Which billionaire could buy your city?
Bill Gates can afford to buy Boston, but not his home city of Seattle.
Thanks to his massive fortune, Gates could afford to buy every single house, condo and townhouse in the city of Boston, according to an analysis by real estate information site Redfin. That's 114,717 residences, at a total purchase price of $76.6 billion.
Of course, that would drain him of his entire $77.5 billion fortune.
That’s chump change for the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart. They could collectively afford Seattle if they pooled their resources and spent $111.5 billion.
In fact, their massive $154.8 billion net worth would qualify them to buy one of at least 10 major American metros, including Atlanta, Las Vegas and Miami.
RedFin crunched the numbers and found over a dozen billionaires who could afford every single home in some of America's biggest cities. A caveat, though: That would not include apartment buildings, or any other buildings, for that matter, like Boston’s City Hall or Atlanta’s skyscrapers or even Seattle’s little, local coffeehouses.
But as far as houses go, these billionaires could afford them all, literally.
The chief economist for Redfin, Nela Richardson, offers this perspective:
“In this fictional real estate investment, the 30 billionaires on our list, with a combined fortune of $582 billion, could afford to own a staggering 6 percent of the total U.S. home equity.”
Also from Yahoo Homes:
• Truly one-of-a-kind prestige penthouse is asking 1 billion dimes: the Woolworth Building
• Dr. Dre buys eco-castle from Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady
• Whitney Houston fan buys her frozen-in-time '80s estate
