A billionaire exodus from the West Coast to Florida is underway, as the ultrawealthy seek refuge from wealth taxes in states such as California and Washington.

Google cofounders Larry Page (net worth $295 billion) and Sergey Brin (net worth $275 billion) rushed to leave California last year before the Jan. 1 deadline tied to the California billionaire tax, and both have purchased property in Florida. Meanwhile, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, whose net worth is $3.4 billion, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth is $196 billion, also both bought property in the Sunshine State earlier this year.

The tech titans and Schultz join Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, PayPal and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, Citadel founder Ken Griffin, and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, all of whom have bought property or moved their companies' operations to Florida in the past several years.

The California billionaire tax

The rush to buy in Florida has been fueled partly by California's proposed Billionaire Tax Act, which, if passed, would charge billionaires who resided in California after Jan. 1, 2026, a one-time tax on 5% of their total net worth.

The bill, which would reportedly affect about 200 people, aims to collect $100 billion in revenue that would go toward funding healthcare in the state, as well as education and food assistance, to a lesser extent. A simple majority in the November elections would make the effort pass and amend the state's constitution to put it into place. According to a recent poll by UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies, voters are seemingly split on the proposal, with 48% of likely voters saying they would support the measure versus 41% who said they would not support it.

Among the ultra-wealthy, the proposal is almost universally unpopular. Many wealthy individuals in California have come out against the tax, including Brin, who earlier this month donated an additional $20 million to a PAC, Building a Better California, which is promoting three countermeasures that, if approved by voters in November, would potentially kill the billionaire tax on arrival—even if the tax also passes. Brin has reportedly donated $102 million in total to the group since it was created in January.

Thiel, for his part, donated $3 million to the California Business Roundtable, a group opposing the billionaire tax.

There are also doubts about whether the bill, even if it is passed, will reach its goal of collecting $100 billion. With Page and Brin arguably having left the state before Jan. 1, along with Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick, who left for Texas, the tax could be robbed of a fourth of its $100 billion goal, according to a calculation by Fortune. A back-of-the-envelope calculation using the 5% wealth tax metric puts the dollar figure of taxes owed by Page at about $14 billion and Brin at about $13 billion, while 5% of Kalanick's and Thiel's wealth adds another $1.8 billion or so—bringing the total potentially lost revenue to about $29 billion.

Washington's wealth tax and Griffin's Chicago exit

Still, the potential California billionaire tax isn't the only effort pushing billionaires to migrate south. Washington State's wealth tax may have also played a role. Both Bezos and Schultz left Seattle before Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law in March a high-earners income tax, or so-called "millionaire's tax", that would charge 9.9% on earnings of more than $1 million. The tax aims to bring in $3 billion to $4 billion per year from wealthy individuals while eliminating some sales taxes on items like diapers and expanding funding for childcare and health care.

Griffin, the lone former Chicago resident, left Illinois in June 2022 after nearly three decades, moving Citadel to Miami. At the time, Griffin pointed to the city's crime and politics as the reason. Since then, Griffin and Citadel have together invested billions in Florida real estate.

Why Florida

Some of the reasons for the billionaires' departure are the attractiveness of Florida's low taxes as well as its nice weather. The state has no income tax and no capital gains tax, and Miami, in particular, has branded itself as a business-friendly alternative to high-tax cities in California and elsewhere. The billionaires who have moved to Florida can also easily afford to buy in the state's most exclusive areas and secure increasingly pricey waterfront properties.

Miami remains one of the most expensive luxury markets in the U.S. Yet in 2025, ultra-luxury home sales surged in the city, with a record 361 homes sold at $10 million or higher last year, according to the New York Times. While the median listing price in Miami fell about 3% year-over-year to $495,000, according to Realtor.com, demand is growing at the high end. Five years ago no home in Miami sold for $50 million, but in 2025, sales in this range made up 7% of the market, the Times reported.

That concentration at the top helps explain why the move is not just about lifestyle, but also about proximity to where some of the world’s richest people and biggest private real-estate bets are now clustering. For companies and founders with multistate footprints, Florida’s tax structure, along with its established luxury enclaves, has become part of the calculus shaping where they live, work, and invest.

Mark Zuckerberg

The Meta cofounder and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, reportedly secured a $170 million waterfront mansion on the west side of Indian Creek Island, a man-made refuge for the ultrarich located in Biscayne Bay, west of Miami Beach. Zuckerberg's property is only a few houses down from Bezos's under-construction compound and includes a gym, hair salon, and massage room, according to the Wall Street Journal. Indian Creek, also known as the Billionaire Bunker, has a mere 41 residents and 24/7 security, which adds to its exclusivity. The property would add to Zuckerberg's myriad properties across the U.S., including in Hawaii and Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains between Nevada and California.

Jeff Bezos

The Amazon founder and executive chair has purchased three multimillion-dollar properties on Indian Creek Island. The world's third-richest man bought two adjoining properties on the western side of the 41-person island in 2022 and 2023, for $68 million and $79 million, with plans to combine the lots into a mega-compound. Meanwhile, Bezos lives on the other side of the island in a Mediterranean-style home he bought for about $90 million in 2024. The billionaire's combined properties cost him more than $230 million in total.

Larry Ellison

Ellison made a 16-acre oceanfront property in Manalapan, Fla., in Palm Beach County, his primary residence earlier this year. The property, which Ellison purchased for $173 million in 2022, is conveniently located fewer than 10 miles from President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Ellison is a major Republican donor and hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his estate in California's Coachella Valley in 2020, according to SFGate. Just after Trump's inauguration last year, Ellison stood by Trump as he, alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, announced a $500 billion initiative dubbed Stargate to invest in U.S.-based AI infrastructure.

In 2024, Ellison purchased the Eau Palm Beach Resort and Spa for $277 million, quickly pushing remodeling plans and installing his favorite Japanese and Peruvian fusion restaurant, Nobu. Ellison also owns another waterfront property in North Palm Beach he purchased for $80 million in 2021.

By moving his primary residence from Lanai, Hawaii, to Florida, before selling Oracle stock and collecting dividends, Ellison saved an estimated $1 billion in taxes, according to Forbes.

Larry Page

With his purchases in recent months, Google cofounder and former CEO Larry Page has amassed more than $180 million worth of properties in the Sunshine State as he looks to build his own mega-compound in Miami's upscale Coconut Grove community. Page purchased two adjacent properties in late December and early January for $101.5 million and $71.9 million; one of the homes includes 13 bedrooms and 15.5 bathrooms. Page snapped up another property in the same area for $14.97 million in January, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

Sergey Brin

Page's cofounder Brin snagged his own slice of Florida in recent months. The billionaire bought a $51 million home on Allison Island, near Miami Beach, earlier this year, Business Insider reported. The 10,000-square-foot property has seven bedrooms, a waterfront pool, and a private dock. The island has 24-hour security and fewer than 50 homes, according to Realtor.com.

Ken Griffin

Griffin made a splash when he announced he was moving his hedge fund Citadel to Miami in 2022. But even before then, Griffin was building up his Florida real-estate empire. For the past 10 years, the hedge funder has poured $450 million into a 50,000-square-foot waterfront compound in Palm Beach County, which, when finished, will be the most expensive residence on the planet, according to the New York Post. The financier also purchased a $106.9 million compound in Coconut Grove in 2022.

Apart from Griffin's personal purchases, his company, Citadel, is also reportedly pouring billions into real estate in Miami, including a 54-story headquarters for Citadel in downtown Miami that is estimated to cost $2.5 billion.

Peter Thiel

While Peter Thiel's Florida footprint is relatively more modest than his fellow billionaires', he has still purchased nearly $40 million worth of property in the Miami area. Thiel in 2020 purchased a compound made up of two homes for $18 million on Miami's Venetian Islands, man-made islands that sit between Miami Beach and downtown Miami in Biscayne Bay. Late last year, the billionaire's Thiel Capital opened an office in Miami. Palantir also announced it was moving its headquarters to Miami in February.

Howard Schultz

Schultz and his wife, Sheri Schultz, purchased a penthouse in Surfside, Fla., north of Miami Beach, earlier this year for $44 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. The purchase was made public shortly after Schultz announced he was leaving Seattle, where he has lived for 44 years, for Miami, in a statement on LinkedIn.

The 5,500-square-foot property has five bedrooms, a rooftop terrace, and an oceanfront cabana, according to the Journal.

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A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on April 2, 2026. Source: Fortune