• Billionaire Bill Koch has relisted his huge Aspen compound for $125 million, its highest-ever price.
• He tried to sell it before with no luck, but he thinks the market is strong enough this time around.
• See the estate, which has a 16,631-square-foot main cabin and other amenities across 53 acres.

Winters in Colorado are cold, but real estate in the Centennial State is anything but.

One of the billionaire Koch brothers is trying again to sell his lavish Aspen compound — this time for its highest-ever price: $125 million.

If the estate were to sell for anywhere close to its asking price, it would be the most expensive home ever sold in Colorado.

Two other billionaires, former casino mogul Steve Wynn and financier Thomas Peterffy, set the current record in April 2024, paying $108 million for a 22,405-square-foot Aspen home. It marked the first time a sale in the state reached nine digits, placing Aspen among other rarified communities where properties trade for that much, including New York, LA, Palm Beach, and Miami.

William "Bill" Koch sold his stake in the family conglomerate, Koch Industries, to his brothersfor $470 million in 1983. Fast forward to 2007, when Koch spent a relatively small sum — $26.5 million — on a former dude ranch just outside the posh ski town of Aspen.

Today, after extensive renovations, it has a 16,600-square-foot main lodge and seven cabins, one of which is a home gym. The total square footage of all the structures is about 25,300. The 53-acre property also offers ample Aspen-suitable amenities, including hot tubs, hiking trails, and an altitude-acclimation room.

Koch — who is worth $2 billion as of February 21, according to Forbes — told The Wall Street Journal that the $125 million asking price is fitting given that a few of the area's ultraluxury homes have sold for around $6,000 per square foot.

"If we applied that to our 25,000 square feet, our asking price would be $150 million," Koch told the Journal.

"Scarcity fuels luxury sales in Aspen's real estate market. Just as high-end brands like Hermès and Rolex create demand through limited availability, Aspen's appeal outpaces its real estate demand," Koch's listing agent Steven Shane, of Compass, said in an email.

Take a look inside Koch's massive compound for sale and read about his journey to find a new buyer.

Bill Koch purchased the 53-acre property for $26.5 million in 2007.

According to Architectural Digest, the property was used as a dude ranch and an event venue before Koch bought it.

He added 31 more parcels onto the property in 2015.

Later in 2015, he listed the entire property for $100 million.

He dropped the price to $80 million in 2016, but it didn't sell.

Koch was able to sell the 31 acres he added on for $14.5 million in 2020.

At various points, he's tried renting out the remaining property for $35,000 per night or $300,000 a month.

There are eight structures spread out across the compound.

The main lodge is 16,600 square feet.

It has eight bedrooms and eight bathrooms.

Counting the other buildings, there are 14 total bedrooms and 17 total bathrooms.

The lodge, also known as the primary cabin, is two stories with 30-foot-tall ceilings.

It has a dining room that seats 20 people, a screening room, and a living room with a wall of windows that faces the mountains.

Other amenities around the property include a gym, hiking trails, two hot tubs, and an altitude-acclimation room.

If there's not enough to do on the grounds, the estate is only 11 miles away from Aspen by car.

• Phoebe Grier, now 18, flipped a home during her high school summer break.
• She used a hard-money loan and got financial help from her father as well as a private investor.
• Grier made a profit of $39,500 — she saved some, donated some, and bought a car.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Phoebe Grier, 18, who flipped a home in the Twin Oaks neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky when she was 16. She used her father's credit to secure a hard-money loan through Backflip, a platform that helps residential real-estate investors find, analyze, and finance projects. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

The summer I flipped the house, I still babysat and housesat, but that was my job.

When I wasn't playing golf, I was running errands for the house — going to buy things, making sure the things that the contractor said were supposed to be happening were happening and that people and places were where they were supposed to be.

My friends were thinking about going out to eat or buying makeup and clothes. One was working at a golf shop, one was working at an ice cream shop, and one was working as an intern. They didn't really realize what I was doing. They didn't even know what to think.

A lot of people were supportive of the fact that I was a young person who wanted to flip a house. Some people were impressed. Other people were like, "OK, you're a 16-year-old girl. Why am I listening to you?"

If I want to do something, I want to do it. I make it happen. It also definitely helped to get empowerment and encouragement from my parents.

My dad and an investor helped me buy the house and fund the renovation

Since I was little, I've had a passion for design and houses. My mom and I love HGTV — we really bonded over the design shows.

When I was in third grade, I collected a bunch of cardboard boxes and I built a house within my house. Even then, I loved anything related to building houses or design.

I first saw people flipping houses on TV. Then my dad, who was a pastor for most of my life, started working in commercial construction and started flipping houses.

My parents were in a real-estate "mastermind" class, and I went to a session and heard about a girl who flipped a house. I was like, "That is something that I think I could do also — and that I would love and be good at."

With my dad's help, I created an LLC called Phoebe Flips. Because I wasn't 18, my dad and I owned it 50/50. With his credit, through Backflip, I was able to get a hard-money loan to pay for the house.

I had to find all the money for the 20% down payment and the renovation on my own. Through talking with family members and friends, I found a private investor to cover the down payment and the renovation costs.

I bought the house for $234,500, including the 20% down payment, and $80,000 went into the rehab.

I had hoped my budget for the renovation would be around $45,000. I didn't know exactly how much every inch of the house needed to be touched. As the project progressed, no room was left untouched — the floors were refinished, walls were taken down and put up. We painted.

The house was in worse shape than I expected, but it ended up selling in 24 hours

I knew I was going to get a return because of the area that the house was in — Twin Oaks — but it really did need to be gutted.

I got the house from a wholesaler, which can sometimes be a little bit more tricky than buying it via a traditional real-estate agent.

The house hadn't actually been on the market. The day I bought the house, its resident hadn't gotten all of his things out. I showed up with the key, and he was actually there with his sister, still moving some of it.

There were still piles and piles and piles of junk, and it smelled. It was like, "Oh, gosh." With the help of my sister and my mom, we filled up, like, 12 bags of trash just within the first two hours we were there.

We didn't have enough time to get all the junk out ourselves, so I hired Junk Luggers to take it out of the house for $3,000. That was an extra expense that I wasn't planning for.

The renovation was my favorite part, and it was also the most challenging part. I love being able to pick out the fixtures and the different flooring and pick colors — just how it all goes together.

In the kitchen, I originally wanted light blue tiles, but they'd sold out, so I ended up going with dark emerald green tiles.

It doesn't just look like any old house; it doesn't have your average subway tiles and gray walls and boring floors. It appealed to all sorts of buyers, but still had some unique flair.

It took 91 days from starting the renovation to closing the sale.

In the moment, that felt really long, but looking back, I'm like, "Wow, three months."

Within 12 hours of listing, I received an offer over asking price, and in less than 24 hours, I had accepted it. I really did not experience any sort of agony with selling the house. We sold the house for $390,000, so the net profit was $39,500.

I didn't think it would be that fast. I wasn't expecting it to be on the market forever, but my expectation was not for it to be sold within a day. It was kind of shocking. I was really lucky.

I spent the money on a car, but I also donated and saved

With the money from the house, I bought a car. At the time, that was what I was working toward.

I also used the money to save for the school year so that I wouldn't have to have a job while in school.

I tithed and gave to my local church and also gave to two small group leaders who had been mentors in my life.

Some of the money is still in my savings account, but it's not enough to pay for college or anything. I'm going to college at Taylor University in the fall, and I'm going to play golf there. I'm going to study business and hope to minor in either entrepreneurship or Spanish.

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to flip a house. Looking back, 8-year-old me would have never thought she could do this.

• Palm Beach's real-estate market is on fire.
• A vacant lot just relisted for $200 million, and sales of homes over $5 million have increased.
• Some brokers attribute the uptick to President Donald Trump's presence at Mar-a-Lago.

Florida may be the Sunshine State, but Palm Beach is having a moment in the spotlight. Some brokers say President Donald Trump could be the reason.

Take 1980 South Ocean Boulevard, a 2-acre vacant lot five minutes from the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago on Palm Beach's "Billionaire's Row."

Its owner — a lawyer and real estate investor named Nathan Royce Silverstein with ties to New Jersey — tried to sell it before, asking $150 million in 2022. This week, he relisted it for $200 million.

Sure, there are renderings for a 20,000-square-foot-plus residence that are ready to show Palm Beach's Architectural Review Commission, and the two-parcel lot has frontage on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Still, a key difference between 2022 and 2025 is that now Trump is president.

Agents — including Margit Brandt, who represented the buyer in Palm Beach's most expensive sale of 2024, a man-made island that traded hands for $150 million — call it a "Trump bump."

"In the postelection era, like, Q1 of 2025, we're seeing a lot of these high-priced listings, but at the same time, a lot of action in the market," Brandt, Premier Estate Properties, told Business Insider. "These are not like hypothetical asking prices. We're seeing a lot of actual movement within the high end here."

"Palm Beach is a small island with big people," she added.

According to Douglas Elliman, the number of signed contracts for homes from $5 million to $9.99 million increased 157% — or from seven homes to 18 — from January 2024 to January 2025. And sales for homes $10 million or more increased by an even larger margin: Three homes were sold in January 2024, while 13 were sold the same month in 2025.

We're tracking the Palm Beach real estate boom as it happens. Below are some key properties and deals.

A spec mansion in Manalapan, Florida, is on the market at $285 million

A Florida home built on spec, meaning it's being built without a specific buyer in mind, hit the market in January at $285 million. It's currently the most expensive listing for a new home in the US and, if sold at that price, would be the most expensive sale in Palm Beach.

The proposed 50,000-square-foot home is in Manalapan, Florida, about 11 miles south of Palm Beach. It's on a lot next door to billionaire Larry Ellison's house, which he paid $173 million for in 2022.

The lot has 700 feet of Intracoastal and ocean frontage and will feature impressive amenities like a car museum, an indoor shooting range, and a bowling alley.

An advantage to buying a home that isn't built yet is that the plans can be altered, listing agent Nick Malinosky told Business Insider in January.

A vacant lot with plans for a new home is listed at $200 million

Two acres of undeveloped property in Palm Beach is on the market with a massive $200-million price tag.

The property boasts both oceanfront and private Intracoastal waterfrontage — which is one of the perks of the narrow strip of island that is Palm Beach.

Records show that the current owner, Nathan Royce Silverstein, who tried to sell the lot in 2022 for $150 million, bought the property in 1966 for an unknown price.

While there's nothing on the property now, the next buyer won't have to think too hard about what to do with it. Building plans and renderings have already been made and are ready to be submitted for approval.

2 oceanfront lots owned by Estée Lauder cosmetics billionaire heir, William P. Lauder, are listed for $200 million

Billionaire and heir to beauty brand Estée Lauder, William Lauder, found a buyer for his more than 2-acre oceanfront lots in Palm Beach after initially listing them for $200 million in 2023.

The offer for the lots — which Lauder bought in 2020 and 2021 — came in at $173 million in February. According to records, he purchased the first lot for $25.3 million and the second for an undisclosed amount.

The property has about 360 feet of direct ocean frontage, according to The Palm Beach Daily News.

If the sale were to close above $170 million, it'd set a new record that's stood since 2023.

A private island in Palm Beach sold for $152 million in 2024

In May 2024, a 28,600-square-foot home on a private island in Palm Beach, Florida, sold for a $152 million, a record for lakefront properties.

Palm Beach, Florida, is already an island, but Tarpon Island, where the home is located, offers an extra amount of seclusion.

As the only private island in Palm Beach, the property features two private decks, multiple pools, a waterfront gym, and a wellness facility complete with a massage room and a nail salon, according to Mansion Global.

Australian investor Michael Dorrell, the CEO and cofounder of investment firm Stonepeak, purchased the home, according to The Wall Street Journal.

• Justin Wong, 36, gave up on the idea of buying a home in Canada, citing the unaffordable prices.
• He grew up visiting Japan and decided to buy a home there instead of in Canada.
• He plans to go back and forth between Canada and Japan for as long as possible.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Justin Wong, who bought a house in Japan's Nara Prefecture through Akiya Mart, a site that helps foreigners buy abandoned Japanese homes known as akiyas. Wong, 36, works in marketing in Delta, British Columbia, about 15 miles south of Vancouver. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

I've been in Japan a lot since I was a kid. I've always loved Japanese culture. I've gone on vacation there maybe six or seven times — sometimes on my own, sometimes with my parents. When I met my wife, we went there together a couple of times. She loves it.

It was always like, "I really wish we could spend more time in Japan." That's always been a thought.

So, we bought our home for $30,000 — that was the base price before we accounted for fees and everything else. I believe it was built in the late '70s or early '80s. It's 2,200 square feet with eight bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two kitchens.

People closest to me are mostly just surprised and curious. The only flack I've gotten is my family thinking it's some sort of scam — and I don't really blame them.

I'm buying a house thousands of miles away. I had never actually seen it. I hadn't actually been there. What if I go there and it's like an empty lot? I wasn't sure myself until I actually got there.

Technically, we bought the house sight unseen. We did a video tour, but it was a little bit of a leap of faith. I did go to see the home afterward because we already had a trip planned in October, but we thought, "Let's just buy it, and then I'll go and make sure the house is alright."

Personally, I love that the home sits in a walkable neighborhood. I don't mind driving, but whenever I'm there, it's like you can walk literally anywhere. Everything is so convenient — that's a huge part of it. Another thing is the food. It's so good in terms of how much it costs and the quality. It's just the type of food I enjoy. So, I have always loved that part of Japanese culture.

Also, I am a private person — more introverted. I don't really care much about going out and socializing all that much, especially now that I'm in my 30s. Japan is very friendly to people who just want to be left alone and do their own thing.

It's a little bit of happenstance because I found a random Reddit thread of people looking to buy houses in Japan. One person suggested Akiya Mart, so I was just looking through it and looking at the prices and thought, "We could actually do this."

Our purchase lines up with the current geopolitical situation, which is just a coincidence. Still, I'm happy we're making some progress.

I can't afford a home in Canada right now

I was born in Vancouver, so I've been here my whole life. I live in Delta, which is just south of Vancouver.

I have a decent wage. I make a good amount of money relative to the Canadian median, I'd say, but there's no way I can afford a house in my area. I can't even afford a mortgage for a closet in Richmond, British Columbia.

The average house price in Vancouver is over a million, I would say.

[The median list price in Vancouver, British Columbia, is $1.5 million, according to Canadian MLS Houseful.]

I'm not super familiar with owning a house, but I remember I specifically looked up a house with the same size and the same dimensions as the one I got in Japan. There's a place in Vancouver that's selling for $5.6 million Canadian [or about $3.9 million].

I kind of made peace with the fact that I would just rent for the rest of my life in Canada. Then we saw this opportunity to buy in Japan, and it was like, "Wait, for $40,000 Canadian, I can own this house, and it's in a country I've always wanted to spend more time in."

Once we knew that this opportunity was available, it was kind of a no-brainer, really.

The process was easier than I expected, too. I've never bought a house before — it seems no one in Vancouver can really — so I had no idea what to expect.

All in all, it was maybe a month and a half to two months, and most of it was just waiting. We did a lot of research going in and looked at as much as we could. So when we met with Akiya Mart and when we met with the real-estate agent, we already knew the home we wanted. We didn't want to waste any time.

I wish I could live in Japan full-time

We're doing some minor renovations. I'm fixing a couple of big cracks in the foundation and putting in some termite-prevention stuff. After that, not much, really. The house is gorgeous, and I don't want to mess with it.

When we were buying, one of my biggest concerns was getting this thing up to earthquake standards because, living in Vancouver, we're also on an earthquake line.

So I wanted to renovate the place, make it earthquake-proof, etcetera. After the contractor got me the quote, I was like, "This is four times the cost of the house. Forget it."

It's not like an investment. We're not looking at it to rent. We're far out in the countryside, so I'm pretty sure no one's going to want to Airbnb somewhere like that.

Right now, however, it's basically a vacation home. I want to get a 90-day visa as a tourist. We're planning on going back three months at a time to Japan, then coming back home, then returning three months at a time.

I have a remote job, so I can work from home without having to worry about finding employment. My workplace is cool enough to allow me to do that.

If I could get permanent residency in Japan, I would probably spend most of my time there. I'd probably be happy. I would love to be able to retire in Japan; they just make it very difficult for you to do so.

Maybe after I spend three months there, I'll hate it—who knows? For now, I love that idea.

• Kofi Nartey was the listing agent for Michael Jordan's Chicago mansion for 11 months in 2015.
• Nartey figured out ways to generate buzz that led to more showings, but didn't land Jordan a buyer.
• The mansion finally sold for $9.5 million in 2024 after 12 years on the market.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with real-estate agent Kofi Nartey 49, who was one of the listing agents for Michael Jordan's mansion in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The over-the-top home went on the market for $29 million in 2012 and finally sold for $14.85 million in 2024 with another broker. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

The Jordan estate had been on the market for about seven years prior to me coming on board.

I've represented a handful of famous clients, like Nick Young, Jason Kidd, Neve Campbell, Matt Kemp, and Kevin Durant.

The goal was to speak to the avatar of the potential buyer: Who would want the story that comes with owning a trophy property like that? The buyer of this property is going to walk away from the closing table, text his buddies, and say, "Dude, I just bought MJ's house."

Someone gets to tell that story, gets to leverage that story. It becomes not only a talking point, but a source of connections, a source of storytelling, a source of business opportunities, and more. Even if that's not your main purpose, it's an ancillary benefit that can't be ignored and that I wanted to promote.

Jordan put his own stamp on the mansion

A lot of the homes we deal with are one-of-one custom builds built specifically for the client. We use the typical "comp" analysis when we're running numbers to get a baseline, and then we adjust up or down based on different attributes of the property.

There was no way to capture the true value of Michael Jordan's estate based on comparable properties. The best houses in the neighborhood are maybe 10,000 square feet. This one is 56,000 square feet — there's no real comp for it.

Because he was such a huge public figure, he wanted to be able to enjoy himself in his own home without having to face paparazzi and hang out with his family.

You've earned the right to customize the hell out of the house, so make it your own and enjoy it.

Jordan had a 23 on the gate. The house has its own full-court gym, full training facilities, cigar lounges, and a swimming pool shaped like a basketball hoop. It has its own pond stocked with fish. It has a par-three golf hole. It has a whole hair salon for his wife.

You're doing yourself a disservice by trying to normalize those things. If anything, you have to lean into those differentiators — capture that story and tell it the right way.

I wanted to raise the house's profile in the hopes of landing a buyer

The call to get the listing wasn't surreal.

The call that was surreal was when Michael Jordan himself called me.

He called me to tell me a little bit more about the vision and answer a few questions I had to extract the story behind building such an amazing property.

It was not just selling another house, not just selling a bigger, better property in the neighborhood. The idea of selling a legendary estate, a trophy property, hadn't fully been embraced.

I wanted to begin repositioning the marketing strategy by changing the price. I picked numbers that added up to the number 23: $14,855,000. That became international news alone.

I offered prospective buyers a pair of each Jordan shoe that had come out in the buyer's size if they bought the home. That made international news.

The pricing strategy was more than fair. It was just a matter of capturing the right story to bring in the right buyer.

I would get calls directly from qualified buyers asking about it. I would also get a lot of silly and fun calls like, "Hey, can I play Michael one-on-one for the house?"

We have some markets and some properties that take two or three years to sell. It's not very common, but some do take more time.

I didn't get a chance to close the deal, but I think I could have

I only had the listing for 11 months in 2015.

I changed companies and the listing stayed with the old company — and then that company lost the listing.

I think given a little bit longer, we would've been able to get the deal done. Given the initial momentum and increase in visibility — the increase in excitement and showings — I think we would have been able to get more than $9.5 million.

At the end of the day, the number that it sells for is the number that everyone agrees to. That's what a buyer decided they were willing to pay, and what Michael Jordan was willing to sell it for.

But I also think that there are some things that can always be done differently to squeeze a bit more value out of a property like that.

• Before he entered politics, JD Vance was best known as the author of the memoir "Hillbilly Elegy."
• The former Ohio senator grew up in the Rust Belt and still has a house in Cincinnati.
• Take a look at all the homes linked to the Yale graduate, former Marine, and current vice president.

Inauguration Day is also moving day.

Donald Trump returned to the White House, and JD Vance headed to the vice president's residence.

Before politics, the 40-year-old Republican was best known as the author of "Hillbilly Elegy," a memoir of his childhood in the Rust Belt. Vance made thousands in royalties after it became a New York Times bestseller in 2016. It was adapted into a 2020 film of the same name starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

Vance attended Yale Law School after a four-year stint in the Marines and getting his bachelor's degree at Ohio State.

His rise to fame also cast a spotlight on his wife, Usha Vance, whom he met at Yale and married in 2014. Since tying the knot, the couple has welcomed three children and relocated several times.

When Vance worked at a venture capital firm connected to former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, they lived in San Francisco. In 2022, Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022 as the representative of Ohio. Trump tapped him as his running mate in 2024.

From the house that inspired "Hillbilly Elegy" to his new home in the vice president's official residence, here's a closer look at Vance's real-estate journey. Representatives for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vance's childhood home is a two-story detached property with a porch in Middletown, Ohio.

The steelworks town of Middletown, Ohio, was thrust into the spotlight thanks to "Hillbilly Elegy."

It's a relatively small city, less than an hour's drive from Cincinnati, with an estimated population of around 51,000. Vance was born and raised in Middletown but has roots in Kentucky, where his family still owns a small cemetery on the side of a mountain.

Vance lived at a light blue house on McKinley Street with his mom, whose struggle with addiction was documented in his memoir.

According to Realtor.com, the 2,000-square-foot house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms underwent an extensive renovation in 2017. The real-estate website also said that the property, which it estimates has a current value of $223,400, was considered "middle class" when Vance grew up there.

Zillow, however, reported that a house with the same square footage — that appears to match Vance's childhood home based on recent photographs — has four bedrooms, not three, and is currently valued at $219,300.

Vance and his wife purchased a historic home in a fairly liberal neighborhood of Cincinnati in 2018.

In 2017, Vance sold his rights to his memoir to Imagine Entertainment, an entertainment production company.

The move laid the foundation for the Ron Howard-directed film adaptation. While it wasn't considered a box-office hit, "Hillbilly Elegy" has seen a spike in interest following Vance's VP nomination.

Shortly after his deal with Imagine Entertainment, Vance and his wife bought a historic home on William Howard Taft Road in East Walnut Hills, Cincinnati.

The neighborhood is left-leaning. The New York Times reported that 85% of voters in the area voted for President Joe Biden during the 2020 election.

Before the sale, a local historian told local TV station WCPO that the house was a "rustic" blend of "mid-century Gothic Revival" and "High Victorian Gothic" design.

The five-bedroom property is described on the real-estate website Redfin as over 6,000 square feet set on 2.29 acres overlooking the Ohio River. Vance bought it in 2018 for just under $1.4 million.

In 2014, the Vances purchased a townhouse in Washington DC's Capitol Hill neighborhood, which they now rent to a tenant — who said they were good landlords.

As many senators and politicians do, Vance owns a home in Washington, DC's Capitol Hill neighborhood — about a mile from the US Capitol.

Property records show that Vance and his wife purchased the white-brick rowhouse in 2014 for $590,000. The two were recently married. Around that time, Usha was a clerk for Brett Kavanaugh, then on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

The house is located on a quiet, tree-lined street. Before the 2024 election, when a BI reporter paid a visit, many of the homes' small yards were adorned with red, white, and blue for the Olympics as well as tiny rainbow Pride flags — including one in Vance's yard.

The couple currently does not occupy the home and rented it out as recently as 2024. According to Redfin, the house was listed for rent in October 2023 for $3,700 a month.

The current tenant told the Washington Post in July of 2024 that she plans to stay there for a while and that her landlords are nice and responsive.

"I love this house. I love this block. I want to be here for a long time," she said. "So I want to be a good tenant. And I have great landlords — Usha's great."

After Vance became a senator, he bought a $1.64 million house in a DC suburb.

According to Politico and local publication the Washingtonian, Vance purchased another DC-area home in February 2023.

The house in Alexandria, Virginia — a city across the Potomac River from DC — sold for $1.64 million to an LLC, property records show.

Del Ray, the Alexandria neighborhood where Vance reportedly bought a home, is a fairly left-leaning neighborhood with Pride flags and other rainbow decorations in many local businesses on the main road. During the 2020 election, Biden captured 81% of the vote in Alexandria.

The more than 2,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house is near a small park.

Residents of the liberal neighborhood are mostly indifferent about the Vances' presence, according to the Washingtonian, but a local artist did "yarn-bomb" an area outside the home, hanging crocheted Pride, bi flags, trans flags, and a pink sign that read "Respect our Rights."

"I'm not the only person who was sort of baffled and, to be honest, a bit dismayed that someone who had so vocally expressed contempt for the kinds of people who live here and the kind of values that we hold had decided to be our neighbor," the yarn artist told the Washingtonian. "Knowing that this person has been really publicly antagonistic to LGBTQ people, to immigrants, to women's rights—it felt appropriate to publicly declare what we stand for in this community."

The Vances moved out of their Alexandria home in January, to move into the Vice President's mansion. The home is not yet on the market.

Now that the Trump-Vance ticket is in office, the Vances are occupying the Vice President's official residence.

In January, Vance moved his family into the Vice President's residence in Washington DC.

Located in Northwest Washington, DC, on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory, the Vice President's residence has been occupied by the second in command since Walter Mondale lived there in 1977.

The home, at 1 Observatory Circle, was originally built in 1893 and has been through several renovations since — the most recent renovations took place in 2021. Former Vice President Kamala Harris waited over two months before moving in as interior designer Sheila Bridges outfitted the first-floor public spaces with furniture, fixtures, and art made by American craftsmen. (After each administration, the furniture is boxed up and the art is returned to the people or museums that loaned it out, according to the Washington Post.)

The 9,000-square-foot house, with 33 rooms, sits on a 72-acre plot of land and is not open to the public.

• Natural disasters like fires and floods put financial and emotional strain on affected residents.
• Property data firm CoreLogic identified the US areas with the lowest risk from natural disasters.
• The lowest-risk places are mostly in the western part of the US, including Washington and Oregon.

Natural disasters are increasing — and it's causing some people to reconsider where they live.

Some of the most idyllic places to live in the US have become disaster-prone. Take coastal Florida, most recently battered by Hurricane Milton, and LA's foothills, which battled wildfires that have devastated many neighborhoods.

Extreme weather events — increasing in intensity and frequency — have claimed lives, homes, and businesses. They've cost taxpayers and insurance companies billions of dollars, and prompted insurers to reduce coverage in high-risk areas.

Alexander de Sherbinin, a Columbia University geographer who specializes in the human impacts of climate change, expects to see a lot of climate migration in the coming years as Americans search for stability.

"Not everybody is necessarily going to go far. But we could see significant movements, probably away from the coasts and toward the north," de Sherbinin told Columbia Magazine.

So, where is safe?

While all US regions will face climate challenges, some areas are more resilient than others.

Property data firm CoreLogic put together a list of the safest ZIP codes in the US based on the firm's Risk Score, which uses property data, replacement costs, and natural hazard insights to determine how weather and climate disasters affect single-family homes financially.

"We combine all of that into the calculation — so it's not just the peril, it's not just the resiliency of the structure," Corelogic principal data scientist Tanya Havlicek told Business Insider. "It's those two things together creating the financial loss."

BI analyzed CoreLogic's data by ZIP code, grouping the safest ones by metropolitan area and highlighting the 10 most populous ones below. The home price data, from Redfin, gives a sense of how much it would cost to buy a home there.

One ZIP code in greater Los Angeles, home to the University of California Irvine campus, appears on the list. It's a pocket of LA that is relatively protected from fires, floods, and earthquakes, said Anand Srinivasan, vice president of research and development at CoreLogic.

Here are 10 metropolitan areas with the lowest risk of climate damage, according to CoreLogic.

10. Spokane-Spokane Valley, Washington

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 99203, 99204

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: The Spokane area has a diverse landscape of hills, plains, prairies, and forests. It is also home to the Centennial Trail, a 40-mile path that runs from Sontag Park in Nine Mile Falls, Washington, to the Idaho state line.

Median home price: $566,000 (99203), $450,000 (99204)

Climate history: Spokane's worst climate event was the 2021 heat dome — lasting from June 26 to July 2 — which resulted in at least 100 deaths throughout Washington state, making it the state's deadliest weather event, according to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

9. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, California

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 91945, 92007, 92093, 92161, 92182

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: The San Diego metro area is the second-most populous area in California. The area is near the beach and has a mild climate year-round.

Median home price: $1,524,500 (Carlsbad) 931,000 (San Diego) $812,500 (Chula Vista)

Climate history: In 2007, the Harris Fire burned in San Diego County and destroyed 560 structures.

8. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 97223, 97080, 97224, 98607, 97304, 97086, 98685, 97003, 97078, 98642, 97015, 98686, 97113, 98606

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: Hillsboro and Portland are in northeastern Oregon close to the Washington border. Vancouver is just a 15-minute drive north of Portland.

Median home price (Redfin): $520,000 (Hillsboro, OR) $505,000 (Portland) $470,000 (Vancouver)

Climate history: Indland flooding poses the greatest threat in the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro metro. The Willamette Valley flood of 1996 was the last and largest flood in Portland history.

7. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 92617

What the low-risk ZIP is known for: The University of California Irvine campus. It's in a part of the LA metropolitan area that is a somewhat protected nook — neither by the ocean nor in the mountains, and not too close to an earthquake fault line.

Median home price: $1 million (Los Angeles), $826,000 (Long Beach), $896,000 (Anaheim)

Climate history: The city's warm climate and dry conditions make it prone to wildfires. In January, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, tearing through several Los Angeles neighborhoods. They have claimed at least 24 lives and destroyed thousands of homes, making them the city's most destructive fires.

6. Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, Nevada

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 89130, 89085

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: Las Vegas is known globally for its entertainment offerings, but North Las Vegas and Henderson have more suburban lifestyles. Both are within 16 miles of Las Vegas proper.

Median home price: $415,650 (North Las Vegas) $489,900 (Henderson) $444,000 (Las Vegas)

Climate history: Inland floods are the most likely disaster in the Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas metro, according to CoreLogic. In 1999, Las Vegas received between 1.5 and 3 inches of rain in one day — which is 35% to 75% of its annual amount. The ensuing floods damaged approximately 369 homes.

5. Houghton, Michigan

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 49931, 49913, 49922, 49921, 49805, 49918

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: Known as the "Gateway to the Keweenaw," Houghton, Michigan, is located along the shores of Lake Superior and is home to Michigan Tech University.

Median home price: $420,000

Climate history: Data from First Street, a climate research company, shows that the city has a low wildfire risk over the next 30 years. However, rainfall could be an issue. In 2018, Houghton experienced its largest flood, with 3 to 7 inches of rain causing major damage, according to the National Weather Service.

4. Hagerstown-Martinsburg, Maryland-West Virginia

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 25405

What the low-risk ZIP is known for: Known as the "Hub City," Hagerstown is a key commercial and industrial center for the broader tristate area, which includes Western Maryland, parts of South Central Pennsylvania, and the Martinsburg Panhandle of West Virginia.

Median home price: $320,000

Climate history: The Maryland government reported that its cities are vulnerable to climate events like droughts, storms, flooding, and wildfires.

The most recent weather event in the Hagerstown-Martinsburg metro was a winter storm in January, which brought on about 5 inches of snow.

3. Eugene-Springfield, Oregon

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 97403

What the low-risk ZIP is known for: This pocket of Eugene is home to the University of Oregon campus. The area is surrounded by forests, lakes, and rivers, with many trails for running, biking, and hiking.

Median home price: $610,000

Climate history: Particle pollution — made up of tiny particles like dust, smoke, dirt, and diesel emissions — is the leading environmental concern in the Eugene-Springfield area. In 2024, the American Lung Association ranked the region as the fourth most polluted city in the US.

2. El Paso, Texas

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 79925, 79908

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: El Paso, Texas, is on the western tip of Texas and borders Mexico and is only about 10 miles from New Mexico. El Paso is nicknamed "The Sun City" due to its average of 300 days of sunshine per year.

Median home price: $254,974

Climate history: Even though there is plenty of sunshine in El Paso, its most-likely threat is inland flood. In 2006 El Paso recieved 19.5 inches of rain — double its annual amount — leading to flooding that caused more than $200 million in damage to businesses and homes.

1. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Michigan

ZIP codes on CoreLogic's list: 48126, 48235, 48224, 48221, 48021, 48205, 48236, 48080, 48213, 48202, 48225, 48206, 48201, 48128, 48216, 48242

What the low-risk ZIPs are known for: The Detroit-Warren-Dearborn metro is located next to the Detroit River and is a short drive from the Canadian border. Both Dearborn and Warren are suburbs of Detroit, which is one of the least expensive cities to buy a home in the country.

Median home price: $205,000 (Warren) $240,500 (Dearborn) $97,200 (Detroit)

Climate history: The most likely weather crisis taking place is a convective storm, according to CoreLogic's rating. In 2014, Detroit set records by accumulating 94.9 inches of snow during the winter in a deep freeze.

• "Severance," an office thriller show, is partially filmed at a real office in suburban New Jersey.
• The office, Bell Works, was originally Bell Labs, a historic incubator for telephone technology.
• Today the building is a mixed-use development with office space, stores, and restaurants.

Lumon Industries, the fictional employer at the center of the workplace thriller "Severance," is probably not anyone's ideal employer.

In the Apple TV+ series starring Adam Scott, Lumon is a cultlike biotechnology company that employs some "severed" workers. These employees undergo a procedure to separate their consciousness into an "outie," who goes about life outside of work, and an "innie," who toils away in the basement on mysterious tasks. As a result, the innies' restrictive workspace is the only world they've ever known.

Workers at the 60-year-old office complex where parts of the show are filmed, however, have the option to order caviar service and mezcal Negronis at its on-site restaurant and bar.

Bell Works, in Holmdel, New Jersey, a township about 30 miles south of Newark, was once a hub of technological innovation. Formerly Bell Laboratories, the 2 million-square-foot building was designed by the famed architect Eero Saarinen for a division of AT&T and opened in 1962.

There, scientists researched and developed technologies for phones and other devices. In 2015, though, it was transformed into a walkable complex of modernized offices and restaurants, bars, shops, and more.

While Bell Works may still look huge and monolithic, its interior is more bustling and alive than the show's sterile and mundane aesthetic suggests.

Here are four facts about the office building used as a filming location for "Severance."

Only parts of Lumon's office were filmed at Bell Works

"Severance" features Bell Works' exterior and entrance, as well as its actual parking lot. Its central skylit atrium also appears in a few scenes. The rest of the show was filmed in New York on several sound stages, according to Curbed.

The production designer Jeremy Hindle built the interior of the office — including the narrow hallways and the iconic green carpet — from the ground up.

"Green is the most common color to your eye, like that's the theory that it's calming, it makes you feel calm," Hindle told Variety in 2022. "Some of the colors, the theories were kind of who they are as characters and what they needed to survive. I think green is something you need to survive."

The original Bell Labs building was a tech incubator

While nobody in the show knows what Lumon Industries' severed employees really do, we have records of the developments that have emerged from work in the Bell Labs building.

From 1962 to 2007, the Bell Labs building had more than 6,000 employees — including a few Nobel Prize winners — who were responsible for many technological innovations.

The theory for the laser, as well as the Big Bang theory, originated in the Bell Labs building. It's also the location of the receiving end of the first cellphone call.

Bell Labs is now a mixed-use development called Bell Works

Inside, the Bell Works building is nothing like the office in "Severance." It's also much changed from its original look, thanks to some recent renovations.

A New Jersey firm called Inspired by Somerset Development purchased it in 2013 for $27 million with plans to modernize the outdated and unused office building.

"The greatest experiment is yet to come for these walls, and that is the ability of a community to come together," the company's president, Ralph Zucker, told NJ.com in 2013. "This building will be repurposed as a place for living."

Inspired renamed it Bell Works. More than 70 vendors have set up shop there, including restaurants, a bar, an indoor golf simulator, and an ice cream shop. There are also fitness franchises and a basketball court.

Tenant companies include the local utility Jersey Central Power & Light, the HR recruiting software iCIMS, and the insurer Guardian Life. Bell Works also hosts conferences and events.

Bell Works' website calls it a "Metroburb," which it defines as "a little metropolis in suburbia."

The show spent almost 5 times as much money filming the 2nd season in New Jersey

The budget for the second season of "Severance" is nothing to sniff at.

NJ.com reported that while the show in its first season spent $5.1 million filming in New Jersey, for its second season it spent more than $24 million over three years filming there.

Other filming locations in the state included Kings Landing, a condominium complex in Middletown, and part of Palisades Interstate Park in Alpine, which overlooks the Hudson River.

Further north, Phoenicia Diner in the Catskills was used to film scenes at Pip's Bar & Grille.

Palmer Haasch contributed reporting to this story.

• A mansion near Palm Beach, Florida, that has yet to be built is on the market for $285 million.
• The seller, who develops real estate as a hobby, paid $27.5 million for the property in March 2024.
• The mansion, with car museum, padel court, and shooting range, is the US' priciest new home for sale.

A former CEO who develops real estate as a hobby has listed a South Florida mansion that hasn't been built yet for $285 million.

That asking price makes it the most expensive new home for sale in the US. (The country's priciest property for sale is a waterfront compound in Naples, across the state on Florida's west coast, on the market for $295 million.)

The $285 million property — located in Manalapan, Florida, a barrier island with a population of just over 400 that's about 11 miles south of Palm Beach — is next door to Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison's estate, which he paid $173 million for in 2022.

Stewart Satter, the seller of the planned estate, built his wealth by founding Consumer Testing Laboratories, a company that tested products for safety. He sold the firm in 2016.

Palm Beach County property records show an LLC managed by Satter purchased the property in March 2024 for $27.5 million. That same month, Satter demolished the existing property, according to the records.

The compound designed for the parcel is more than 50,000 square feet, with a separate beach house and a boat house, plus a bowling alley, a car museum, a gym and spa, a padel court, a golf simulator, and a shooting range.

Take a look at renderings that offer tantalizing glimpses into Satter's planned over-the-top mansion.

Satter is selling the 50,000-square-foot mansion "on spec," which means it's built by a developer with no specific buyer in mind.

"Someone spending $285 million is expecting everything," Satter told The Wall Street Journal. "And in that property, they're going to get everything."

Listing agent Nick Malinosky of Douglas Elliman told Business Insider that one of the perks of purchasing a not-yet-built home is that the buyer can customize the plans as construction proceeds.

The house might take about two and a half years to complete, Malinosky said.

The property has 700 feet of waterfrontage on the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean.

The amenities are lavish and include a car museum.

There's also an indoor shooting range.

An expansive wine cellar can hold the buyer's collection.

There's also a bowling alley.

To design the mansion, Satter tapped Robert W. Burrage of RWB Construction Management, a local homebuilder, and architecture firm Choeff Levy Fischman.

There is a private tunnel connecting parts of the compound that runs underneath South Ocean Boulevard, the north-south road that parallels the Atlantic Ocean coastline.

There are currently eight bedrooms, nine full bathrooms, and seven powder rooms planned for the main house alone.

Another lot Satter owned sold with plans to build a mansion to Campbell Soup heiress Mary Alice Dorrance Malone for $40 million after originally listing for $125 million, according to Realtor.com.

In 2022, Larry Ellison purchased the property next door for $173 million, setting a record for most expensive property ever sold in Florida.

The logic with the pricing, according to Malinosky, comes from the value of the land itself as well as the home planned for it.

"I think buyers that are in this price point are coming to South Florida, and in many cases, the actual home does not excite them," Malinosky added. "So what we wanted to do was create something that is so unique, so special, and so brand-new that we could truly provide that discerning buyer with everything they want in their Florida property."

• Tom Brady is open to selling his newly built home on Indian Creek Island.
• He spent $17 million on the vacant lot in 2020 and has reportedly received offers over $150 million.
• Indian Creek homes are historically expensive, but Bezos' presence has boosted prices further.

Football legend Tom Brady is open to selling his newly-built mansion on exclusive Indian Creek Island in Miami.

Brady is entertaining offers on the home only a few months after its completion, a source familiar with luxury real estate in South Florida told Business Insider.

Bloomberg, which on Thursday reported Brady's whisper listing citing three people familiar with the situation, said he has received offers exceeding $150 million and that talks are underway.

Representatives for Brady did not respond to a request for comment.

According to property records, Brady purchased an empty lot on Indian Creek Island for $17 million in 2020. The LLC associated with the property filed a notice of commencement to start constructing a two-story home in August 2021. He took out a $35 million construction loan in 2023, records show.

Brady's property features four separate structures, as well as a jacuzzi, a tennis court, a pool, and a private dock with access to Biscayne Bay, according to property records. Construction finished in 2024.

A man-made island in Miami-Dade County known as the "Billionaire Bunker," Indian Creek's uber-rich homeowners include Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and billionaire Carl Icahn.

Jeff Bezos — who spent nearly $230 million purchasing three properties on Indian Creek over the last two years — has only raised the profile of the island.

The prices of Indian Creek real estate have always been high, but asks have ballooned as Bezos resets the market.

A 1.84-acre vacant lot on the island that was purchased for $27.5 million in 2018 is now on the market for $200 million.

"If it's a new build house, buyers are willing to pay premium," Ilya Reznik, the broker representing the sellers of the $200 million lot, told BI in December. "This is just what's going on in Miami."

Properties on the island are scarce. There are only about 40 homes spread throughout its 300 acres. Security is paramount: There is one bridge connecting Indian Creek to the mainland, and it is heavily guarded by the island's own police force.

• Erik Buhrow bought a home in Japan for $26,000 while he was still living in the US.
• Buhrow, who grew up in Japan, plans to return at some point when his career is over.
• In the meantime, he plans to rent out his home to the Americans looking to move to Japan.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erik Buhrow, who bought a house in Japan's Niigata Prefecture through AkiyaMart, a site that helps foreigners buy abandoned Japanese homes known as akiyas. Buhrow, 39, runs a construction business outside Minneapolis.

A lot of people born and raised in Minnesota stay here forever. I've only been here about 10 years.

It can feel like anybody who has any sort of money bought a cabin in northern Minnesota back in the day — when you could. Now, if you want to buy a cabin up north, you're spending $300,000 for a starter shack in the tundra.

Would I rather spend $300,000 on a cabin in northern Minnesota or $30,000 for a cabin in Japan — a country I'm from, I'm accustomed to, and I actually enjoy going to?

I purchased an akiya in Japan this year. I closed on it in July and I did everything remotely over the course of three months.

I did not visit Japan to see the house or do anything. I worked with a real-estate agent who went there and FaceTimed me. Because I'm in construction and I am used to Japan, I was like, "Yeah, I'm willing to pull the trigger without going there."

It's roughly 3,000 square feet and about 150 years old. The Japanese would classify it as eight bedrooms, but I would classify it as six. There are two extra rooms that they would consider bedrooms, but because of their lack of closets, I'm going to call them bonus rooms. There's a two-car garage, one bathroom, and multiple really open living room spaces in an old-school style.

All in with the taxes and the real-estate fees and everything, it was $26,000.

A lot of people say, "The prices are really good, but the insurance and the taxes are going to get you." They don't. My insurance for $200,000 of replacement costs me a little under $500 a year. I actually bought five years' worth of home insurance at once.

My taxes are $183 a year. In Japan, homes over 22 years old are depreciated, so that $183 is just on the land. There's no tax on the house because it's ancient.

I own my home in Burnsville, Minnesota. It's very similar — 3,000 square feet, a garage. I bought it in 2017 for $300,000, and my taxes have gone — from 2017 to now — from $3,000 a year to about $5,000 a year.

I may be a little bit cavalier about the situation. I knew that no matter how bad the house is, it's nothing that I haven't seen. I just felt like, if I don't go visit it, but it's in the location that I want, that's what real estate is about. That's what these houses are really about. You can fix things, you can make the house better or worse, but you can't move it.

I grew up in Japan and long to move back for retirement

I grew up in Japan, so it helped make the decision easier. I grew up on a US military base in Misawa, Japan, in the Aomori Prefecture. My mom was a government teacher, so I lived there for an extended amount of time.

I officially moved to the United States when I went to college. But when I grew up in Japan, I had a huge desire to own property there, but it was always seen as impossible. My mom, my sister, and my brother-in-law, who's half Japanese, just always accepted it as something you can't do — that it's too complicated, or you have to get residency.

I reached out to AkiyaMart for a consultation. They pitched me on being the pilot person for their buyer program. I think it worked out perfectly.

My biggest aim was to be surrounded by the culture of Japan. I grew up on a military base, so I know what it's like to be around foreigners in Japan. Tokyo and Osaka are very tourist-driven, and it can be really difficult to learn the language and truly learn the customs.

The Sea of Japan, or western, side of the country is known for not being very heavily touristed or westernized. The house I bought is on the southern portion of the Tohoku region of Japan. You still get snow, but the architecture as you get further south in Japan gets to be, in my opinion, more beautiful. You have tile roofs and things of that nature. If you go north, you get more flat metal roofs.

Because I'm in construction, I care about home design. So this was a beautiful in-between spot where I could enjoy a southern-style home, but in a snowy northern climate, and also still be close to Tokyo.

The closest city-slash-train stop for the bullet train is 20 minutes away. I can hop on the bullet train and be in Tokyo 90 minutes later.

The prices in that area are lower because it is more remote. It allows you to explore in this adventure of buying a foreign property without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I plan to rent out my akiya to other Americans weighing moves to Japan

I'm also in the process of buying another akiya property two minutes down the street. The original premise to buy the second home is based on my sister and brother-in-law, who both grew up in Japan.

In the meantime, I'm hoping that I can turn the second home into a long-term-stay place. I can allow people thinking about doing the same thing that I'm doing to stay there one to three months while they try and figure out is this something that might be a fit for them.

Because people are curious and they're interested in living in Japan, but they don't know if it would work. Somebody could go, "Hey, Erik, I want to stay in your house for a month, use your car, use your Wi-Fi, and figure out if this area fits my goals."

Or maybe my renters will want to work remotely in Japan for an extended amount of time.

My life goal would be to retire in Japan. However, because of visas and complications, it's not that easy.

I look at buying the akiyas as a new adventure in life, a new chapter. If you're not continuing to write new chapters in your book, then it gets kind of boring to read.

• Some Airbnb hosts decided not to welcome guests during Donald Trump's inauguration weekend.
• They worried about safety or supporting a political agenda. Others, though, had no issues hosting.
• Demand for DC-area short-term rentals in 2025 is on par with Trump's 2017 inauguration, AirDNA said.

Washington DC Airbnb host Stacy Kane blocked her calendar for president-elect Donald Trump's second inauguration.

Kane and two friends contacted community members and city councilors urging other hosts to join in, saying in an email that it would "show Trump supporters who are coming into the DMV that we do not welcome hate, misogyny, or intentions to take over DC," according to the Washington Post.

A handful of other hosts have removed their short-term rentals from the market. One Airbnb owner — who lives in the same property as the apartment she rents out about three miles from the Capitol — told Business Insider that she was concerned for her own safety given the language and actions of Trump supporters on January 6.

Other people who have said they run Airbnbs have posted on Facebook and Reddit forums for hosts that they not only kept their homes open to book — but added premiums to their rates.

"I'm charging $1,200 a night with a four-night minimum," one Redditor posted in November.

It appears that the conflicting opinions over how to treat inauguration weekend have had little effect. Demand from guests looking to stay in short-term rentals in the DC area this year is similar to Trump's first inauguration in 2017, according to Bram Gallagher, the director of economics and forecasting at AirDNA.

"In the DC metro area, the number of available listings has remained stable, and search trends and average nightly rates are typical for periods of increased demand," an Airbnb spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson also said that the company "connects guests and hosts of all political perspectives" and is "committed to ensuring that this is their experience on the platform. Our policies and Terms of Service make this clear, and if we learn of instances where these are violated, we take action."

Are you a Washington DC Airbnb host renting — or not renting — your home this weekend? Email Hana Alberts at [email protected] to share your thoughts for a future story.

DC's rule that Airbnb hosts rent out their primary residence made one feel at risk

The Airbnb host worried about her safety, who asked to remain anonymous due to the same concerns, said DC's rule that short-term rentals for stays under 30 days must also be the owner's primary residence makes her feel more vulnerable.

"If something happens, these people can forever just target me," she told Business Insider. "It opens you up to way more than what it's worth for a few nights of rental income. I just could never see myself putting myself out there for that."

Because of the law, many Washington DC hosts live in the homes they rent out and have strong connections to their neighborhoods.

"From my perspective, it's not about the money," she added. "I love hosting. I love meeting people and helping people enjoy my city, but I couldn't possibly be somewhere where people are using hate speech and targeting people and being violent. Those aren't the kind of folks that I want to host, and I would just rather be safe than take that risk."

Bookings for inauguration weekend are close to 2017 figures

Every four years on January 20, people from all over the country regularly stream into Washington and brave inclement weather to see the president get sworn in outside the Capitol. Trump announced Friday that his 2025 inauguration would be held inside the Capitol Rotunda instead due to expected freezing temperatures.

Gallagher, of AirDNA, broke down how short-term-rental demand in 2025 is on par with 2017's.

AirDNA data shows that the peak day for short-term rental demand for the 2017 inauguration — as measured by the total number of nights booked — was 6,796 as of January 13, 2017. As of the same date in 2025, the total number of nights booked was 8,100.

Gallagher noted that AirDNA did not start tracking Vrbo data until later in 2017; the 2025 figures reflect Airbnbs and Vrbos booked.

In the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the Capitol is located, demand was 1,191 nights booked in 2017 and 1,189 in 2025 — almost the same.

"I was surprised by how close these demand figures are — it was a pretty big event in 2017," Gallagher said.

So far, the data also suggests that major price hikes haven't occurred. The highest average daily rate in 2017 during the inauguration was about $363 a night. In 2025, it's about $304.

"I think people just became very, very cost-conscious in 2023, and that's still sort of going on," Gallagher said. "We saw prices decline all through 2023 on average nationwide. It might just be kind of a hangover from that."

He added that some hosts care more about getting bookings than about securing the most profitable rate.

"It may be also too that the short-term-rental operators just prefer to fill up rather than have the highest possible price," he said. "I can imagine if you're a management company or if you're a small manager, you go to your owner and say, 'Well, I've got this DC apartment in Capitol Hill, but we couldn't rent it out on inauguration,' they'll be pretty mad."

• First-time homebuyers have had a hard time finding affordable homes.
• A ranking from Realtor.com shows the best cities in the US for first-time buyers.
• Smaller and suburban cities lead the list, and one region is nowhere to be found.

The current state of the housing market has made it challenging for first-time homebuyers, but a few cities around the US have easier markets than others.

The look of the first-time buyer has changed over the years, with the median age of the first-time buyer jumping to 38 in 2024 from 35 in 2023.

"When we think about first-time homebuyers, a lot of times we think young families and young professionals looking to get into the housing market for the first time," Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner told Business Insider. "And that's still true. But the other thing that is true — and becoming more true — is it's folks who have been in that position for several years now are just finally able to get into it."

With sticky listing prices and mortgage rates predicted to remain unchanged in 2025, first-time homebuyers face additional challenges.

A newly released report from Realtor.com ranked the best markets for first-time homebuyers in 2025. Three Florida cities made the list and two cities in New York did as well, but no cities on the west coast made the list.

This wasn't all that surprising, as plenty of movers have vacated the west looking for more affordable parts of the country, and Berner noted affordability made up 25% of the weighted score.

"Affordability is the main story we talk about, and it's a big struggle with mortgage rates just hovering right under 7% right now — not really going to get a lot of relief on that front," Berner told Business Insider.

Small towns and suburban cities dominated the list, offering a good mix of relief in listing prices as well as high location scores — a metric used by Realtor.com that factors in nearby amenities like daycares, nightlife, and restaurants.

While most of the cities on the list have populations under 200,000 residents, Baltimore is an outlier, with affordable home prices and a population of 585,708, according to census data.

"I think if that median listing price were just a little bit higher, it wouldn't have been here," Berner said. "But because it's a very affordable market, it can compete with some of these smaller towns."

Here are the top 10 cities for first-time homebuyers, according to Realtor.com.

1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Median listing price: $140,000

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 34.8

Price-to-income ratio: 2.6

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 20.6%

2. Rochester, New York

Median listing price: $129,900

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 21.2

Price-to-income ratio: 2.5

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 22.3%

3. Villas, Florida

Median listing price: $236,950

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 85.6

Price-to-income ratio: 3.4

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 14.1%

4. Lauderdale Lakes, Florida

Median listing price: $154,850

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 72.4

Price-to-income ratio: 2.7

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 11.2%

5. Altamonte Springs, Florida

Median listing price: $229,400

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 46.8

Price-to-income ratio: 3.6

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 19.4%

6. Lansing, Michigan

Median listing price: $135,000

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 42.3

Price-to-income ratio: 2.6

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 21.4%

7. North Little Rock, Arkansas

Median listing price: $160,000

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 38.5

Price-to-income ratio: 3.3

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 17.6%

8. Baltimore, Maryland

Median listing price: $210,000

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 51.6

Price-to-income ratio: 3.3

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 19.9%

9. Tonawanda, New York

Median listing price: $229,900

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 30.2

Price-to-income ratio: 2.9

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 14.2%

10. Wilmington, Delaware

Median listing price: $222,000

Home inventory per 1,000 households: 41.3

Price-to-income ratio: 4.1

Expected share of 25- to 34-year-old homeowners: 18.4%

• Billionaires Darwin Deason, Michael Dell, and Tony Pritzker are trying to offload homes right now.
• Their properties for sale range from a $31 million penthouse in Boston to a $195 million LA estate.
• It can take a long time for extremely expensive or unique homes to find buyers.

Billionaires regularly want to offload their homes, but the housing market can present some unique challenges for the wealthiest home sellers.

Buyers at high price points don't always love properties customized for the previous owner, and the additional cost of maintenance and upkeep can deter even the deepest pockets. Some people struggling to rid themselves of luxurious properties end up slashing their asking prices. Others forego selling them altogether, choosing to either auction them off or rent them out instead.

At least two billionaires have found buyers for their homes this fall.

Gordon Getty, heir to the Getty fortune, found a buyer for his home near Berkeley, outside San Francisco, in less than a month. The 3,991-square-foot house, nicknamed the Temple of Wings, features Corinthian columns and luscious greenery, sold for $5.85 million in September after listing for $5 million in August.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's three-story, nearly 7,000-square-foot penthouse in Manhattan went into contract on October 10 after more than two years on the market, according to its listing. The former chair of Fox Corporation and News Corp. purchased it for $57.9 million in 2014. In 2022, he listed it for $62 million but dropped the price as low as $28.5 million — a 50% decrease.

A handful of billionaires, however, have homes they're still trying to sell.

Here's a roundup of billionaire-owned properties from Boston to California on the market as of January 6. They are presented in order of last name.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen listed his Bay Area mansion for $33 million in March 2024.

Earlier this year, tech investor Marc Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen listed their $33 million Bay Area mansion.

Touted as ideal for hosts of events and parties, the five-bedroom, four-bathroom home has seven fireplaces, two separate kitchens ready for catering, and custom built-ins throughout to display art. It is located in Atherton, California, near Palo Alto and Stanford, and across the street from the Menlo Circus Club, an exclusive social club.

The Andreessens may not be leaving California altogether, however. The couple has purchased over $250 million worth of real estate in Malibu, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Of the three homes they have acquired over two years in the coastal enclave northeast of LA, the most expensive is a $177 million, seven-acre estate in Malibu's Paradise Cove neighborhood. Known for its picturesque shores that locals fiercely guard, Paradise Cove was once dubbed "the most unfriendly-to-the-public public beach in Southern California," according to San Francisco publication SFGate.

Andreessen's net worth as of January is $1.9 billion, according to Forbes.

Tech mogul Darwin Deason is parting ways with his Versailles-inspired estate in California.

Tech billionaire Darwin Deason has put his oceanfront estate in La Jolla, California, nicknamed the Sand Castle, on the market for an impressive $108 million.

Deason, who sold his IT and business process outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services to Xerox for $6.4 billion in 2009, initially spent about $26 million on the house and an adjacent parcel of land, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Over about six years, Deason poured an additional $60 million into transforming the property into a breathtaking 13,000-square-foot mansion, drawing inspiration from Versailles and the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, a five-star retreat for celebrities in the South of France.

The estate includes a seven-bedroom main house and a three-bedroom guest house, with 14 full bathrooms and three half-bathrooms. It also features a pool, two cabanas, a fitness center, and an elevated, private beach with sand Deason imported from the Augusta, Georgia, golf course where the famed Masters tournament is played.

If the property sells even near its listing price, it will more than double the San Diego County record of $44.1 million set by billionaire Egon Durban in 2023.

Deason is worth $1.3 billion as of January, according to Forbes.

Michael Dell is trying to offload not one but two luxury penthouses in Boston.

Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell is no stranger to eye-popping real estate.

In 2015, he was the buyer of what was then the most expensive home ever sold in New York City, a $100 million penthouse overlooking Central Park on West 57th Street, aka Billionaires' Row. He raised his kids in a sprawling 33,000-square-foot Austin compound dubbed "The Castle" that featured both indoor and outdoor pools.

As of January, Dell's net worth was $119.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Now Dell is looking to unload two Boston properties he bought in 2020.

The first is a penthouse in Boston's tallest residential tower, One Dalton, which is one of the Four Seasons' private residences. The ultra-luxe home comes complete with 24-hour white-glove concierge service and a 570-square-foot private balcony. Originally listed at $34 million, the price has been reduced to $31 million as of October.

Dell's second Boston property for sale is a $9.45 million penthouse on the 54th floor of Boston's Millennium Tower, located just steps from the iconic Boston Commons park. This property features floor-to-ceiling windows with panoramic views of the city and the Charles River.

Hedge fund manager and billionaire Ken Griffin is exiting Chicago by selling his multiple condos

Ken Griffin, who founded Citadel, a hedge fund that manages $92.46 billion in total assets as of September 2023, is offloading a few condos in Chicago.

Griffin famously relocated his managing firm to Florida in 2022. He also set himself up pretty nicely by spending about $169 million on properties in one neighborhood between 2020 and 2023. He also bought two bay front houses in Coconut Grove in 2022.

He's seemingly all in on Florida, but still has some loose ends to clean up in the Midwest.

Griffin bought a Chicago penthouse and three other units for $59 million in 2017 in what is still the city's biggest real-estate deal.

Records show he bought the top two floors, totaling about 15,000 square feet, for $34 million. The units are the top two floors of the No. 9 Walton building and are unfinished. Griffin has never lived in them.

In November, he sold those units for $19 million, taking a 44% loss on the sale. He's not quite yet done as the other two units he owns are still for sale.

According to Forbes, Griffin's net worth is $45.9 billion as of January.

Joe Lacob, who owns the Golden State Warriors, put his Malibu mansion on the market in August.

The owner of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, Joe Lacob, once claimed to be one of the best blackjack players in the world, winning $1 million in one sitting at least nine times.

Lacob must be hoping his luck hasn't run out as he tries to sell his Malibu mansion for $44 million.

The home on Carbon Beach has five bedrooms across about 5,500 square feet. It allows for indoor-outdoor living, with open balconies throughout to enjoy California's balmy climate.

It also has Hollywood-glam touches like a waterfall wall, a movie theater, and a glass-enclosed gym.

The third level is a prime entertaining space, complete with a barbecue island, a fire pit, a lounge area, and a hot tub.

Lacob does have a history of good bets. In 2010, he and other investors purchased the Golden State Warriors for $450 million. In July, the New York Post estimated the franchise's value to be $5.4 billion.

Lacob, a former venture capital investor, is worth $2.1 billion as of January, according to Forbes.

Hyatt Hotels heir Tony Pritzker is selling his enormous Los Angeles home after a bitter divorce.

Tony Pritzker, chairman and CEO of Pritzker Private Capital, built one of the country's largest and most luxurious homes.

Pritzker and his former wife Jeanne spent six years constructing a 50,000-square-foot megamansion in the hills of Beverly Crest, an upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles' Westside.

After their contentious divorce earlier this year, the home landed on the market in October for a staggering $195 million.

The estate has 16 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms over six acres. Amenities include a tennis court, a basketball court, a cliffside pool, a detached guest house, a bowling alley, and a private movie theater. The house's perch also offers stunning 180-degree views of the Los Angeles skyline.

The Wall Street Journal reported that if the Pritzker estate sells for its asking price of $195 million, it will set a record for the most expensive home sold in Los Angeles. This record is currently held by Jeff Bezos, who spent $165 million on the Warner Estate, located 1.4 miles away, in 2020.

According to Forbes, Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, has a net worth of $4.1 billion as of January.

• Billionaires are buying bundles of properties for several advantages.
• The ultrawealthy set a new price for the market, sending ripple effects to nearby areas.
• Their presence can also attract unwelcome visitors to the areas.

The real-estate portfolio of the ultrawealthy is typically expansive: Coastal homes, overseas vacation getaways, and a handful of homes scattered in cities where they frequent.

However, billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, and Mark Zuckerberg have recently been snatching up multiple properties in the same place.

Over the course of two years, Bezos spent over $200 million on three properties in an exclusive South Florida enclave 11 miles from Miami. Meanwhile, Swift dropped nearly $50 million in one of New York City's most trendy neighborhoods, while Zuckerberg is building a 1,400-acre compound in Hawaii that he describes as a "little shelter."

While some billionaires want to bundle their properties for privacy, others simply seek space. Despite the reasoning, monied buyers collecting multiple homes at a time can typically name their own price, dramatically affecting the surrounding real estate market.

"Hearing what Bezos paid for those two properties — no one had ever paid that before," Miami real-estate broker Jill Hertzberg of The Jills Zeder Group told Business Insider.

She's referring to how, in 2023, Bezos paid $68 million and later $79 million for adjacent mansions in Indian Creek, Florida. He'd go onto purchase a third mansion on the island, which he secured for $90 million.

"We all rise together, and we sink together," she added.

The Bezos Effect is changing South Florida's pricing landscape

Longtime Seattle resident Jeff Bezos announced in 2023 that he was leaving the West Coast and heading to Florida — following the trend of wealthy elites seeking solace in the Sunshine State.

Bezos, whose net worth is $233.7 billion as of January 2024, according to Forbes, didn't buy just one home in Florida; he bought several.

His homes are located on a secluded island called Indian Creek, nicknamed "Billionaire Bunker," and for good reason. The island has security patrolling the perimeter 24/7, so unwelcomed visitors — like paparazzi or fans — can't come close. Although it's unclear why he bought several homes on Indian Creek specifically, privacy is definitely a top perk.

Bezos is one of many wealthy individuals to move to the island, and his mansions have raised property values drastically. Miami-Dade County property records show his $79 million purchase sold for $28 million in 2014. (It was listed for $85 million.)

"When Bezos came in and bought 11 and 12 Indian Creek Island Road, those are both tear downs," Hertzberg said. "So that sets the land at that price for those sized lots, those 80,000 square foot lots."

A roughly 80,000-square-foot vacant lot neighboring Bezos' property hit the market in December 2024, asking for $200 million, a little more than what the billionaire paid for the two lots. That's the Bezos effect.

Ilya Reznik, the vacant lot's listing agent, told BI that sellers she's spoken to will not accept less than what Bezos paid.

Hertzberg said the Bezos Effect has spilled off the island to nearby neighborhoods like Bal Harbour and Surfside, which sits just across the water from Indian Creek and has similar views.

For example, her son, Danny Hertzberg, broke a record in October 2024 for the highest sale in Surfside after selling a home for $19.7 million.

Taylor Swift's New York compound

Taylor Swift owns multiple real estate properties, including mansions in Rhode Island, Beverly Hills, and a penthouse in Nashville.

However, over the last decade, Swift has turned her properties at 155 Franklin Street in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City into a compound, paying a total of $47.70 million for privacy, square footage, and the status that comes with living in one of the city's chicest neighborhoods.

BI's Britney Nguyen and Jordan Hart reported that Swift bought two penthouse units from Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings " in 2014 for $19.95 million. Jackson paid $17.35 million for the units — which form a duplex in the Sugar Loaf, a pre-war building in Tribeca — when he purchased them in 2008, Curbed reported. The six-story building has 10 units and two apartments per floor, as said on its StreetEasy profile.

Swift also purchased the townhouse next door to the Sugar Loaf for $18 million in 2017 and another apartment in the Sugar Loaf building for $9.75 million in 2018.

Real-estate agent Andrew Azoulay told The Wall Street Journal he suggested Swift use the townhouse as a garage that connects to the Sugar Loaf through the additional apartment, allowing her to enter and exit the building without using the front door.

Swift's properties in the building appear to be the priciest sold in recent history. Zillow records show a three-bedroom, three-bath apartment in the building sold for $5.95 million in 2023, and a similar unit sold for $7.1 million in 2022. (A four-bedroom unit was sold off the market in January 2024, so the price wasn't available, according to StreetEasy.)

Noble Black, a Douglas Elliman real-estate agent, told BI that Swift hasn't changed the Tribeca real estate landscape much with her high-end purchases. The neighborhood has long been appealing to luxury buyers looking for more spacious apartments in a quieter area of Manhattan.

Likewise, most Swift fans can't afford to buy an apartment in her neighborhood because she lives there, so it's not like Tribeca has been crawling with Swifties since she moved in.

Black also said buyers looking at listings in Tribeca aren't likely to be turned off by Swift's presence in the neighborhood since celebrities live all over Manhattan; it's part of the city's culture for many New Yorkers to see stars day-to-day.

Black also told BI that Swift's compound is comparable to similar listings in the area. For instance, Black is listing a penthouse in 111 Murray Street, a modern luxury development, for $33.95 million. And just before the New Year, the penthouse of 67 Franklin Street, a luxury building just a few blocks down from Swift's compound, was put under contract for $12 million in a deal by real-estate agent Krista Nickols of SERHANT.

However, Swift's presence in the building garners attention, with paparazzi and fans often lining the streets outside when she is spotted in the city — even those with more sinister intentions. For example, a 33-year-old man was arrested three times in January 2024 for trying to access Swift's compound.

Swift's residency also raised some eyebrows in the New York Sanitation Department. In 2023, The New York Post reported that the sanitation department ticketed Swift 32 times for trash that accumulated in front of the townhouse since she had bought it.

Zuckerberg is one of many billionaires living in Hawaii

Meta cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a diverse real estate portfolio, with properties in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe, California. Still, the roughly $200-million real-estate portfolio is highlighted by his 1,200-plus acre land in Hawaii. He's been buying land on the island of Kauai since 2014.

According to a 2023 Wired report, the compound was built in secrecy and includes a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter. The below-ground dwelling screams doomsday bunker, but Zuckerberg recently tried to quell concerns from locals and said it's a shelter to protect against hurricanes.

"I think that's just like a little shelter," he told Bloomberg. "It's like a basement."

Kauai real-estate broker Michael Ambrose told BI that even though bunkers aren't that common, Zuckerberg isn't the first to buy land in Hawaii.

"I know this lady on the East Coast; she owns like a hundred and something acres out here, and she's literally just sitting on it, and it's worth millions of dollars," he said. "I think the more that the world population grows, the more there's an interest in owning physical areas of the world."

As for Zuckerberg resetting the market, Ambrose said several billionaires, like Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, are already in Hawaii and may have contributed. Still, his presence can be felt in the market.

"Say you could be neighbors with the richest guy in the world — clearly, the land itself has more value because of the next-door neighbor being who he is," Ambrose said.

Ambrose, for example, highlighted a vacant lot for sale in Kilauea, a community on the northern shore of Kauai that shot up in price after Zuckerberg moved in. As of December 2024, it's listed for $16.5 million. According to Zillow, the 7.87-acre lot went on the market in 2014 for only $3.9 million.

• Home prices across the US kept climbing in 2024, and luxury home prices were no exception.
• The cost of the top 5% of luxury homes rose nearly 9% from 2023 to 2024, Redfin found.
• A $210 million Malibu mansion and $108 million Aspen property were among the priciest sold in 2024.

By some measures, all home prices reached record highs in 2024.

It's not just more affordably priced homes that have gotten more expensive: Luxury real estate has also boomed this year.

The price of luxury homes — defined as those with a market value in the top 5% for their area — rose nearly 9% year-over-year as of the second quarter of 2024, according to the most recent data available from real-estate site Redfin. That jump was twice as fast as the increase for non-luxury homes, Redfin found.

Here's a look at five of the most expensive homes sold across the US this year.

A $210 million Malibu mansion broke California's record for priciest property ever sold

In June, Oakley sunglasses founder James Jannard sold his Malibu mansion for $210 million.

It edged out Beyoncé and Jay-Z's $200 million compound, also in Malibu, to break the record for the most expensive home ever sold in California.

Jannard bought the estate 12 years ago for $75 million, but the new owner's name is shrouded behind an anonymous LLC, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The mansion has eight bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and a tennis court spread over 9.5 acres and was pared down by previous owners who found the original main home "too grandiose," according to San Francisco outlet SFGate.

Its renovation was handled by Michael S. Smith, who also redesigned the White House's Oval Office for then-President Barack Obama in 2010.

A home on Palm Beach's only private island sold for $152 million

In May, a 28,600-square-foot home on Tarpon Island in Palm Beach, Florida, sold for $152 million, a real-estate agent behind the sale confirmed to Business Insider.

The property — situated on Palm Beach's only private island — includes two private decks, multiple pools, a wine room, a waterfront gym, a tennis court, and a wellness facility complete with a massage room and a nail salon, according to Mansion Global.

The home's buyer was Australian investor Michael Dorrell, who founded infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak Partners and formerly served as a senior managing director at Blackstone, The Wall Street Journal first reported, citing people familiar with the deal.

Another Palm Beach home sold for $148 million to a collector of trophy properties

A nearly 23,000-square-foot house with 225 feet fronting the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach sold for $148 million to billionaire investor Daren Metropoulos earlier this year, Mansion Global reported.

Metropoulos — a principal at private-equity firm Metropoulos & Co. and former co-CEO of Pabst Brewing Company — is a collector of trophy properties. He purchased the former Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, California, in 2016 for $100 million, according to The New York Times.

The landmarked Mediterranean Revival-style house in Palm Beach, designed by architect Addison Mizner in 1919, is called Casa Amado and sits on 3.2 acres, according to Mansion Global.

A $135 million penthouse was New York City's most expensive sale of the year

Real-estate developer Vlad Doronin's highest-profile project of late is the hotel and condos at Aman New York, located in the landmarked Beaux-Arts-style Crown Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Doronin himself purchased a five-story penthouse in the building this year for $135 million, Bloomberg reported.

The penthouse is one of just 22 residences above the hotel, which has more than 80 rooms, according to Bloomberg.

The home, which fetched more than $10,000 per square foot, was sold as an unfinished space that the owner can build out, Bloomberg reported, citing a spokesperson for developer OKO Group.

Doronin, who the Wall Street Journal called a "Russian James Bond" earlier this year, founded OKO Group and serves as Aman's owner, chairman, and CEO.

An Aspen home with 11 bedrooms broke a Colorado record

Former casino tycoon Steve Wynn partnered with billionaire financier Thomas Peterffy to purchase Colorado's most expensive home ever sold, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Looking out over Aspen at the base of Red Mountain, the 22,405-square-foot mansion — which includes 11 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, an outdoor pool, and a guest house — sold to the pair in April for $108 million, The Denver Post reported.

Aspen's first nine-figure sale elevates it to the ranks of other places that have hit that milestone: New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach, according to the Journal.

• Real-estate tech startups aim to make tasks from property management to homebuying more efficient.
• We surveyed 10 venture capitalists to identify the hottest proptech companies of the year.
• Some of the firms are modernizing real estate by digitizing analog processes, sometimes using AI.

The frozen housing market meant tough times for the proptech — or property technology — industry.

As the market starts to thaw, however, things are looking up for firms that seek to use technology to digitize, automate, or otherwise improve legacy processes in the worlds of residential and commercial real estate.

Business Insider asked 10 venture-capital investors who focus on real-estate and construction technology to nominate the most exciting, promising, and talked-about proptech startups in 2024.

The 20 companies on the final list reveal the breadth of the proptech universe.

Take Steadily, a firm trying to digitize insurance underwriting for real-estate investors, a process that has historically taken a lot of paperwork and time — only to result in policies with steep premiums. Another startup, Arcol, aims to make producing 3D architectural drawings faster and easier. A third, Conservation Labs, uses an AI-powered sensor to detect if water is leaking or being wasted in a building to prevent damage and protect the environment.

In the first half of 2024, venture funding for proptech companies dropped 14.3% from the same period a year prior. Funding totaled $4.37 billion, down from $5.1 billion during the same period in 2023 and dramatically less than the $13.13 billion invested in the first six months of 2022, according to the Center for Real Estate Technology & Innovation (CRETI), which surveyed 1,088 proptech startups.

Certain niches, however, hold promise. In 2024, VC investments in AI-powered proptech companies reached a record $3.2 billion, CRETI reported earlier this month.

Here are 20 of the buzziest proptech companies in 2024, presented alphabetically. The companies' fundraising numbers are from PitchBook to ensure a consistent data source.

Did we miss a company you think is disrupting the industry? Send reporter Jordan Pandy an email at [email protected].

Agora

City: New York City and Tel Aviv

Year founded: 2019

Total funding: $64.31 million

What it does: Agora is a financial software firm that helps real-estate investors process payments, keep track of tax records, raise money, and generally organize data.

Why it's hot: The firm, which raised a $34 million Series B round in May, said it helps landlords and developers with much-needed modernization.

"Real estate is the largest asset class in the world. However, the market still relies on legacy software providers, inefficient workflows, outdated, fragmented systems, and manual, tedious work," Asaf Raz, Agora's head of marketing, told Business Insider.

"Investors expect a digital-first experience — they're tech-savvy and need access to information quickly. Firms can't work without it, and clients need a platform like Agora more than ever," Raz said.

A challenge it faces: Real-estate investors are still grappling with relatively high interest rates, which makes it harder to borrow money and scale up, and the relatively high price of materials, which makes it tougher to renovate or upgrade properties. Those market forces could make customers more reluctant to spend money on new software.

Agora CEO Bar Mor told business news site Pulse 2.0 earlier this month, however, that Agora might still appeal to customers because its suite of products could help them "enhance efficiency and save costs."

Arcol

City: New York

Year founded: 2021

Total funding: $5.1 million

What it does: Arcol is a web browser-based design tool predominantly used by architects to create and collaborate on 3D models of buildings and explore their feasibility.

Why it's hot: Architects — Arcol's target audience — have traditionally relied on software design tools like AutoCAD and Revit, which require paid licenses and aren't as collaborative. Arcol has set out to solve that issue with a browser-based format easily shared and edited by anyone involved in a building project.

"These people are core to our society; they're literally building the built world, yet they hate using their tools," said Paul O'Carroll, the son of an architect and founder of Arcol. "The design tool we use to design buildings, we want to rethink for the browser to be collaborative and to be performant."

So far, demand is high. Arcol, run by a team of six, has a waitlist of over 18,000 users, O'Carroll said.

A challenge it faces: There are several other startups in the BIM, or Business Information Modeling, space. Competing with established players like Revit could take a lot of time and money, according to AEC Magazine. (AEC stands for architecture, engineering, and construction.)

Also, Arcol is currently only useful to architects during the conceptual modeling phase, and the company hopes to expand the tool to help with other stages of construction.

Branch Furniture

City: New York City

Year founded: 2018

Total funding: $11.76 million

What it does: Branch Furniture sells office products, like chairs and desks, to businesses and directly to consumers.

Why it's hot: The company's first iteration sold office furniture the old way: B2B, catering to employers outfitting a huge space who would often purchase items in bulk. After the pandemic changed how (and how often) workers occupied offices, Branch pivoted to sell to regular people — wherever they work.

"We launched our D2C business to cater to the future of work, which was definitively hybrid, both during COVID and after — and that's where we sit today," Sib Mahapatra, cofounder of Branch Furniture, told Business Insider.

Branch's ergonomic chair is a bestseller with a 4.6 rating out of five with over 6,000 reviews — it's rated among the best in its category by Business Insider, Architectural Digest, and Wired for its adjustability and sleek design.

In addition to desk chairs — in colors that range from a standard black to salmon-y orange hue called "poppy," the company also sells desks and lamps to outfit a home office. Its inventory includes meeting tables and even phone booths ($6,395) for more commercial office spaces.

A challenge it faces: Branch's products are physical, so it's been plagued by supply-chain delays. Branch is also up against competitors in the good-looking-furniture-that-is-also-comfortable arena, including Herman Miller and Steelcase — though Branch's offerings are often cheaper.

The company is also gaining ground regarding velocity, or the speed at which new products are developed and released.

"We're learning a lot about the pace of iteration in our product category," Mahapatra said. "It's definitely not software, but the benefit is that you get more time to really get things right and to iterate with purpose, and you end up being a little bit more deliberate about how you iterate the product — it just takes longer."

BuildCasa

City: Oakland, California

Year founded: 2022

Total funding: $6.67 million

What it does: BuildCasa helps California homeowners subdivide their lots — thanks to new state laws — and then connects them with local builders who pay the homeowners for a portion of their land and then build new housing on it.

Why it's hot: The national housing crisis is particularly acute in California, which recently passed a series of laws to encourage more building. While others look to transform construction to make cheaper housing, BuildCasa uses technology instead to find more buildable lots in desirable locations like San Francisco and San Jose.

Most massive home-building companies focus on large, master-planned communities, often far from city centers. BuildCasa's vision, said its founders Ben Bear, CEO, and Paul Stiedl, CPO, is to become a large homebuilder focused instead on finding land in already desirable cities and suburbs.

The company works with homeowners to subdivide their land, creating a new, buildable lot. Those lots can then be sold to a local real-estate developer to build on, or BuildCasa can work in partnership with a local builder to erect and then sell a completed home.

A challenge it faces: New laws have simplified the process of subdividing lots, but building in infill areas still requires technical expertise and good relationships with local officials. Building on these smaller lots may be becoming easier, but it still isn't easy.

Conservation Labs

City: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Year founded: 2018

Total funding: $14.68 million

What it does: Conservation Labs developed a smart water sensor that can identify leaks and wasteful water use. The H2know sensor uses machine learning to decode sounds in water pipes and translate them into insights for commercial property owners, including restaurants and hotels.

Why it's hot: The startup is at the intersection of two buzzy topics: AI and sustainability. H2know trains on thousands of hours of water pipe acoustics so that, over time, it becomes more accurate in detecting leaks and inefficient water use in buildings. Customers use that information to fix problems and conserve water, saving them money on utility bills while lowering their overall carbon footprint. Some 20% of home energy use goes to heating water.

"There's a very strong relationship between net-zero carbon emissions and water consumption," said Mark Kovscek, founder and CEO of Conservation Labs.

He added that H2know has detected leaky toilets in nearly every building in which it's installed. Some large properties are wasting 1 million gallons of water a year, he said.

A challenge it faces: H2know starts at $129, and it could be hard to convince cash-strapped commercial real estate owners to spend money to install sensors when the office market is struggling in many parts of the US.

Kovscek said the goal is to scale up to 100,000 sensors installed as soon as possible, or five times what Conservation Labs is currently on track to sell this year. To support that growth, the company needs to hire some of the "best and brightest" data scientists and engineers to further develop the machine-learning platform that underpins H2know, Kovscek said.

Constrafor

City: New York

Year founded: 2019

Total funding: Almost $380 million

What it does: Large general contractors use Constrafor's software to onboard and pay their subcontractors on time — sometimes before the contractors themselves get paid by the clients. Contractors can also use the software to help purchase the supplies and services needed to complete a construction project on time and within budget.

Why it's hot: There's the money raised. In November, Constrafor announced that it raised $14 million in Series A funding as well as a $250 million credit facility.

The issues the firm is trying to address are also key. Construction is booming across the US, thanks in part to President Joe Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. The rise of AI is also leading to a corresponding increase in the construction of data centers.

The actual process of construction, however, can often be long and complicated. That's why Constrafor's role as a one-stop shop appeals to large general contractors.

"So far, everyone has been focused on just building a very, very small point solution," said Anwar Ghauche, Constrafor's founder. "We're combining multiple different workflows, multiple different departments, all on the same platform."

The main challenges it faces: Next up: Constrafor must try to convince subcontractors to subscribe and pay for its software, too.

Gauch added that Constrafor's contractor clients can face cash-flow crunches. Those can lead to delays on important projects.

After Hurricanes Helene and Milton severely damaged parts of Florida, North Carolina, and other parts of the Southeast, Constrafor launched a disaster relief effort that would allow local contractors who are part of rebuilding efforts "to overcome delays, purchase materials, and ensure timely payment for their teams."

Ease Capital

City: New York

Year founded: 2022

Total funding: $13.95 million

What it does: Ease Capital helps private equity firms and large investors lend to smaller apartment landlords. It uses data and technology that allow the biggest players to lend $5 million to $50 million in deals that would typically be too small for them.

Why it's hot: Sophisticated private lenders usually focus on the largest apartment complexes, meaning that most apartment-building owners have to turn to banks and agencies to borrow money to purchase or refinance properties. However, current high rates have dramatically slowed bank and agency lending and the large private lenders usually won't lend for small—and medium-sized projects.

Ease uses data and technology to make it easier and more efficient for these large lenders to lend on smaller deals when the need is the highest. In 2023, the company announced a $450 million partnership with major real estate owner and asset manager Taconic Capital Partners, and has already announced multiple successfully originated loans.

CEO Charlie Oshamn told Business Insider earlier this year that the company is often seeing up to $1 billion in loan requests a month. Unlike other firms, which provide an estimated rate upfront that could potentially change over months of negotiation, Ease Capital sticks to its initial offering, eliminating the guessing game for potential clients.

A challenge it faces: Though the founding team has successfully launched other major proptech businesses, like flexible office and event space provider Convene and real-estate data firm Reonomy, it still needs to prove itself as a lender.

Habi

City: Colombia and Mexico

Year founded: 2019

Total funding: $564 million

What it does: Habi has built Latin America's largest proprietary database and utilizes AI-based pricing algorithms to facilitate transactions and financing for homebuyers and sellers. Habi also buys and sells homes, offers mortgages, and posts and publicizes listings of properties for sale.

Why it's hot: The company operates in Colombia and Mexico without centralized MLS. MLS, or multiple listing services, are databases designed to help real estate brokers identify available homes for sale. These systems are abundant in the US, whereas they are scarce in Latin America. Without an MLS, it means homebuyers and sellers in Colombia and Mexico have difficulty knowing which properties are available for sale, their prices, and their listing and pricing history.

By gathering and sharing information on more than 20 million homes, Habi has addressed a critical need in these countries' real estate sector, establishing itself as an authority on housing in the region.

"We've become a household name for low and middle-income sellers and consumers and brokers in Mexico and Colombia," Brynne McNulty Rojas, CEO and cofounder of Habi, told Business Insider.

A challenge it faces: A combination of factors, including shifting economic and political conditions, has stalled the growth of Latin America's real-estate market. To achieve the same level of ubiquity as Zillow in the US, Habi must get real-estate brokers and sellers to list their properties on its platform and entice buyers to use it.

HoneyHomes

City: Lafayette, California

Year founded: 2021

Total funding: $21.35 million

What it does: Founder Vishwas Prabhakara envisions Honey Homes as a "primary care physician for your home." For a monthly fee, a dedicated handyman will come once or twice a month to knock off "lightweight" home improvement projects like fixing a leaky faucet, installing a new ceiling fan, or repainting a room.

Why it's hot: With a cooling housing market, Prabhakara believes many homeowners are staying in their homes longer and interested in investing resources in — and enjoying — the property they currently have.

The main challenge it faces: Homeowners who already hire their preferred handymen may not be willing to pay for a service that sends new people, and bigger projects might require more specialized repair professionals. Then there's the cost and current smaller scale of the company: Subscriptions start from $295 a month, or $3,940 a year, according to the company website. The service is only available in parts of San Francisco and the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, and Dallas, according to the site.

Impulse Labs

City: San Francisco

Year founded: 2021

Total funding: $25 million

What it does: Impulse Labs made a battery-powered induction cooktop that, unlike most of its competitors, which may require an electrical upgrade, can plug into a standard 120-volt outlet. The cooktop can boil water at lightning speeds, and sensors hold heat levels steady even at high temperatures.

Why it's hot: Impulse Labs founder Sam D'Amico said the cooktop offers a better cooking experience than gas burners while promoting more climate-friendly homes. Cooking with gas emits pollutants like methane, benzene, and carbon monoxide, which harm our health and the planet. But it can cost thousands of dollars to rewire a home for an electric induction stove. Impulse Labs' induction cooktop avoids those pollutants and the cost of home retrofits.

The battery in Impulse Labs' stove also stores enough power to make three meals if the power goes out, D'Amico said.

"One of the cheapest ways to deploy battery storage is in the appliances we have to buy anyways," he added.

The main challenge it faces: The cooktop costs $5,999. The price is high, D'Amico said, but similar to other premium appliances. The price is lower if buyers qualify for tax breaks and rebates from federal and state governments, as well as some utilities. It's also only a cooktop — not a full stove — but D'Amico said the company eventually wants to sell a suite of appliances that can be a whole-home battery solution. Impulse Labs is accepting pre-orders, with plans to ship in the first quarter of 2025, according to its website.

Keyway

City: New York City

Year founded: 2020

Total funding: $43 million

What it does: Keyway uses machine learning and AI to aid institutional investors in sourcing, underwriting, and managing portfolios of properties.

Why it's hot: Companies that use AI have become commonplace today, but Keyway believes it is ahead of the pack in adopting and applying AI technology to real-estate investing.

"We were very early on in the AI game in 2020, and I think we've built a really strong backend of data with lots of APIs that allows us to integrate very segregated data very fast," CEO and cofounder Matias Recchia told Business Insider. "The fact that we built our system in a modular way also allows us to customize our product to a lot of our customers — so it's really not one solution fits all."

The main challenge it faces: New technology like Keyway can be hard to push on seasoned real-estate investors as they're used to using old-school methods like manually sourcing, underwriting, and managing portfolios.

"We're merging two cultures that are very different," Recchia said. "The real-estate industry requires a lot of proof to show them that data can really help them make better decisions. So there's a little bit of a culture shift that we're bringing to real estate as we sell them these tools and we partner with them."

Latii

City: Brooklyn, New York

Year founded: 2023

Total funding: $8.82 million

What it does: Latii is a sourcing platform that uses AI-powered tools to help North American-based architects and contractors save up to 60% by connecting with Latin American, southern European, and northern African window and door fabricators.

Why it's hot: Architects often include custom windows and doors in their designs, but hiring contractors and craftspeople overseas can cost their property-owning clients thousands of dollars. The architects who work with Latii, however, can source materials faster and at lower costs, cofounder and CEO Santiago Bueno told Business Insider.

"We're able to produce either equal or higher quality products at a less expensive rate," Bueno said.

In October, Latti announced that it had raised $5 million in seed-round funding, which it will use to expand in the Pacific Northwest, Mountain states, and the New York tri-state area.

The main challenge it faces: When working with fabricators in Latin America, challenges can arise in managing certifications, enforcing warranties, and overcoming language barriers. The region's use of the metric system can also be difficult for North America-based architects to navigate.

Lessen

City: Scottsdale, Arizona

Year founded: 2020

Total funding: $713.8 million

What it does: Lessen's software allows commercial and residential landlords to track maintenance needs, connect with service providers, and buy products.

Why it's hot: In August, Inc. magazine named Lessen the fastest-growing private software company in the US, citing its $1.1 billion valuation.

The valuation preceded a major acquisition in 2023: Lessen spent $950 million to buy property maintenance management firm SMS Assist in what the Commercial Observer called the largest proptech acquisition in history.

Lessen's software is widely used, handling 3 million work orders a year across 250,000 properties, according to Fifth Wall, an investor in the firm. Lessen also launched Lessen Advantage Marketplace, which allows its landlord customers to buy materials like glass, floors, and doors and find better insurance and loan rates.

The main challenge it faces: Like many real-estate firms, Lessen faces an overall slowdown in both the commercial and residential sectors, with mortgage rates remaining elevated. One big potential client base for Lessen is office building owners and property managers, but the office market right now is struggling, with vacancies around the US at record highs.

"We typically grow hand-in-hand with our clients, serving them in additional properties and markets as they expand. So, for example, interest rates can influence growth in some areas of our business," said Michael Tanner, senior vice president of marketing at Lessen.

A dearth of tradespeople is also a challenge for the company's platform that connects them to landlords, Tanner said.

Finally, the firm competes in a crowded market of competitors offering software for landlords, including Stessa, AppFolio, TenantCloud, and more.

Metropolis

City: Santa Monica

Year founded: 2017

Total funding raised by the company: $1.93 billion

What it does: Metropolis uses a computer vision platform powered by artificial intelligence to enable checkout-free payment at parking facilities. After registering their vehicles on the Metropolis app, customers can simply drive in and drive out without the hassle of paying with credit cards or ticket machines.

Why it's hot: Metropolis announced its acquisition of SP Plus, the largest parking network in North America, for $1.5 billion in October 2023 and closed the deal in May 2024. The move allowed Metropolis to rapidly scale its technology and reach 50 million customers across 4,000 locations.

"We've seen success and are continuing to scale and grow because Metropolis' checkout-free experiences give people the gift of time back, so they can spend it on the things that matter the most," cofounder and CEO Alex Israel told Business Insider.

The main challenge it faces: Israel said that most of the parking payments and transactions in the world are still analog.

"We envision a future where checkout-free payments travel with you, but scaling this technology across industries is complicated — it requires remarkable proprietary technology and boots on the ground," he said.

PredictAP

City: Boston

Year founded: 2020

Total funding: $13.17 million

What it does: PredictAP makes real estate invoice processing simple and easy. It uses AI to code invoices quickly.

"So the accounting rules can become very complicated in commercial real estate at big companies," said CEO and founder David Stifter, describing the journey of how an invoice is processed.

He said an invoice would come in first, and someone would need to determine which accounting rules to apply. Predict AP will be useful at this stage because the AI will understand and use the accounting rules correctly. Then, it will go through the rest of the accounts payable process, a department responsible for paying vendors for services or goods at the company. Then, someone will approve it and then pay for it.

Why it's hot: Predict AP serves every corner of the real estate sector. The company said its customers are publicly traded companies that own real estate, private companies that own and operate real estate, or customers who provide services for those big companies.

The company has been able to help AP specialists and property managers face difficulties entering invoices because it takes a lot of time and effort.

"We're able to help folks with that difficult task of coding invoices and it's particularly painful in real estate where there's a lot of complexity," said CEO and founder David Stifter. He added: "Nobody wants to be typing 15-digit invoice numbers; that's not fun."

Russell Franks, the president and cofounder of Predict AP, added to his comments and noted that Predict AP could process an invoice in 30 to 40 seconds faster than the normal processing time of five to 10 minutes.

The main challenge it faces: The company shared that it is hard to find funding in this tough economy, and it is not easy to grow and expand.

Propexo

City: Boston

Year Founded: 2022

Total funding: $7.97 million

What it does: Propexo's unified API, or application programming interface, helps other real-estate tech companies quickly and easily integrate with property-management systems.

Why it's hot: Real-estate tech companies use APIs to integrate with data from external sources, like lead generation systems or rent roll systems.

However, existing APIs and the technology around them are outdated.

That means companies lose time and money that could be used to develop their product while trying to integrate with these APIs, said COO Ben Keller.

Propexo's unified API improves the developer experience by making the integration process simpler, faster, and cheaper. "We're really the first engineering infrastructure product in the proptech ecosystem," said Keller.

The main challenge it faces: It's not easy to convince property managers and owner-operators to change how they've been running their businesses for many years.

In August, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, alleging that the property-management software company allows landlords to coordinate and unfairly keep rents high. This is causing some landlords to rethink how they handle and process information, according to trade publication Multifamily Dive.

Rent Butter

City: Chicago

Year founded: 2020

Total funding: $4 million

What it does: Rent Butter has created an alternative tenant screening process that gives landlords a more comprehensive view of applicants' financial history.

Why it's hot: Landlords have historically relied on static credit reports and background checks when evaluating potential tenants. Doing so creates a barrier for applicants with financial difficulties early in their adult lives, as credit scores are a difficult metric to improve.

Rent Butter is trying to eliminate that barrier and change the narrative around who is a "good" candidate by providing landlords with additional information that can more accurately assess a person's financial reliability.

Their application connects to an applicant's bank account, credit history, and employment, criminal, and rent payment history to provide a detailed one-page report highlighting their financial behaviors and potential risks.

"Our whole approach is: How do we show who the person is today — not who they were seven or 10 years ago," cofounder and CTO Christopher Rankin told Business Insider.

The main challenge it faces: Rent Butter partners with landlords, rather than selling directly to consumers, which makes scaling a challenge. Most landlords already have a tenant-vetting process, so it could be hard to convince them to change to Rent Butter.

Shepherd

City: San Francisco

Year founded: 2021

Total funding: $22.27 million

What it does: Shepherd is a Managing General Underwriter (MGU) leveraging tech to make underwriting commercial construction insurance more efficient. It also wields data to create more informed risk selection and price recommendations, often leading to upfront and long-term savings for policyholders.

Why it's hot: Insurers partner with MGUs to provide clients with insurance, with the MGU underwriting policies for clients and selling to potential policyholders. Shepherd adapts the typical MGU model by cutting the underwriting process from weeks to hours and incorporating risk assessment tech into its platform, making it a one-stop shop for insurers and clients. By working faster and putting these services in one place, Shepherd can better serve construction companies and insurers while fostering more involved relationships.

The main challenges it faces: Both insurance brokers and potential clients have some healthy skepticism about a new model for commercial construction insurance, so it falls on Shepherd to earn their trust to gain their business.

Steadily

City: Austin

Year founded: 2020

Total funding: $60.1 million

What it does: Steadily is a digital insurance company for real-estate investors that promises a "faster, better, and cheaper" underwriting experience.

Why it's hot: Steadily founder Darren Nix first encountered the outdated nature of insurance underwriting, trying to find quotes for his own rental property in Chicago.

Terrible customer service and shockingly high quotes stopped him in his tracks.

"It was like rolling back the clock to the mid-1990s," he told Business Insider. Focusing on selling insurance to real-estate investors has helped Steadily grow to about 140 employees across Austin and Kansas City, Missouri.

In November, Steadily announced it had started to actively write new business on its own insurance carrier. "Nothing says 'we believe in the product we've built' more strongly than underwriting risk as the carrier," Nix said in a statement.

The main challenge it faces: Steadily has started selling insurance to short-term-rental investors, which presents different challenges than underwriting more traditional, longer-term rentals.

The market represents significant growth — accounting for nearly 20% of Steadily's current business — but the pricing is tricker.

"The people coming in and out of those properties don't take care of them at the same level of responsibility," Nix explained. "One of the things that a host can do to demonstrate that they are a good insurance risk is to point to their Airbnb or VRBO history and show that they're a super host, they take great care of their property, they don't host ragers."

Tour24

City: Medfield, Massachusetts

Year founded: 2020

Total funding: $20.35 million

What it does: Tour24 is an app that lets prospective tenants take self-guided apartment tours without a leasing agent present.

Why it's hot: In many cities, renting an apartment can be cutthroat, with open-house lines and bidding wars to nab a good unit at a reasonable price.

More than ever, people are deciding on places to live quickly — sometimes even committing before they've even seen the unit because they aren't able to schedule a walkthrough that jives with their working hours.

Tour24 allows users — who are ID- and credit card-verified — to tour apartments when leasing agents aren't available, such as on evenings and weekends.

"We are seeing that certainly millennials really prefer self-guided experience," Georgianna W. Oliver, the founder of Tour24, told Business Insider.

Oliver said many of their leasing-agency clients offer Tour24's self-guided tours as well as leasing agent-led tours and virtual tours — and have given feedback that the more options they give potential renters, the better.

"People have the options," she said. "And they really like having the options."

The main challenge it faces: Since the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, many individual leasing agencies have been offering some version of a self-guided tour on their own with their own video Tour24 also competes with other self-guided rental-tour apps like Rently and CareTaker.

Tour24 seems to be holding its own: The startup announced in October that it raised $5 million in a Series B round, noting that it had doubled in size in 2024 to reach 525,000 units across over 2,060 multifamily properties.

• A plot next to Jeff Bezos' Miami properties is on sale for $200 million.
• The land is on Indian Creek, a private island that's home to several billionaires.
• The sellers remain unknown, but their broker said they are open to negotiating the price.

A plot of land next to Jeff Bezos' properties in South Florida is on sale for $200 million.

The 1.84-acre property is on Indian Creek, a private, artificial island in Miami-Dade County that's known as the "Billionaire Bunker." The island is home to properties owned by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Carl Icahn, and a more recent arrival — Jeff Bezos.

The asking price — $200 million for the land — is more than what Bezos paid for any of his three properties on the island. In 2023, the Amazon founder purchased a $68 million mansion and an adjacent property for $79 million. In September, he made a third purchase for $90 million. Last year, Bezos said he would be moving to Miami after living in Seattle for 29 years. The listing was first reported by the New York Post.

Ilya Reznik is representing the owners, who did not want to be identified. The owners bought the land for $27.5 million in 2018, the listing states. Predesigns for a 25,000-square-foot estate on the property that would be available to the buyer, according to the listing.

Reznik told Business Insider that asking price comes down to the lot being "a very unique location." However, Bezos' purchases had an effect on the prices in the area.

Bezos "did pay the numbers, which are really high," Reznik said. "But now those prices are there and the market is there and higher."

"It's not just Indian Creek, but everywhere in Miami and on the islands," Reznik said. "And if it's new, if it's a new build house, buyers are willing to pay premium. This is just what's going on in Miami."

The listing states that the land also comes with 200 feet of Biscayne Bay waterfront, which The New York Post reported would allow the owner to build a deep-water dock for a 180-foot megayacht.

Indian Creek is about 15 miles from Miami. The highly secure island is accessible only by a single bridge connecting it to the mainland. It has about 40 homes over 300 acres and an ultra-exclusive country club. The island's police department monitors the area's only entrance and patrols the perimeter around the clock.

• The NYC townhouse where Bob Dylan lived quietly with his kids from the 1980s to 2005 is for sale.
• The enclave, with only 20 homes and a shared garden, remains a favorite haunt of actors and musicians.
• It's just a coincidence that the movie about his life is in theaters now, the listing agent said.

A New York City home where Bob Dylan lived quietly for years is for sale.

The legendary singer-songwriter rented the townhouse on East 49th Street in Manhattan in the 1980s — then loved it so much that he bought it under a business associate's name in 1990 for an undisclosed amount.

In 2005, he sold it to the current owners for $4.45 million; they have put it on the market with an asking price of $7.25 million.

The five-story home is in Turtle Bay Gardens, a landmarked enclave of 20 1860s-built townhouses on East 49th and East 48th whose backyards lead to a shared garden for residents only.

Dylan, one of the best-selling music artists of all time, had young kids at the time and liked the privacy, "Dylan's local fix-it man at the time" told real-estate news site Curbed.

Turtle Bay Gardens has long attracted creative types, including Hollywood and Broadway greats. Previous renters of Dylan's home, at 242 East 49th Street, included Mary Tyler Moore.

Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim called No. 244 home for 60 years until his death in 2021; it sold for $7 million in 2023, according to property records. Katharine Hepburn lived next door, at 244 East 49th Street. Child actor turned fashion designer Mary-Kate Olsen and her ex Olivier Sarkozy owned 226-228 East 49th Street from 2024 to 2022.

The current owners of Dylan's home used it as a pied-à-terre, according to Sotheby's International Realty agent Lisa Larson, who has the listing with her colleague Angela Wu.

"They just weren't coming to New York very often, so they rented it out, and now they've just decided to sell it," Larson told Business Insider.

It hit the market on December 5. The Bob Dylan biopic, "A Complete Unknown," with Timothy Chalamet as Dylan, is released in theaters on Christmas Day, December 25.

Larson said that the timing is a happy accident.

"I didn't even know there was a new Bob Dylan movie," Larson said. "It was totally coincidental, because we were just waiting for the last tenant to move out."

Take a look inside Dylan's former house, which has a mix of old-school features and modern amenities, and the secret garden on which it sits.

A house Bob Dylan lived in from the 1980s to 2005 is on the market for $7.25 million.

Starting in the 1980s, Dylan rented the home from a married couple: screenwriter Garson Kanin and his wife, actor Ruth Gordon.

He started out renting, then liked it so much he bought it.

The home is located in a somewhat hidden micro-neighborhood called Turtle Bay Gardens.

"It's got a pretty esteemed history," Larson said. "It has a lot of playwrights, writers, actors, and musicians who have lived in this enclave of 20 homes."

Owners of the 20 townhouses on East 49th and East 48th Streets can access a residents-only shared garden via their private backyards.

Turtle Bay Gardens was named a historic district by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966. It was built with a fountain modeled after the Villa Medici in Rome.

"It's got this unique feeling of being this special little enclave in the middle of a whole bunch of hustle and bustle and high rises," Larson said.

The current owners bought the home from Dylan for $4.45 million in 2005 and then renovated it.

"They did a more modern kitchen, they redid all the bathrooms — they did a lot of capital improvements," Larson said. "It's got all the conveniences of a modern house, but yet it still retains a lot of its old-world characteristics."

According to Larson, Dylan had installed a lot of mirrors around the townhouse that didn't survive the renovation.

The current owners used the home as a pied-à-terre and visited New York City less than five times a year.

The owners had rented out the townhouse for the last year, Larson said.

The ground floor features a patio and garden that lead to the shared garden.

The parlor level also has a terrace that leads to the lower level.

"It's not super unique to have necessarily a small terrace or a balcony on the parlor floor, but for you to be able to walk out onto it and then walk downstairs to access the garden below is pretty unique and pretty special," Larson said.

A unique feature of the home Dylan owned is the brick staircase from the private patio that leads to the shared garden.

"In my opinion, the backyard is one of the prettiest in all of Turtle Bay Gardens because it has that bi-level aspect to it, and just beautiful brickwork and stonework," Larson said.

The five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom home has around 5,400 square feet of interior space.

The library has a fireplace — one of seven in the home.

The archways throughout the five-story home are original. The elevator, though, was added on after Dylan sold.

Larson said the home is 19 feet wide.

"Some 19-footers have elevators and some don't," she added. "Having an elevator is huge."

• Dual citizen Michael Stiege was raised in Canada but spent many years working in the US.
• The darkness and cold climate of Canada pushed him to sunny California.
• For Americans thinking they can simply move up north, it's not that easy, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Stiege, 75, a dual citizen of the US and Canada. Stiege was raised in Canada and spent roughly 30 years working in California before moving back to Canada 15 years ago. He soon plans to split his time between the US and Canada. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Because I'm a dual citizen of America and Canada, traveling between the two countries is virtually a non-issue.

If you're an American coming to Canada, you can travel visa-free. Still, if you're planning to move here and be able to work here, that's another story.

You can visit for six months as long as you leave before the end of the six-month period. You can do that back and forth all the time — but you won't get access to the social system and healthcare.

My friends, who used to live in Chicago, moved to California and said, "We're going to move up to Canada when we retire," but they couldn't get a visa.

This fellow's a Ph.D. and a really smart technical guy — and his wife is pretty bright, too. They couldn't get a visa because they were simply too old. Once you're — let's say 50 — the immigration system disadvantages you. They have a merit-based point system and start worrying about things like age. That's the thinking. Once you reach a certain age, or if you don't have certain other legs up, the criteria by which you can get a working visa is stacked against you.

[In Canada's Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) — which rates potential immigrants based on age, language fluency, education, professional expertise, and if you have a Canadian partner — applicants 45 years old or older receive 0 points.]

Whereas if you're a young guy just out of college, you have some reasonable skills, and you even know a few words of French, you probably wouldn't have a problem.

There are ways around it, but if the expectation is, "I'm just going to go up there and apply for a visa and get a visa," it may not happen like that.

I needed a change from the cold and long nights in Canada

I was born in Stuttgart, Germany. When my parents and I moved to Canada, I was about 3 and written into my parents' passports.

They got their visas and eventually became naturalized Canadians, which was bestowed on me. So, for all practical purposes, I'm a Canadian.

I grew up in Toronto, went to school in Toronto, and it wasn't until the early side of my career that I moved out into western Canada to Calgary and British Columbia.

I have an engineering degree and an MBA — which, at that time, was a pretty good combination to earn a job and make a living. I looked at the available jobs in the market and thought, "Go to Silicon Valley, where your skills will be valued the most."

I applied to a couple of things and got a call one day. It said, "Are you interested in coming down?" I said yeah, and there I was.

I needed warmer weather, and I was able to get rid of Canada's long winter nights. The summers in Canada were great — you could golf at 11 p.m. — but the winters were awful.

Seasonal affective disorder really got to me. It's not so much the cold as the long winter nights. It's dark. My wife says I had started hibernating, so I wanted to leave that behind.

I rented in the US and bought a home in Canada

When I moved to the US, I found that if I pushed myself, I could've bought a house, but I kept holding off. I found it easy to rent — it was affordable. I could get by without any problem. What I didn't put into a mortgage, I put into stocks and stuff like that.

I lived there for almost 30 years in two or three residences. I paid about $3,200 monthly in Los Altos Hills, California, right by Stanford University.

I came close to buying a couple of times, but the property tax burden in California is significantly higher than what you would find in Canada.

If you buy a house in California for $3 million, you're looking at $40,000 yearly in property taxes. [Zillow estimates a $3 million home in Santa Clara County would cost $36,300 annually in property taxes.] I could go on a trip for six months on that.

If I did the same thing in Toronto, I might spend between $6,000 and $8,000 — and that's a big difference. [According to the city of Toronto, a $3 million home costs $21,459 in city, education, and building fund taxes.]

I moved back to Canada about 15 years ago. My father was 96 then, and I said, "Let's go back." My wife is Canadian, and we have family up here. We settled in and bought our house.

We have a summer home up north in the lake country. It's not bad, but it gets cold in the winter.

If I ever move back to the US, my preference is California.