The Real Deal

Research wealthy people by their real estate, the hardest thing to fake

Sam's research process: track big real estate purchases (via The Real Deal's gossip column) and reverse-engineer who bought them, because real estate holdings are one of the few wealth signals that are very hard to fake. A $20M home almost guarantees a $100M+ net worth.

“And the reason why is one of the best ways to figure out if someone's actually wealthy or not is by the real estate holdings that they own. That's one of the few things that it's really hard to fake. I mean, you could fake it, but if someone has bought a $20 million home, the likelihood that they're worth $100 million plus is incredibly high.”

Steal thisTo gauge someone's real wealth, look at their real estate holdings, not their lifestyle props.