For the ultrawealthy, it used to largely be the case that they wanted their flashy home purchases and sales to be made very public: Think drone shots, a glossy listing, and a splashy press release naming the owner and buyer.
All of that served as a way to show off and solidify their wealth. But now the upper echelons of the housing market want to be much more private, and a lot of it has to do with privacy being the new sought-after luxury.
A growing class of ultrawealthy buyers, particularly tech and AI executives who have moved to Silicon Valley, are deliberately routing their home purchases through limited liability companies, privacy trusts, and so-called “whisper” listings that never touch the multiple listing service.
Their end goal isn’t getting the best deal they can possibly get: It’s more about maintaining anonymity and thinning their paper trails to ensure security. This new phenomenon is called stealth wealth buying, Ken DeLeon, founder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based DeLeon Realty, told Fortune.
The shift started about three years ago, said DeLeon, who is one of Silicon Valley’s top-producing luxury brokers and was once ranked the nation’s No. 1 real estate agent by the Wall Street Journal and RealTrends.That was when the market capitalization of tech companies began to grow again, and more wealthy people began flooding Silicon Valley.
