10 Cities With the Biggest Real Estate Wealth Gaps

The lifestyles of the rich and famous sometimes seem so far out of reach.

With homes selling for upward of $50 million and billionaires building compounds to disallow regular folks from taking a glance at luxury, one end of the real estate market seems to be growing exponentially.

Those enormous price tags can be jarring when looking for a home, but in reality, the median price of a luxury home is far lower. The entry point of luxury, which is defined as the 90th percentile of listing prices, was $1.19 million in December, according to Realtor.com. That price was about three times the national median home listing price of $399,950.

But there are some places where luxury, mega-luxury, and standard homes exist side-by-side. While that may seem concerning for those who are looking for affordable homes, these different markets don’t always impact each other.

“Big gaps between luxury and typical home prices aren’t automatically a warning sign,” Realtor.com senior economist Anthony Smith said. “They often point to markets that are highly segmented, where luxury behaves differently from the rest of the housing market. In those places, even small shifts at the high end can create noticeable changes in luxury pricing without spilling over to the median home price.”

Florida, for example, has five metros that ranked in the top 10 on Realtor.com’s list of places with the widest luxury gaps in real estate, partially fueled by high-net-worth individuals moving to Florida recently. Miami specifically dethroned the New York City metro area as the city with the most $1 million-plus listings in the country. The influx of high net worth individuals into Miami is also significantly linked to an exodus from the New York metro area: Realtor noted that 26.3% of the Miami metro’s demand originates from the New York metro.

There will always be gaps in the housing market separating one sector from the next. But some luxury markets differ greatly from the sector below.

Here are the top 10 metros where the luxury sector is the most disconnected from the typical market, according to Realtor.com.