Where Are The Million Dollar Homes And High Earners?

On Tuesday I posted about the state of housing in America.  In today’s post I want to give you more resources and tools to help you understand regional and geographic trends in housing costs. 

After all, many of you are probably going to early retire or plain-ole normal retire to a different place than where you live now.  Geoarbitrage is a great strategy for financial independence, and the saying is true, location is everything.

The first tool is especially cool for dorks like me who enjoy unique mapping interfaces.  Metrocosm took data from Zillow and made a really nifty interactive 3D map of the average housing price per square foot by county. 

On the map the height of each area represents the average price per square foot of homes within its boundary. 

 

New York and San Francisco stand out as expected and the post details some numbers for those two areas.  But other areas such as The Washington D.C. region, parts of Hawaii, Aspen Colorado, Nantucket, and Key West stand out as well as having very expensive prices. 

As another resource, I created this map of the median home sales price per square foot by state for a previous post about bloated homes.

 

$1 Million Homes

The next resource is all about million dollar homes.  According to USA Today more than 3 million homes nationally, or 3.6% of all homes, are worth at least $1 million.  Where are these million dollar homes?  Well, there’s a tool to help you find out. 

This interactive map uses data from Trulia to show neighborhoods where the median house price has exceeded $1 million.  It’s built in Tableau which is great data visualization software but a little clunky for mapping.  The map has data over urban areas only and if you hover your mouse over an area you’ll see the median home value and the percentage of home over $1 million for that area for 2016 – 2018.

 

Of the top ten neighborhoods with the highest concentration of million dollar homes, 6 of them are in California.  It turns out celebrities and tech geeks make some coin.

 

Where Are The Rich Going?

If you want to FatFIRE and live alongside the wealthiest Americans, there’s a resource to help you with that. 

Bloomberg mapped out the neighborhoods which are attracting America’s highest earners.  They used data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and have a map showing the concentration of households earning $200,000 or more in each county.

 

 

Nationally 6.9% of American households have an income of $200,000 or higher.  And as the map above shows, the Washington D.C. area has the highest concentration of high earners in the country.  Its also the fastest growing area in that $200,000+ category.  In fact, 9 of the top 20 counties for median household income are in the D.C. area. 

But as I previously posted, that doesn’t mean the folks in the D.C. region are any closer to financial independence than you are.  Despite the $100,000+ median household incomes, families in the D.C. region have high income to debt ratios and spend way too much money.  The D.C. region is the poster child for lifestyle inflation.  I should know, I live here and see it everyday. 

The Bloomberg piece is worth a read as it details interesting trends in wealth concentration in Chicago, Jacksonville, and Houston.

 

Renters vs. Owners

Lastly, this beautiful interactive map shows every single home owner and renter in the United States.  You read that correctly. 

But don’t zoom to your house and expect to see the proper number of dots for your family.  The data is accurate to the level of a Census block, and within each Census block the specific locations are randomized.  It’s still a beautiful map to look at and gives a really good geographic awareness as to what areas have higher percentages of renters versus owners. 

Take this section of Washington D.C. for instance.

 

The section in the middle is dominated by high rise apartment rentals, while the neighborhoods surrounding it have more of a mix of renters and owners.

 

Geoarbitrage

Geoarbitrage is a viable and popular tool for those seeking financial independence.  I hope these cool mapping tools and resources about housing can help you if you’re looking to buy or rent and want to use location as an influence.

I’ve done lots of other geographic-based posts showing various aspects of money and finance from a location perspective.  Be sure to check out my Geoarbitrage Resources Page that has tons of great tools to help you find your perfect location.

 I hope you find this resource handy and I will continue to expose valuable tools that can help when deciding on a geoarbitrage strategy.