Billionaire bɪljəˈnɛː/ noun - A person possessing assets worth at least a billion pounds or dollars (or) a person who has the ability to purchase an entire city, at least according to Redfin's latest research.
Every year, Forbes releases its annual rich list and we can't help but wonder at the wealth those billionaires amassed. Any business expert would tell you that the key to get rich is to invest in the right thing at the right time. Considering the "get rich" mantra, the folks at Redfin Blog decided to find out which billionaire could afford to invest in all the homes of an entire American city and the results are surprising.
For the study, the blog used the Forbes 400 Wealthiest List that enlists the richest people in the world and their net worth. They also calculated the average number of homes in a city and the average price and divided it by a billionaire's net worth and voila!
"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," Nela Richardson, chief economist at Redfin said in a statement.
See which city the top 10 billionaires could buy:
Billionaire | Net Worth | City |
Walton Family, Wal-Mart | $154.8 billion | Seattle, Wash. |
Koch Brothers, Oil | $86.0 billion | Atlanta , Ga. |
Bill Gates, Microsoft | $77.5 billion | Boston, Mass. |
Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway | $63.5 billion | Charlotte, NC. |
Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg LP | $31.8 billion | Anaheim, Calif. |
Larry Page, Google | $30.8 billion | Boca Raton, Fla. |
Jeff Bezos, Amazon | $30.5 billion | Napa, Calif. |
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook | $27.7 billion | Saint Paul, Minn. |
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft | $20.4 billion | Littleton, Colo. |
Phil Knight, Nike | 18.3 billion | False Church, Va. |
Which billionaire could buy your city? Find out here: https://t.co/UQDWTPSytK pic.twitter.com/i3MQO9upWh
— Redfin (@Redfin) June 5, 2014
A recent study revealed that billionaires are smarter than the Fortune 500 CEOs and that 45 percent of the billionaires fall in the top 1 percent cognitive ability category!
