For roughly 80 years, the answer to “what makes Americans rich” was boringly consistent: real estate. That era, according to Goldman Sachs, is officially over.
Equities have overtaken real estate as the primary driver of US household wealth for the first time since World War II. The finding, drawn from Goldman’s latest research and echoed in its 2025 Family Office Investment Insights Report, marks a structural turning point in how wealth is built and concentrated across income levels in America.
The numbers behind the shift
Goldman’s family office data shows public equity allocations climbing to 31% in 2025, up from 28% in 2023. That’s a meaningful jump in just two years, reflecting a decisive tilt toward liquid, growth-oriented assets among the wealthiest households and institutional family offices.
Private real estate and infrastructure allocations, by contrast, sit at just 11% in 2025. That figure edged up only slightly from prior years, a far cry from the aggressive property accumulation that defined earlier decades of American wealth building.
