The billionaire exodus from the West Coast to Florida is underway as the ultra-wealthy seek refuge from wealth taxes in states like California and Washington.
Google cofounders Larry Page (net worth $244 billion) and Sergey Brin (net worth $226 billion) rushed to leave California last year before the Jan. 1 deadline for the California billionaire tax. Both have purchased property in Florida. Meanwhile, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, whose net worth is $3.4 billion, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth is $198 billion, also both bought property in the Sunshine State last month.
The tech titans and Schultz join Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, PayPal and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, Citadel founder Ken Griffin, and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, who have all bought property or moved their companies’ operations to Florida in the past couple of years.
The rush to buy in Florida has been fueled partly by California’s proposed Billionaire Tax Act, which, if passed, would charge billionaires who resided in California after Jan. 1, 2026 with a one-time tax on 5% their total net worth.
The bill, which would reportedly affect about 200 people, aims to collect $100 billion in revenue that would go toward funding health care, education, and food assistance. To get on the ballot in November, the proposal needs to collect 875,000 signatures from California residents by June. Once on the ballot, a simple majority in the November elections would make the effort pass and amend the state’s constitution to put it into place.
But not everyone is on board. Many wealthy individuals in California have come out against the tax, including Brin, who donated $20 million to a political action committee running three counter “spoiler” measures which if approved by voters would potentially weaken or yield legal challenges to the billionaire tax if it passes as well. Thiel also donated $3 million to the California Business Roundtable, a group opposing the billionaire tax.
There are also doubts about whether the bill, even if it is passed, will reach its goal of collecting $100 billion. With Page and Brin leaving the state before Jan. 1, as well as Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick who left for Texas, the tax could be robbed of a fourth of its $100 billion goal, according to a calculation by Fortune. A back-of-the-envelope calculation using the 5% wealth tax metric puts the dollar figure of taxes owed by Page at $13 billion and Brin at about $12 billion. Meanwhile 5% of Kalanick and Thiel’s wealth adds another $1 billion or so that brings the total potentially lost revenue to about $26 billion.
Still, the potential California billionaire tax isn’t the only effort pushing billionaires to migrate South. Washington’s wealth tax may have also played a role. Both Bezos and Schultz left Seattle before Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law Tuesday a high-earners income tax that would charge 9.9% on earnings of more than $1 million. The tax aims to bring in $3 billion to $4 billion per year from wealthy individuals while eliminating some sales tax on items like diapers and expanding funding for child care and health care.
Griffin, the lone former Chicago resident, left Illinois, moving Citadel to Miami in June 2022 after nearly three decades. At the time, Griffin pointed to the city’s crime and politics as the reason. Since then, Griffin and Citadel have together invested billions in Florida real estate.
Some of the reasons for the billionaires’ departure is the attractiveness of Florida’s low taxes as well as its nice weather. The state has no income tax and no capital gains tax, and Miami in particular has branded itself as a business-friendly alternative to high-tax cities in California and elsewhere. The billionaires who have moved to Florida can also easily afford to buy in the state’s most exclusive areas and secure increasingly pricey waterfront properties.
Miami, especially, is one of the most expensive luxury markets in the U.S. In 2025, more ultraluxury homes sold in Miami, according to the New York Times. While the median home price in Miami fell about 7% to $610,000 in March, at the ultra-high end range, demand is growing. Five years ago no home in Miami sold for $50 million, but in 2025, sales in this range made up 7% of the market, the Times reported.
Mark Zuckerberg
The Meta cofounder and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan reportedly secured a $170 million waterfront mansion on the western side of Indian Creek Island, a manmade refuge for the ultra-rich located in the Biscayne Bay west of Miami Beach. Zuckerberg’s property is only a few houses down from Jeff Bezos’ in-construction compound and includes a gym, hair salon, and massage room, according to The Wall Street Journal. Indian Creek, also known as Billionaire Bunker, has a mere 41 residents and has 24/7 security which adds to its exclusivity. The property would add to Zuckerberg’s myriad properties across the U.S. including in Hawaii and Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains between Nevada and California.
Jeff Bezos
The Amazon founder and executive chair has purchased three multi-million-dollar properties on Indian Creek Island. The world’s third-richest man bought two adjoining properties on the western side of the 41-person island in 2022 and 2023, for $68 million and $79 million with plans to combine the lots into a mega-compound. Meanwhile, Bezos lives on the other side of the island in a Mediterranean-style home he bought for about $90 million in 2024. The billionaire’s combined properties cost him more than $230 million in total.
Larry Ellison
Ellison made a 16-acre oceanfront property in Manalapan, Fla., in Palm Beach County his primary residence earlier this year. The property, which Ellison purchased for $173 million in 2022 is conveniently located fewer than 10 miles from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Ellison is a major Republican donor and hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his estate in California’s Coachella Valley in 2020, according to SFGate. Just after Trump’s inauguration last year Ellison stood by Trump as he, alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son announced a $500 billion initiative dubbed Stargate to invest in U.S.-based AI infrastructure.
In 2024, Ellison purchased the Eau Palm Beach Resort and Spa for $277 million, quickly pushing remodeling plans and installing his favorite Japanese and Peruvian fusion restaurant Nobu. Ellison also owns another waterfront property in North Palm Beach he purchased for $80 million in 2021.
By moving his primary residence from Lanai, Hawaii, to Florida, before selling Oracle stock and collecting dividends, Ellison saved an estimated $1 billion in taxes, according to Forbes.
Larry Page
With his purchases in recent months, Google cofounder and former CEO Larry Page has amassed more than $180 million worth of properties in the Sunshine State as he looks to build his own mega-compound in Miami’s upscale Coconut Grove community. The Google cofounder purchased two adjacent properties in late December and early January for $101.5 million and $71.9 million. One of the homes includes 13 bedrooms and 15.5 bathrooms. Page snapped up another property in the same area for $14.97 million in January, South Florida Business Journal reported.
Sergey Brin
Page’s cofounder Brin snagged his own slice of Florida in recent months. The billionaire bought a $51 million home on Allison Island, near Miami Beach, earlier this year, Business Insider reported. The 10,000 square foot property has seven bedrooms, a waterfront pool, and a private dock. The island has 24-hour security and fewer than 50 homes, according to Realtor.com.
Ken Griffin
Griffin made a splash when he announced he was moving his hedge fund Citadel to Miami in 2022. But even before then, Griffin was building up his Florida real-estate empire. For the past 10 years, the hedge funder has poured $450 million into a 50,000-square-foot waterfront compound in Palm Beach County,which, when finished, will be the most expensive residence on the planet, according to the New York Post. The financier also purchased a $106.9 million compound in Coconut Grove in 2022.
Apart from Griffin’s personal purchases, his company, Citadel, is also reportedly pouring billions into real estate in Miami, including a 54-story headquarters for Citadel in downtown Miami that is estimated to cost $2.5 billion.
Peter Thiel
While Peter Thiel’s Florida footprint is relatively more modest than his fellow billionaires, he has still purchased nearly $40 million worth of property in the Miami area. Thiel in 2020 purchased a compound made up of two homes for $18 million on Miami’s Venetian Islands, manmade islands that sit between Miami Beach and downtown Miami in Biscayne Bay. Late last year, the billionaire’s Thiel Capital opened an office in Miami. Palantir also announced it was moving its headquarters to Miami in February.
Howard Schultz
Schultz and his wife Sheri Schultz purchased a penthouse in Surfside, Fla. north of Miami Beach last month for $44 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. The purchase was made public shortly after Schultz announced he was leaving Seattle, where he lived 44 years, for Miami in a statement on LinkedIn.
The 5,500 square foot property has five bedrooms, a rooftop terrace, and an oceanfront cabana, according to the Journal.
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