Breaking Down the Billionaire Halo Effect

18 minutes read

We are excited to announce that Jonathan Miller, who has long authored the most authoritative report on the residential real estate market, is partnering with The Real Deal. Below, you’ll find his Housing Notes column, which will now run on our site several times a week. In addition, Miller’s quarterly report for New York City, which he published through Douglas Elliman for more than three decades, will now be “The Real Deal report, prepared by Jonathan Miller.” Miller’s data venture, Streetmatrix, which provides hyperlocal data, will provide statistics to TRD Data subscribers.

— TRD editors

Here’s a psychology primer coat before absorbing billionaire takes on the economy

Good grief. I’ve been writing a lot about uber wealth in the housing market recently, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Not because I want to, but because it is literally in our faces every single day. In fact, I’m personally working to strengthen my resistance to the billionaire worship that rains down on us all day, every day. Members of this rarified financial strata of the population who are very good at creating their own wealth often think they are blessed with credible expertise across all elements of society. That’s an illusion. Please indulge me on a short descent into the rabbit hole:

Halo effect: When someone gets rich in one field, we assume they’re smart about everything, even topics they don’t actually know well. Great wealth implies significant expertise in everything. Johnny Carson famously told the story that his late-night television success led him to believe he was also great at tennis, creating a lot of personal frustration.
Authority bias + media amplification: Billionaires get treated as automatic experts on any topic, and the media repeats their views far more than those of real specialists. We saw this with the handful of billionaire tech bros fleeing California to escape the rumored state wealth tax as if they represented all the wealthy in the state.
Aspirational psychology: Many people imagine they’re future billionaires, not members of a different class, so they identify with the ultra‑rich instead of questioning their power. Ultra high-end real estate easily provides this context.
American success myths: We still tell a story that the richest people earned it purely through talent and hard work, even though most also benefited from big head starts, favorable systems, and connections. If we’ve learned anything over the past few decades, it is that the US isn’t a meritocracy because it doesn’t account for the widening wealth gap.

Thanks for indulging me on this human psychology rabbit hole. I do love tracking high-end real estate, but let’s cut back on the billionaire worship.

A $400 million listing enters the real estate zeitgeist

Here’s another example of how high-end housing keeps pushing our attention away from housing for the rest of us — it’s purely aspirational: Will a Los Angeles Megamansion Become America’s First $400 Million Home?

This asking price isn’t a new record, but it’s been 4 years since we’ve had an audacious one to vet. Remember The One? We were all subjected to endless coverage of this $500 million listing because it was shockingly high-priced and, like most of these listings, was disconnected from the local market. After 5 years of the developer trying to build value into perception, it sold for $126 million, or $141 million including expenses.

Here’s the timeline:

Around 2017, the developer and early press were already positioning The One as a $500 million listing, with expectations that it would hit the market at that price once completed.
Through the late 2010s, it was discussed and marketed conceptually at the 500-million-dollar level while still under construction, but it never found a buyer at or near that price.
By 2021–early 2022, facing over $100 million in debt and foreclosure, the price guidance had been cut dramatically, with talk of $225–$350 million, then a formal auction list price of $295 million.
The property finally sold via bankruptcy auction on March 3, 2022, for a $126 million price (roughly $141 million including fees), ending the multi‑year effort to make a $500 million‑dollar sale happen.

I’m getting PTSD just thinking about those five years of constant coverage.

Admittedly, I’m interested in this new $400 million LA listing because it’s been a while. Nationally, there have been 5 or more $100 million sales every year except one since 2019, with the highest number sold in 2025.

Most importantly, I got a chart into the Wall Street Journal, and charts = life.

Since 2014, I’ve been tracking $50 million+ sales in the US (back to 2000) and it’s becoming a chore because of the expanding volume. Back then I decided to focus on tracking closed sales ≥ $50 million because there have been a LOT of listings that have entered the market with great fanfare and never sold. A lot of these listings were probably placed online for the owners to be a “bold-faced name” in tabloids.

Billionaire Ken Griffin doesn’t want attention for purchasing a $238 million second home

After I read this Bloomberg piece, Citadel’s Griffin to Meet With New York Governor After Mamdani Spat, I was surprised the billionaire was surprised. I got the impression that he was implying he would lead all other high-net-worth individuals out of the city because of the bad vibes. He called Mamdani’s reference to his home for the proposed pied-à-terre tax: “a profound lack of judgment,” and called it a “personal attack.” Unlike many other billionaires who pontificate a lot on economic matters, I find Griffin’s economic observations quite prescient. For context, he already got a lot of unwanted attention for owning the most expensive condo in the U.S., which has been mentioned thousands of times on Google and on local, national and international media outlets since the 2019 closing. For years, I have described Griffin as someone who seems to enjoy paying full retail for residential real estate worldwide. That’s his right, and more power to him for that. But it also makes him a public persona. Here’s that Wall Street Journal article with one of my Ken Griffin takes.

‘”He’s a whale’s whale,” said property appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. “In my career, I’ve really never run into somebody that singularly has dominated a segment of the market in so many different places. He’s a prolific buyer of full retail-price real estate.”’

He gets a lot of attention for his niche hobby, so why does this bother him now? I’m really curious. I’m sure this won’t be the last reference to his $238 million non-primary home. When you buy the most expensive home in U.S. history, I think it is reasonable to expect it will be cited repeatedly in the media or by politicians.

In many ways, Griffin could be considered a key driver of the US housing market above the $50 million threshold. Although some of his record purchases, like Faena House in Miami and No. 9 Watson in Chicago, were resold at a substantial losses, -20 percent on the former and -44 percent on the latter. I don’t begrudge him for having fun in the residential real estate space, but with a pattern of paying some of the highest prices in a number of locations, he’s going to get some unwanted attention.

When the infamous (and since convicted of 10 federal human trafficking charges each) Alexander Brothers brokered his 220 Central Park South purchase, the cornerstone of the launch of their once new, now defunct, firm Official, he was rumored to be quite angry about the associated publicity. And I’m sure this pied-à-terre tax attention might risk some uber-wealthy people from temporarily shying away from super luxury purchases of NYC. But let’s be serious. He was singled out for having the highest condo sale in America. If someone had bought a property for even more after his purchase, they would likely have been the pick for the pied-à-terre tax by the NYC mayor, not Griffin. It can’t be personal as Griffin claims.

Griffin’s Thursday meeting with Governor Hochul will only bring more attention to his $238 million second home, which will be subject to the proposed pied-à-terre tax. Here’s a partial list of his U.S. purchases to show this isn’t a one-off. I left off international purchases like his $125 million Central London mansion buy.

Remember, this is what he does, constantly.

Final thoughts

Our culture’s halo effect around billionaires used the saga of “The One” megamansion and a new $400 million LA listing to illustrate how trophy properties generate years of media hype, often ending in steep discounts or no sale at all, while still dominating our attention. At the same time, mega-housing owners like Ken Griffin become emblematic of the uber-high-end market, whose second homes inevitably become political props in debates like New York’s proposed pied‑à‑terre tax, whether they like the spotlight or not.

The actual final thought — Let’s focus on the important stuff, like the historical quality-of-life issues.
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