Ever since my wife and I entered the housing market in 2023, and had a shocking wakeup call, I have been a broken record. Here’s how I’ve described it before. There were at least three big problems for any normal person looking to buy a family home: 1) city-to-rural (or “ruraler”) moves after COVID; 2) airbnb purchases of multiple homes in places people don’t even live (there may be a housing shortage, but there’s no airbnb shortage); but 3) is a more mysterious problem I’ve had difficulty putting a finger on. The way I’ve put it is that there is an unknown, mysteriously high number of people running around the with wild amounts of f-you money in their pockets. An anesthesiologist in Bozeman, for example, who sold his ~$800,000 house for a cash offer. The account provided as proof of cash: $29 million.
I have not been under the impression that this is a rare occurrence. When we lost a bid for a house in southern Oregon to, of course, a cash offer, when we were still thinking of settling there, we asked if we could be listed as a backup. They said sure, we could be put down as a backup… after the other 5 cash offers on this home that also beat you out.
Well, the whole thing still stinks, but it’s nice to know I wasn’t wrong:
When Americans picture the ultrarich, they typically think of tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, whose wealth lies predominantly in shares of publicly traded companies. They might also think of Wall Street financiers and celebrities such as Taylor Swift. But far more typical are figures like Terry Taylor—which is to say, owners of successful privately held businesses. We are economists who have been studying taxation and inequality for more than a decade. By our calculations, about 1.7 million Americans have each built a net worth of at least $10 million by owning a private business. For every CEO of a public company, there are more than 1,000 private-business owners with a net worth of more than $25 million.
In the course of our research, we’ve come to call these people “everywhere millionaires” because they exist all around the country, in a huge range of industries. Perhaps not surprising, some of these millionaires have stakes in investment firms or medical, dental, or legal practices. But the ranks of everywhere millionaires also include a repo man from Henderson, Nevada; a car-wash owner from Milwaukee; a treated-lumber magnate from Alabama; a boat-cover maker from the Ozarks.
[…]
According to our analysis of the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, the 65,000 American households worth more than $100 million consisted almost entirely of business owners; fewer than half held graduate degrees.…
…Everywhere millionaires don’t get the same attention as eccentric tech titans, finance executives, or famous entertainers. But seeing them is the first step to understanding the economy and society as they really are.