2024 Wealth Report: Howard M. Lorber Sees Rise in $100M+ Home Sales as “New Normal”

While persistently high interest rates and scarce inventory are still impacting wide swathes of the residential real estate market, the phenomenal growth in global ultra-wealth coming out of the pandemic is propelling the rise in monumental home sales in more markets around the U.S. That was one of the key takeaways from an April 17 event in New York City exploring the 2024 Wealth Report , Douglas Elliman and Knight Frank’s annual round-up of insights and analysis on investment trends driven by the world’s high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs and UHNWIs, respectively). View full report. Held at 583 Park Avenue in Manhattan, the event featured a presentation of Wealth Report findings from Liam Bailey , Knight Frank’s Global Head of Research, followed by a conversation between Douglas Elliman Executive Chairman Howard M. Lorber and CNBC Wealth Editor Robert Frank . Frank prefaced the conversation by highlighting what the 2024 Wealth Report showed was a staggering 49% increase in wealth among the top 1% globally over a three-year period. “That’s a decade worth of wealth creation in the United States that all happened between 2020 and 2023,” Frank said. “There is now $18 trillion in wealth among the 1% that they didn’t have before 2020.” Along with that influx of wealth in the wake of COVID, Lorber said, “people changed the way they wanted to live and where they wanted to live.” He pointed to the recent close of a record-setting $108-million home sale in Aspen—the first in Colorado to break $100 million—as a case in point and just the latest in a trend of massive sales figures. “The new high-price number is over $50 million—if it’s less than $50 million, you can’t even find a reporter that wants to write a story about it,” Lorber quipped, adding that Douglas Elliman’s 2024 Ellie Awards rankings showed numerous sales in the $50-million to $100-million+ bracket. “I think that’s going to be the new normal.” He also noted that many of those ultra-high-priced properties sold by Elliman agents had not been listed, affirming Frank’s observation that private, off-market sales have been on the rise. Moreover, Lorber said, that trend has inspired many agents—particularly newer players—to join teams that are better able to surface private listings. Howard M. Lorber, Robert Frank Howard M. Lorber, Robert Frank Liam Bailey Liam Bailey Paddy Dring, Susan de França, Scott Durkin Paddy Dring, Susan de França, Scott Durkin Liam Bailey, Scott Durkin, Susan de França, Howard M. Lorber, Paddy Dring Howard M. Lorber, Michael Lorber, Jonathan Stein Along with praising the depth and richness of data contained in The Wealth Report , Frank commended Douglas Elliman and Knight Frank for having the foresight to establish its partnership, given how globally minded today’s wealthy individuals are. “It’s not just that their businesses are more global— they are more global,” he said. “They think about everything as global. That’s where the clients want to be.” That understanding of where clients want to be, Lorber said, is what guides Elliman’s market presence in the U.S. “We really want to be in the right markets—we don’t want to be every place,” he said, explaining that those markets are in “low-tax or no-tax states, because that’s what attracts business.” As for Elliman’s home market of New York City, Lorber remains bullish, echoing comments he made a year prior regarding the city’s enduring appeal. “New York City is going to be the number one second-home market,” he said. “There is no place in the world that you can buy a place in one city that has everything that New York City has.”