In 2013, Los Angeles had 4,520 mega-rich people, aka ultra high net worth individuals, aka people with more than $30 million in net assets; it had the fifth most mega-rich after New York, London, Tokyo, and San Francisco. Today it has 969 mega-rich people and is ranked twentieth. Where have the mega-rich gone? The numbers come from Knight Frank's 2015 Wealth Report (via CityLab), which also found that, while Los Angeles was considered one of "the best investment opportunities in 2015" among the mega-rich, it's only the twenty-second "most important" city to these people, tailing Madrid and Milan.
New York's total number of super-rich also dropped dramatically, although the city fell only from first to fourth place in the rankings. There are more crazy rich people now than ever, with 65,335 added in the last decade for a total of 172,850 holding $20.8 trillion in wealth. And we know, according to a different report on these fascinating creatures, that they love owning houses in Los Angeles—it's fourth among all cities for super-rich-people homes. (And yet another found last year that Los Angeles has 5,135 ultra high net worthies, so grain of salt.) So how did LA hemorrhage so many mega-rich between the 2013 KF report and the 2015 one? The report does mention that the ultra-rich love to move around, but there's been a mass exodus from Los Angeles. Are they declaring residency elsewhere for tax avoidance purposes? Or is Istanbul just that much more fun? Maybe they just realized they can't hang.
· The Wealth Report [Knight Frank]
· The Super-Mega-Rich Love to Own Houses in Los Angeles [Curbed LA]
· Los Angeles is No Longer the Filthy Rich Capital of California [Curbed LA]
Loading comments...