Bill Gates isn't quite rich enough to buy every home in Seattle, near where Microsoft is headquartered. But he could buy every home in Boston...and the Walton family could pick up the Seattle ones anyway. According to a new analysis by real estate brokerage Redfin, the nation's billionaires could buy entire cities' worth of homes.

Redfin used MLS sales data from April 2013 through April 2014 as a representative sample of all homes in a city in order to calculate the total home value of any given city.
It's sort of a silly analysis, but it's one great way of getting a firmer handle on exactly what it means to be a multibillionaire. Homebuying remains out of reach for many Americans, and many of those who do buy homes have to scrape together the money for a down payment (and certain national capitals that shall remain nameless have a lot of prohibitively expensive houses), so it boggles the mind to realize there are people out there who could theoretically buy tens of thousands of homes at once.
Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?
Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.
Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.
So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)
If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.
Yes, I'll give $5/month
Yes, I'll give $5/month
We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and
Google Pay. You can also contribute via