The 1% are on the move. Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen bought a $17 million teardown on Miami Beach’s ultra-exclusive Indian Creek island. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who are said to have plunked down $30 million for a lot, may be their neighbors. Recently it emerged that hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. is moving its Manhattan headquarters to South Florida, and that private equity giant Blackstone Group Inc. will open an office there. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is reportedly considering relocating part of its asset management operations to the region, too. It’s not just happening on the East Coast. In the last few months, the venture capitalists David Blumberg and Keith Rabois decamped from the San Francisco Bay Area to Miami.
Austin is having something of a moment as well. Elon Musk is trading Los Angeles for the Texas tech hub, where his new $1 billion Cybertruck factory is under construction. Larry Ellison announced that Oracle would move its headquarters there from Silicon Valley. DropBox Inc. CEO Drew Houston and Splunk Inc. CEO Douglas Merritt reportedly took steps to relocate from the Bay Area to Austin, too.
Some residents of pricey cities like New York, L.A. and San Francisco might say good riddance to the uber-rich whom they blame for growing unaffordability and inequality in their cities. But their cities will pay a literal price for their departures. It doesn’t take very many one-percenters changing their address to wreak havoc on cities’ finances.
Continue reading here at Bloomberg CityLab, courtesy of Richard Florida.