Why America’s Wealthy Are Buying Homes Like Stocks

High-net-worth American wealth is being reorganized through corporate industrial investments and strategic tax planning, not through a wholesale abandonment of traditional coastal powerhouses. Wealthy buyers are increasingly treating residential real estate like a diversified stock portfolio, expanding into rising secondary markets instead of simply relocating.

Ryan Serhant, founder and CEO of the multidimensional brokerage SERHANT., said in an interview at his SoHo headquarters in New York City, “I think it’s a bit overblown that wealth is migrating out of major American cities. I think that people aren’t necessarily moving as much as they are multiplying.” He added, “We now have more clients that have multiple homes than at any other point in my career. And they all want ease of access to great cities without necessarily maybe paying to be in the center.”

The pattern is pushing capital into interior hubs where state-level business incentives and generational infrastructure projects are creating new economic centers. High-earning households are maintaining ties to major financial centers while acquiring properties in growth-friendly states to capture regional tax benefits, secure space, and hedge against localized economic friction.

Huntsville, Alabama, has become one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the country. Long known as “Rocket City” because of its ties to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal, the city is supported by Cummings Research Park, the second-largest research park in the United States. Its population has surged by 8.7% since 2020, while its concentration of engineering talent and economic stability has attracted real estate investment. Alabama has also risen to outpace traditional destination states like Florida in certain domestic net migration metrics.

“Why own one stock if you can own an ETF? Why own one home if you could own a couple? There’s only so many of them. And they’re not making any more land as far as I know,” Serhant said. This approach mirrors portfolio diversification: buyers are entering multiple markets rather than concentrating capital in a single primary residence.

Central Ohio is another beneficiary of the industrial realignment. In New Albany, a wealthy suburb northeast of Columbus known for master-planned corporate parks and Georgian-style estates, Intel is building a semiconductor manufacturing campus. The private-sector project exceeds $28 billion, making it the largest investment in Ohio’s history. Intel has adjusted its timeline, and the first factory is now projected to begin operations between 2030 and 2031.

Amazon Web Services has also deepened its commitment to Ohio with an additional $10 billion investment in data center infrastructure. That would bring AWS’s total projected investment in the state to more than $23 billion by 2030. The projects have already acted as a catalyst for local commercial and residential real estate, while highly paid engineers, executives, and tech professionals move into the area.

“You go to Ohio and you look around, and there are more very expensive cars than you’ll see in South Beach. But no one talks about it,” Serhant observed. “Again, it’s not the fall of the American city, it’s the stretch of what it means to be a great American dream city, and there’s not going to be less of them, there’s just going to be more.”

North Carolina’s Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia metropolitan area ranked fifth nationally for numeric population growth from 2024 to 2025. Charlotte is the second-largest banking center in the United States behind New York, with Bank of America’s headquarters and Wells Fargo’s East Coast operations, and it combines corporate career opportunities with lower property taxes and robust public infrastructure.

According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, Texas and Florida remain the nation’s top two states for overall numeric population growth. Secondary markets in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Ohio are increasingly drawing institutional and private investors seeking long-term stability.

“You want to know a market I think people will be talking about in five years? I think it’s Huntsville, Alabama,” Serhant said. “I think Huntsville, Alabama, and I think Central Ohio and Charlotte, North Carolina, are three markets that investors are paying a lot of attention to right now that more people should be talking about.”

The movement of capital is also shaped by municipal and state policies affecting the bottom line of businesses and high earners. In high-tax jurisdictions such as New York, California, and Washington, rising local taxes and regulatory friction have created opportunities for competing states. New York lost approximately 12,000 residents last year, a figure that industry experts view as an indicator of structural policy challenges rather than a terminal crisis for the city.

“Taxes get headlines. New governance policies get headlines, and it’s easy to sell against fear,” Serhant said, pointing to the real estate benefits southern markets gained from the pandemic-era policies of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and from current local initiatives led by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“I don’t necessarily think they’re to the detriment of New York long-term. I think New York is irreplaceable, but it’s not necessarily invincible,” Serhant said. “And so, just like companies do, if you have restrictions on employees [in] one company, really smart people at that company might say, ‘You know what? Maybe I’ll look for other jobs. Where can I have the greatest career?’ And they look at other companies. Those companies are states.”

Serhant argued that California, Washington, and New York are taking a short-term view of regional growth, while states winning capital are balancing financial incentives with investments in community infrastructure. “I think Alabama, Ohio, and North Carolina understand that people move with their wallet, yes, so how do we keep quality of housing and affordability front of mind, but also with their heart?” he said, emphasizing education, security, public services, and ease of travel as factors in attracting long-term residents.

SERHANT., which launched in New York in 2020 and quickly built a reputation through media-centric property marketing, has expanded beyond its original footprint as buyers acquire homes across multiple markets. The firm recently launched operations in Texas, its 17th state, and established a new presence in Colorado.

Those moves complement the brokerage’s luxury operations in Southern Florida’s high-demand enclaves, including Miami, Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton, and Fort Lauderdale, where luxury residential prices have climbed sharply over the past several years.

“Investors and people who have the ability to move are now thinking about stretched markets. They don’t necessarily need to come to your city for a job. They don’t necessarily need to go to that state for grade schooling,” Serhant said. “The economy is global and it moves in milliseconds.”

The economy’s increasing digital and geographic fluidity allows local regulations to push talent and capital across state lines. Interior markets offer abundant land, business-friendly tax policies, and heavy industrial capital expenditure.

“It’s New York or nowhere as the epicenter, in part because our business is so global,” Serhant concluded. “But if I had to throw a dart on where I think the epicenter of the country might be eventually, I might think about coastal erosion and I might go dead center. And I think there’s a lot of opportunity in Ohio. Maybe we should open SERHANT. in Ohio? I’m talking myself into it right now.”