California Wealth Tax Bringing More Billionaires to Miami

A proposed 5 percent tax on billionaires in California is propelling another wave of wealth to South Florida.

Look no further than Google co-founder Larry Page, one of the three wealthiest men in the world, who recently spent a combined $173 million to buy two waterfront homes in Miami’s Coconut Grove.

Page’s purchases aren’t shocking. In addition to the proposed California tax, ultra high-net worth buyers have for decades been attracted to Florida for its lack of state income tax, conservative politics and pleasant weather. The region is already home to billionaires, who include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and hedge funder Ken Griffin. To keep their Florida residency, they only need to spend six months and a day in the Sunshine State.

And more are considering moves to South Florida, brokers and other industry insiders say.

Fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who was also shopping for a Miami abode, made an offer to buy a waterfront house in Miami Beach for about $50 million, sources told The Real Deal. Brin is buying LVMH Americas Chairman & CEO Michael Burke’s Allison Island home.

Interest picked up in early December, around Art Basel, according to brokers. That’s when Brin arrived in Miami via his $450 million megayacht Dragonfly, which was docked in Biscayne Bay.

“We’re showing property almost every single day,” said Douglas Elliman agent Devin Kay.

Luxe Living Realty broker Dora Puig said the spike in interest from Californians is “foundationally strong.” That includes prospective buyers who made their fortune in cryptocurrency, she said.

The billionaires, primarily from California but also other parts of the country, are looking from Miami to Palm Beach, where a number of large deals have closed recently as well: In December, fintech billionaire Ronald Clarke, chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Corpay, purchased a 2.5-acre waterfront compound in North Palm Beach from William Wrigley Jr. for $97.5 million. Another $72 million trade closed at the start of the year.

Danny Hertzberg, of the top-ranked Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker, said he’s the busiest he’s been since the pandemic boom of 2021. Hertzberg is part of the team that represented the seller of the $101.5 million estate Page purchased. He declined to comment on the deal.

Hertzberg flew out to California after the wealth tax idea was first floated. The ballot measure would tax California residents worth more than $1 billion the equivalent of 5 percent of their assets. It still has to secure enough signatures to make it onto the November ballot, but if it passes, it would apply retroactively to anyone who lived in California as of Jan. 1, 2026.

“Our team has been quite busy. Everyone thought it was going to be a New York-Mamdani story, but it’s been a California story,” he said, referring to the “exodus” South Florida brokers predicted when Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York in the fall. That’s fallen short.

“It’s not just L.A., San Francisco. It’s every pocket of California that has high net-worth individuals,” Hertzberg said. South Florida, Texas and Nevada will benefit most if the tax becomes a reality, he added.

The buyers are interested in properties at the very top of the market. Coconut Grove has benefitted from the boom already — in addition to Page’s buys, a mystery buyer spent over $100 million in the same Miami neighborhood, on another waterfront property that billionaire Jorge Mas sold in December.

Kay of Elliman said he’s starting to see a bump in activity spill over into big-ticket contracts for ultra-luxury condos at the Four Seasons Residences at the Surf Club. The luxury condo market has performed less consistently than the waterfront single-family homes, but the Surfside development and its sister projects have attracted a Who’s Who of buyers for years.

“We’re seeing that across all of our business,” he said.