The center of ultra-luxury homes has shifted from California to Florida. From the New York Post,
Gables Estates, a small gated community located in Coral Gables, Florida, has now taken Zillow’s top spot for the United States’ most expensive neighborhood, based on home value data over the last 12 months.
The neighborhood now tops Beverly Hills, California, long regarded as the pinnacle ZIP code of wealth.
That’s not all,
Seven of the 10 priciest neighborhoods are located in the Sunshine State, while the remaining three are in California.
The center of gravity of wealth and influence has shifted from one coast to the other, for all of the obvious reasons,
Buyers and businesses are relocating [to Florida] for lifestyle, taxes and the overall environment. South Florida is increasingly becoming known as Wall Street South.
And it’s not just Californians fleeing,
Additionally, Henley & Partners World’s Wealthiest Cities Report for 2025 found that both West Palm Beach and Miami surpassed New York City as the world’s fastest-growing wealth hubs.
Power Line recently featured under “Picks” above this piece by Joel Kotkin on his website. He writes under the headline,
Gavin Newsom, the Chameleon Who Destroyed California.
Kotkin chronicles the fall and fall of what was once America’s most important state,
But Newsom has an even bigger, more vulnerable Achilles’ heel than his shifting political positions. It is the undeniable economic and social decline he has overseen as governor of California.
A state that was once the envy of the world is now best described as a bastion of feudal inequality. Huge wealth is concentrated in a few hands, while it accommodates roughly half of America’s homeless population. It not only has the highest cost-of-living-adjusted poverty rate in the US, it also has the highest unemployment. Nearly one in five Californians lives in poverty, while the Public Policy Institute of California estimates another third live in near poverty.
And people are leaving in droves, and it’s not just the ultra-wealthy. Kotkin continues,
Even immigrants, reacting to the lack of good jobs and high housing costs, are heading elsewhere. In the past decade, Los Angeles has actually lost foreign-born residents, who have been flocking to the very places – Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Miami – that Newsom caricatures as racist hellholes. Migration to California is now, on a per capita basis, lower than virtually any state, while the numbers leaving have shot up since 2020.
From another era,
A sunkissed miss said, “Don’t be late!”
That’s why I can hardly wait
Open up that golden gate
California, Here I Come!
