Talk about concentration of wealth.
Manhattan may be home to over 1.6 million people and some of the world’s most expensive properties, but it would take just 10 of the world’s richest people to own all of Manhattan’s residential properties.
According to a Thursday analysis from real estate data firm, PropertyShark, the world’s wealthiest have a combined net worth high enough to cover the cost of every single residential property in Manhattan.
That cost was $547.8 billion in the third quarter of 2016. Property Shark based its analysis on the Forbes billionaire ranking, which shows the that world’s 10 richest had a combined $565.6 billion to their name as of Wednesday’s market close.
Meaning the world’s 10 wealthiest today—a list that now includes Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim Helu, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg, Charles Koch, and David Koch—would be more than enough to buy Manhattan.
Property Shark determined the combined value of Manhattan real estate by taking into account all residential properties in the city, and multiplying that figure by the average sale price of each neighborhood for the third quarter.
Property Shark put together a graphic of who could buy what neighborhoods, but based on their wealth back in March. Their individual net worth has stayed largely the same, excluding tech CEOs Amazon’s Bezos and Facebook’s Zuckerberg, who added $20 billion and $10 billion to their wealths respectively this year, as their companies’ stock prices soared.
According to Douglas Elliman, the average price of a Manhattan property was $2 million in the third quarter.