Your city's "favoured quarter"

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

And Marin is northern Westchester?

I'd say the Santa Cruz Mountains would be northern Westchester plus perhaps part of Fairfield south of Danbury and north of the panhandle. Just something that captures vast amounts of undeveloped wilderness and sparsely populated communities.

I'd group Marin with Sonoma, Napa, and Solano Counties and just say that those are more or less akin to the Hudson River Valley — Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster. Also mostly sparsely populated with some sizable communities (Vallejo would be, say, Poughkeepsie). Orange and Ulster have lots of wineries, and I think Upstate in general is looked upon favorably by more sophisticated crowds. Chelsea Clinton had her wedding in Rhinebeck.

San Jose is a combination of Nassau's wealth and tract-style housing and Fairfield's suburban-based power economy and transplant-friendliness. I think just about anyone who lives along the Northeast corridor could adjust with relative ease to life in Fairfield, as it's technically New England, very Italian and Irish, quite German and English, fairly Jewish, and culturally WASP (for NoVA types).

Southern half of Santa Clara County (south of 85) plus Santa Cruz County would be the closest thing to Suffolk County.

Del Monte Forest (Pebble Beach) and Carmel would be the Hamptons, although those are in Monterey. Honestly though, hardly anyone commutes from the Hamptons to Manhattan. The Hamptons are only included in NYC's CSA because Suffolk County is so large.

The communities along the 4 corridor (Suisun Bay and San Joaquin River) would be the equivalent of Ocean and Monmouth Counties, although the latter aren't as trashy and have mostly coastal communities.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

There's cultural as well as economic dimensions. That's why Long Island and Westchester vote so differently, in spite of looking pretty similar on paper.

The demographics are quite different. Westchester is relatively diverse for a wealthy suburban county; it's 26.81% Latino and 13.04% black per the 2020 census.

Suffolk is extremely Italian and Irish and not very Jewish by NY standards. It's also 100% suburban and less connected to NYC, unlike how The Bronx flows into Westchester.

Nassau is also very Italian and quite Irish, but also extremely Jewish and much more black than Suffolk. Persian Jewish community I'm guessing skews conservative.

[Docere]

^ And Orthodox Jews in the Five Towns.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't think it's anything like LA. If I took LA County's HNWI and looked at the share west or east of downtown, it would probably be 90-10 west. The wealth is hugely lopsided. And I'm accounting for places like La Canada Flintridge as east. If you did the same in an equivalent radius in NY, it would be approaching a near even-split.

There's billionaires, UHNWIs, HNWIs (let's say 10-29 million), and households with six-figure incomes. Each of these dimensions, I think, wouldn't be consistent across any metro area, including NYC. As you move more and more towards the billionaire end of the spectrum, you'll likely see Greenwich and the Hamptons overly represented. However, if your standard is counties with median household incomes of $100,000 or more, then you have total geographic equilibrium. This is why I mentioned distinguishing between certain types of wealth.

Regarding LA, I think a large part of this is simply due to LA having a relatively underdeveloped economy compared to NYC and the Bay Area — hence less wealth. The wealth would most likely be STEM-based (as opposed to finance) and presumably result in larger Chinese, Indian, and white populations. SFV, SGV, Gateway Cities, and north OC would be less Latino. But to be honest, "favored quarter" as determined through the lens of cachet, is still largely dictated by whiteness. Even the large Chinese and Indian populations living in Cupertino and Fremont, respectively, are by and large not part of the elite, well-connected class that runs Silicon Valley. They're more likely to be the engineers coding things, not the ones meeting with investors.


There's also geographical factors that come into play. Manhattan is in the center of the metro area both physically and population-wise:

East: 8,063,232 million (Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island)
West/south: 7,857,219 million (North/Central Jersey, Staten Island, Pike County, PA)
North: 5,799,620 (The Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Ulster, Putnam, Dutchess, Fairfield, New Haven, Litchfield)

Bergen County is mostly north of Manhattan, even more so if you want to cut Manhattan off at 96th Street. If you move it to the north group, then you have something closer to:

East: 8.06 million
West/south: 6.91 million
North: 6.76 million


In both LA and the Bay Area, climate makes coastal-proximate communities more desirable. If you were to do that HNWI test for the Bay Area, I bet it'd be pretty lopsided to the west. It's not just the SF peninsula vs. the East Bay either. Western Santa Clara County is seen as much more desirable than the eastern half. Also add in Marin County. There's no question which side "wins."

[Quixote]

For LA, the most expensive place to live is actually not Beverly Hills or Bel Air. It's Malibu, which I wouldn't really call the Westside. Central Malibu is, as the crow flies, as far away from Santa Monica as Boyle Heights is.

The most expensive listing for a home in the LA area is in Malibu — a 25,000-SF estate designed by Robert Stern situated on 5 acres on a bluff with elevator access to the beach below asking $195 million. And it's on busy Pacific Coast Highway, which I have always thought was a turn-off.

There's another listing of a much more modest 3,800-SF home right on the ocean but with no backyard. The home sits on a slope and a large deck on the beach. The house is an ugly stucco box built in 1982 that I wish would have been torn down. Asking price? $75 million.

In terms of price per square foot — the true way to measure cost of real estate — Malibu wins hands down.

Hidden Hills is also another exclusive (guard-gated) community adjacent to Calabasas in the SFV. It's where the Kardashians (I know, who cares), Drake, and tons of other celebrities live.

In Manhattan Beach, there's a 1,733-SF home on The Strand for sale asking $14.4 million.

The point? Malibu, Hidden Hills, and Manhattan Beach are all very different areas and every bit as pricey as Beverly Hills and Bel Air. These are not communities where you can buy a 9,000-SF for $5 million like you can in Scarsdale. Beverly Hills and Bel Air are not the be-all and end-all.

[Quixote]

NYC area billionaires, as of May 3-4, 2023:

Michael Bloomberg -- NYC
Julia Koch & family -- NYC
Jim Simons -- East Setauket, NY (Suffolk)
Stephen Schwarzman -- NYC
Ray Dalio -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Leonard Lauder -- NYC
Steve Cohen -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Rupert Murdoch & family -- NYC
Stephen Ross -- NYC
Israel Englander -- NYC
Donald Newhouse -- NYC
Valerie Mars -- NYC
Leon Black -- NYC
Chase Coleman III -- NYC
David Shaw -- NYC
Ramzi Musallam -- NYC
Rocco Commisso -- Saddle River, NJ (Bergen)
Henry Kravis -- NYC
Leonard Stern -- NYC
Don Vultaggiioo & family -- Port Washington, NY (Nassau)
Ralph Lauren -- NYC
Philippe Laffont -- NYC
David Siegel -- Scarsdale, NY (Westchester)
John Overdeck -- Millburn, NJ (Essex)
George Soros -- Katonah, NY (Westchester)
Bruce Kovner -- NYC
Stanley Druckenmiller -- NYC
Ken Langone -- Sands Point, NY (Nassau)
Karen Pritzker -- Branford, CT (New Haven)
Daniel Ziff -- NYC
Robert Ziff -- NYC
Margaretta Taylor -- Southampton, NY (Suffolk/Hamptons)
James Chambers -- Palisades, NY (Rockland)
Katharine Rayner -- East Hampton, NY (Suffolk/Hamptons)
Paul Singer -- NYC
Todd Boehly -- Darien, CT (Fairfield)
Tony Tamer -- NYC
Jonathan Gray -- NYC
Ron Baron -- NYC
Thomas Secunda -- Croton-on-Hudson, NY (Westchester)
Jon Stryker -- NYC
Marc Rowan -- NYC
Ronald Lauder -- NYC
Charles Dolan & family -- Oyster Bay, NY (Nassau)
Jane Lauder -- NYC
John Catsimatidis -- NYC
Barry Diller -- NYC
Brad Jacobs -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Stephen Feinberg -- NYC
Richard LeFrak & family -- NYC
Charles Cohen -- NYC
Jerry Speyer -- NYC
Josh Kushner -- NYC
Peter Kellogg -- Short Hills, NJ (Essex)
Stephen Mandel, Jr. -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Scott Shleifer -- NYC
Ira Rennert -- NYC
Daniel Loeb -- NYC
Wesley Edens -- NYC
William Ackman -- NYC
Steven Klinsky -- NYC
Charles Zegar -- NYC
Pablo Legorreta -- Sag Harbor, NY (Suffolk/Hamptons)
Vincent McMahon -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Jeffrey Talpins -- Larchmont, NY (Westchester)
Hamilton James & family -- NYC
Vincent Viola -- NYC
John Paulson -- NYC
Daniel Sundheim -- NYC
William Lauder -- NYC
Leonard Schleifer -- Tarrytown, NY (Westchester)
Stewart Rahr -- NYC
Glenn Dubin -- NYC
Aerin Lauder -- NYC
Alejandro Santo Domingo -- NYC
Ben Ashkenazy -- NYC
Felix Baker -- NYC
Julian Baker -- NYC
J. Tomilson Hill -- NYC
Jeff Sutton -- NYC
Joseph Edeleman -- NYC
Jay-Z -- NYC
David Walentas -- NYC
Mortimer Zuckerman -- NYC
Henry Swieca -- NYC
Noam Gottesman -- NYC
Howard Marks -- NYC
Marc Lasry -- NYC
Jane Goldman -- NYC
Daniel Lubetzky -- NYC
Amy Goldman Fowler -- Rhinebeck, NY (Dutchess)
Diane Kemper -- NYC
David Blitzer -- NYC
Larry Robbins -- Alpine, NJ (Bergen)
James Dinan -- North Salem, NY (Westchester)
David Lichtenstein -- Monsey, NY (Rockland)
Lucy Stitzer -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Brian Higgins -- NYC
O. Francis Biondi -- NYC
Ronald Perelman -- NYC
George Yancopoulos -- Yorktown Heights, NY (Westchester)
Alexis Lê-Quôc -- NYC
Jonathan Tisch -- NYC
Mario Gabelli -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Herbert Allen, Jr. & family -- NYC
Duncan MacMillan -- Princeton, NJ (Mercer)
Andres Santo Domingo -- NYC
Clifford Asness -- Greenwich, CT (Fairfield)
Jamie Dimon -- NYC
Louis Bacon -- Oyster Bay, NY (Nassau)
Laurie Tisch -- NYC
Axel Stawski -- Sagaponack, NY (Suffolk/Hamptons)
Sidney Kimmel -- NYC
Greg Mondre -- NYC
Nelson Peltz -- Bedford, NY (Westchester)
Cameron Winklevoss -- NYC
Tyler Winklevoss -- NYC
Wilma Tisch -- NYC
Mitchell Jacobson -- Locust Valley, NY (Nassau)
John Farber -- NYC
Michael Arougheti -- Nyack, NY (Rockland)
Gregg Hymowitz -- NYC
Randal Nardone -- NYC
Lawrence Golub -- NYC
Michael Steinhardt -- Mount Kisco, NY (Westchester)
Scott Nuttall -- NYC
Lloyd Blankfein -- NYC
David Golub -- NYC
Joseph Bae -- NYC
Joseph Steinberg -- NYC


95% sure that NYC means Manhattan. What's left:

13 Upstate (9 Westchester, 3 Rockland, 1 Dutchess)
10 Connecticut (9 Fairfield, 1 New Haven)
9 Long Island (4 Nassau, 1 Suffolk, 4 Hamptons)
5 New Jersey (2 Bergen, 2 Essex, 1 Mercer)

Westchester and Fairfield account for nearly 50%.

[Crawford]

The wealthiest families in Brooklyn are mostly Syrian Jews with family business in retail or real estate (often the real estate empire formed via the retail holdings). But because the wealth is almost always split among large families, I don't think there are billionaires. And if there were, they would usually do anything in their power to obscure this fact. They're a completely insular community. Brownstone Brooklyn now gets finance types and celebrities but not in the billionaire range.

So, yeah, I'd guess that 100% of current NYC billionaires are in Manhattan.

Also, I think the regional split still shows that regional wealth is pretty dispersed. If you did the same for Chicago or Atlanta or Dallas, I think the pattern would be very different.

BTW, I know that Axel Stawski's two girls go to a Manhattan private school. Maybe his official residence is in the Hamptons, but his wife and kids are definitely in Manhattan during the week. The school is on the Upper East Side. I imagine everyone on this list has multiple residences. There are also only two Hamptons private schools, and neither are remotely analagous to the top-tier Manhattan schools, so probably no one wealthy with kids lives year-round in the Hamptons (though plenty of child-free or empty nesters now do).

[Steely Dan]

^ yeah, I'd think that pinning down the precise location where most billionaire's "live" to a single address is a bit hair-splitty.

Yeah, they have to declare a residence for tax purposes, but don't most of them own and use multiple homes?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Quixote

LIRR and Metro-North blow away NJT in terms of ridership despite far less route mileage serving a much smaller population. Nassau County in particular has dense, one-mile station spacing along many stretches, something that NJT lacks in areas with similar density patterns. Metro-North and most of LIRR uses single-level rolling stock, with large sections powered by third-rail.

NJ is more culturally and economically independent of NY, a regional dynamic that's reflected in the lower ridership numbers and the different demographics. There are several racial and ethnic groups (e.g. African Americans, Indians, Koreans, Peruvians, Cubans, Portuguese) that have heavier concentrations in NJ and are important/major contributors to the metro's overall diversity.

NJ Transit has a massive commuter bus network of which there is no equivalent serving Long Island or the northern suburbs. There's also the PATH train which I believe carries about the same number of passengers as the LIRR.

[RST500]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Yep. The nicest is probably Orinda (technically not along 680 but close enough).

Let's be honest though. Those communities are no match against the likes of Atherton, Hillsborough, Woodside, or Portola Valley.

The New Jersey comparison is just to say that the East Bay is culturally quite different than the Peninsula (but both authentic Bay Area). There's more newer suburban sprawl and political affiliations are more conservative in the affluent communities (i.e. Danville).

Atherton, Hillsborough, Woodside, Portola Valley are more expensive due to proximity to Silicon Valley jobs but Orinda is just as nice though not that well know outside the Bay Area, very underrated. I think East Bay suburbs are more family oriented than the Peninsula. Orinda/Danville is more like Westchester County, nothing like New Jersey.

[Quixote]

LA area billionaires, according to Forbes. Some that were listed by them as Los Angeles were incorrect (which I fixed), and I just left anything that wasn't LA alone. There's a decent chance that some listed as Beverly Hills by Forbes are actually located in the city of LA.

Donald Bren — Newport Beach
Marijke Mars — Los Angeles (don’t know)
Eric Smidt — Beverly Hills
Henry Samueli — Newport Beach
David Geffen — Beverly Hills
Don Hankey — Malibu
Jack Dangermond — Redlands
Edythe Broad & family — Los Angeles (Brentwood)
Edward Roski, Jr. — Los Angeles (Toluca Lake)
John Tu — Rolling Hills
David Sun — Irvine
Henry Nicholas III — Newport Coast
Patrick Soon-Shiong — Los Angeles (Brentwood)
Antony Ressler — Beverly Hills
Tom Gores — Beverly Hills
Michael Milken — Los Angeles (Pacific Palisades)
Rick Caruso — Los Angeles (Brentwood)
Stewart Resnick — Beverly Hills
Lynda Resnick — Beverly Hills
Jean (Gigi) Pritzker — West Hollywood (as of December 2017)
Jose E. Feliciano — Los Angeles (Pacific Palisades)
Behdad Eghbali — Los Angeles (Brentwood)
Lynsi Snyder — Glendora
Jeff Skoll — Beverly Hills
Peter Thiel — Los Angeles (Hollywood Hills)
Donald Sterling — Beverly Hills
Travis Kalanick — Los Angeles (Bel Air)
Steven Spielberg — Los Angeles (Pacific Palisades)
Anthony Pritzker — Los Angeles (Beverly Glen)
Jeff T. Green — Newbury Park
Rodney Sacks — Laguna Beach
Geoffrey Palmer — Beverly Hills
Nicolas Berggruen — Beverly Hills
Haim Saban — Beverly Hills
Meg Whitman — West Hollywood
Sean Parker — Los Angeles (Holmby Hills)
Alec Gores — Beverly Hills
Charles Munger — Pasadena
Bruce Karsh — Beverly Hills
Evan Spiegel — Los Angeles (Holmby Hills)
David Murdock — Ventura
Tom Ford — Los Angeles (Holmby Hills)
Jeffrey Gundlach — Los Angeles (don’t know)
George Arguers & family — Newport Beach
Richard Saghian — Los Angeles (Bel Air)
Bobby Murphy — Los Angeles (Venice)
Richard Kayne — Santa Monica
Sarah MacMillan — Malibu
Palmer Luckey — Newport Beach
Gary Michelson — Los Angeles (Brentwood)
Riaz Valani — Malibu
Tom Werner — Los Angeles (Pacific Palisades)
Bill Gross — Laguna Beach
Steven Tisch — Beverly Hills
Sue Gross — Laguna Beach
Joe Kiani — Irvine
George Joseph — Los Angeles (Hancock Park)
Bennett Rosenthal — Beverly Hills
David Kaplan — Los Angeles (don’t know)
Kim Kardashian — Hidden Hills
Donald Friese — Los Angeles (Chatsworth)
LeBron James — Los Angeles (Benedict Canyon)
David Tran & family — Arcadia


14 Beverly Hills
12 Brentwood / Pacific Palisades / Santa Monica / Venice (5 Brentwood, 5 Pacific Palisades, 1 Santa Monica, 1 Venice)
10 OC (5 Newport Beach, 3 Laguna Beach, 2 Irvine)
7 Bel Air / Holmby Hills / Beverly Glen / Benedict Canyon (3 Holmby Hills, 2 Bel Air, 1 Beverly Glen, 1 Benedict Canyon)
4 central LA (2 West Hollywood, 1 Hollywood Hills, 1 Hancock Park)
3 SFV (1 Toluca Lake, 1 Hidden Hills, 1 Chatsworth)
3 SGV (Glendora, Pasadena, Arcadia)
3 Malibu
2 Ventura County (1 Newbury Park, 1 Ventura)
1 IE (Redlands)
1 South Bay (Rolling Hills)


Simplifying it:

33 Westside
11 south (OC, South Bay)
8 north/west (SFV, Malibu, Ventura County)
4 central LA
4 east (SGV, IE)


Or:

36 Westside / West Hollywood / Hollywood Hills
11 south/east (10 south OC, 1 Rolling Hills)
7 north/west (3 Malibu, 1 Hidden Hills, 1 Chatsworth, 1 Newbury Park, 1 Ventura)
6 east (3 SGV, 2 central, 1 IE)


With Westside / West Hollywood / Hollywood Hills being the favored quarter, that doesn't look terribly unbalanced.

Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Rolling Hills, Malibu, Hidden Hills, Chatsworth, Newbury Park, Ventura, Toluca Lake, Pasadena, Arcadia, Glendora, and Redlands are all quite far away geographically and culturally.

Ventura to the west, Laguna Beach to the south, and Redlands to the east captures the bulk of the metro if you were to draw a triangle.

[sopas ej]

I don't see Andrew Cherng, founder of Panda Inn/Express. His net worth is 2.4 billion bucks, and he lives in South Pasadena: https://virtualglobetrotting.com/map...e/view/google/

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

So, yeah, I'd guess that 100% of current NYC billionaires are in Manhattan.

Even with Downtown and Brownstone Brooklyn and Williamsburg having becoming more in vogue over the last 20 or so years, there's still a large contingent of elitist Manhattanites who generally would not "deign" to visit Brooklyn, much less live there. Many Manhattanites never leave the island unless it's to go to a sporting event, airport, or for some special/infrequent circumstance. A lot of these people also only take taxis, Uber/Lyft, or executive car service, rarely ever riding the Subway. I remember Ivanka Trump back in (I think) 2007 "bragging" about how she took the Subway from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn while working for Forest City Ratner, clearly trying to portray herself as more "grounded" (something that she also tried and failed miserably at while her father was POTUS).

The point? For most of the very elite and establishment types, I don't really see prime Brooklyn ever being considered a worthy alternative to Uptown in the way that the likes of SoHo and TriBeCa have.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ yeah, I'd think that pinning down the precise location where most billionaire's "live" to a single address is a bit hair-splitty.

Yeah, they have to declare a residence for tax purposes, but don't most of them own and use multiple homes?

They do but still plant roots somewhere. Owner of my wife's' company is a billionaire and has houses and ranches all over the place but Houston is still home base. Except for Elon Musk, he literally couch surfs.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

The point? For most of the very elite and establishment types, I don't really see prime Brooklyn ever being considered a worthy alternative to Uptown in the way that the likes of SoHo and TriBeCa have.

Probably true, at least among boomers. Obviously most billionaires are older.

I doubt there are even many billionaires in SoHo or Tribeca. They're mostly on the UES, with smaller concentrations on the UWS and West Village.

Brooklyn Heights has a lot of old-old money, but not billionaire wealth. The newer money in Brooklyn is heavily celebrity and arts oriented. Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Adam Driver, Keri Russell, Ed Sheeran. Tech founders like Snap, Etsy, Rockstar Games. There are finance types, but not the real money. Old superrich live roughly between 57th and 96th Street east of Central Park.

[Quixote]

Assuming all of those NYC billionaires live in Manhattan, I'd be interested in seeing the split between not just UES/UWS but also Uptown/Downtown.

NYC is very neighborhood-centric and Manhattan is big and walkable enough that Greenwich Village is seen as "across town" from the perspective of an Upper West Sider, even though it's only 3-5 miles and one subway line away. The HGTV show "Selling New York" featured real estate brokers who would often comment to each other about "going down" or "coming up" to each other's respective areas of specialty (UES/UWS vs. Downtown) as if they were talking about visiting foreign countries. The funny thing is, almost all of them were Jewish and native Manhattanites. Manhattan is weirdly both very cosmopolitan yet parochial at the same time. Just like there are some New Yorkers who don't have a driver's license, I'm sure there are plenty of Manhattanites who only need two hands to count how many times they've left Manhattan (let alone NYC) in the last year.

That's why I find it a bit jarring the notion of NYC having less of a "favored quarter." Even if it's in the context of the three-state region, Manhattan is far and away the residence of choice for the upper-crust. That it's also an island and occupies a relatively small share of the metro's land mass only makes it more jarring. I'm not familiar with the Hamptons as far as primary-resident, year-round population is concerned, but I'd have to imagine that if you own a place in the Hamptons, you probably have a pied-à-terre in the city as well.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I don't see Andrew Cherng, founder of Panda Inn/Express. His net worth is 2.4 billion bucks, and he lives in South Pasadena: https://virtualglobetrotting.com/map...e/view/google/

Las Vegas is now the primary residence for him and his wife.

[Crawford]

I'm not embarrassed to admit I like their Beijing Beef. Actually I like most of their gloppy fast food goodness. Their rice is horrendous, though.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Probably true, at least among boomers. Obviously most billionaires are older.

I doubt there are even many billionaires in SoHo or Tribeca. They're mostly on the UES, with smaller concentrations on the UWS and West Village.

Brooklyn Heights has a lot of old-old money, but not billionaire wealth. The newer money in Brooklyn is heavily celebrity and arts oriented. Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Adam Driver, Keri Russell, Ed Sheeran. Tech founders like Snap, Etsy, Rockstar Games. There are finance types, but not the real money. Old superrich live roughly between 57th and 96th Street east of Central Park.

Most A-list actors, musicians, professional athletes, and media figures ("celebrities") aren't and will never become billionaires. If they do, they'll "sneak in" at 1-2 billion (Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian).

Most billionaires are heirs/heiresses, founders/leaders of major conglomerates or startups, or owners of sports teams. I'd say even techies are more likely to go the blue-chip route more than the creative. A lot of those Silicon Valley billionaires live in Palo Alto, Atherton, Woodside, and Portola Valley. In going through the list, I don't believe I saw anyone living in San Mateo, Burlingame, San Carlos, or Belmont; I did see a few in Marin County. Those areas have nice, non-tract-style homes that comport with the notion of "modest wealth" typically associated with tech types and Bay Area wealth writ large. And quite a few tech billionaires who made their fortunes in Silicon Valley have moved to LA, opting for the toniest of neighborhoods instead of, say, Santa Monica north of Montana or Los Feliz.

In NYC, I could see tech billionaires not liking the vibe of the UES/UWS with all the co-op buildings and pre-war apartments with more definition of space. Greenwich Village, SoHo, NoMad, TriBeCa, and Chelsea are likely far more their style. But I don't think they would live in Brooklyn, although there might be an exception here and there.

Musk and Bezos, who I think most people by now know have surpassed Gates, aren't low-key. Musk (who is a special-case nutjob) owned four homes in Bel-Air when he was based in LA, while Bezos owns five units at 212 Fifth Avenue and a $175-million estate in Beverly Hills.

[Crawford]

Also, for the Peninsula, I think the nicer towns closer to SF are more traditional wealth (lawyers, doctors, small business owners), while the nicer towns closer to Stanford and Sand Hill Road are almost all tech-related wealth. So a SF law firm partner or neurologist might live in Burlingame, but a VC guy or startup founder will live in Atherton. And obviously the latter can be 100 times richer.