Billionaires expanding their property empires are increasingly buying up the houses around them too — not for investment, but to keep the people who work for them nearby. Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, worth an estimated $195 billion, paid nearly $10 million in 2023 for homes in a small gated community in Boynton Beach, Florida, to house members of his family's staff, including tutors for the five children he shares with his wife Jolin Ellison, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the arrangement. The community sits roughly 30 minutes from Ellison's $173 million oceanfront estate in Manalapan, which he bought a year earlier in what was at the time the most expensive residential sale in Florida history, according to Fortune's Sydney Lake.
The Journal reported that an Ellison-linked LLC with a California address went on to purchase eight more homes in Florida's Palm Meadows Estates, part of a broader pattern among the ultrawealthy of acquiring nearby housing to keep staff "close enough to be helpful" while preserving the family's own privacy. All told, Ellison has put an estimated $450 million into real estate in Manalapan, a roughly 400-resident island town about 20 minutes from Mar-a-Lago that has become an increasingly popular address for billionaires, where, as one Palm Beach luxury agent put it to Fortune, security has shifted from being a hassle to a selling point: "What used to be a temporary inconvenience has now become part of the infrastructure of doing business here."
A parallel compound in Palo Alto
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, worth an estimated $261 billion, has pursued a similar strategy in a different form. Since buying a home on Edgewood Drive in Palo Alto in 2011, he has spent more than $110 million acquiring at least 11 houses in the city's Crescent Park neighborhood, the New York Times reported last year, at times offering owners two or three times what their homes were worth. Several of the properties sit empty, others host guests or events, and one was reportedly used as a private school in violation of city code.
Zuckerberg's attorney told Palo Alto Online that the family arranges taxi and rideshare transportation for staff and pays someone to ensure anyone connected to the property parks only in front of homes Zuckerberg owns. A spokesperson for Zuckerberg told Fortune the family has "taken a number of steps above and beyond any local requirements to avoid disruption in the neighborhood," including handing out noise-canceling headphones to neighbors during loud construction stretches.
Cities are struggling to respond
Local officials have had limited success addressing the trend. In April, Palo Alto's City Council voted down a proposal from Vice Mayor Greer Stone and Councilman Keith Reckdahl that would have capped construction timelines, required licensed security guards, and set occupancy rules for owners holding more than three properties on a single block, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post. Michael Kieschnick, a Crescent Park resident, told Palo Alto Online he worries the neighborhood has become a template others could copy: "What has happened in our neighborhood has left a blueprint that is easy for anyone else to follow."
The homes are often purchased through LLCs that obscure the ultimate buyer, a structure that fits a broader shift toward what real estate professionals describe as "stealth wealth" planning. Palo Alto–based real estate agent Ken DeLeon has told Fortune that his wealthiest clients structure their purchases so that even someone combing through ownership records "still cannot easily connect the property back to the principal owner." Financing choices reflect the same instinct to keep capital elsewhere: Zuckerberg refinanced his Palo Alto home in 2012 with a 30-year, 1.05% adjustable-rate mortgage, a decision consistent with how many ultrahigh-net-worth buyers approach real estate. "They'd rather keep their money working for them in investments, businesses — or even art — rather than tying it all up in one property," Compass executive director of sales Miltiadis Kastanis has told Fortune.