for a single year. In 2010, there were none.
Some buyers paid tens of millions of dollars for houses, only to raze them and build brand-new mansions in their place. They bought newly constructed, multimillion-dollar condos and gut-renovated them, putting existing high-end finishes out with the trash. They upholstered their walls in red leather from the uber-luxury handbag brand Hermès. The youngest members of the family got playhouses that cost more than conventional homes.
