What Do the Rich Want?

The New Wealthy Home Buyers Who have redefined luxury want freedom, flexibility and the best value for the dollar
by Jean Torkelson // Illustration by Jürgen Mantzke

What do the wealthy want?

It isn’t gargoyles or renovated castles, or even the traditional trappings of wealth – what luxury-home expert Paul Boomsma calls “brass and glass and gold.” What the new, high-end home buyer wants is “the luxury to be yourself.”

It means the grand, sprawling kitchen isn’t the main draw anymore. It’s what goes in there – like the computer nook – that reflects the owner’s individualism and flair for multitasking.

It means fireplaces that can switch from a crackling fire to a sparkling waterfall, depending on one’s mood. In the bathroom, it means your mirror now morphs into a television.

That high-maintenance spa? Today’s answer is a retreat into the quick but penetrating blast of a steam shower, surrounded by river rock to resemble an outdoor garden.

Rather than pouring all these innovative designs into one “McMansion,” today’s luxury buyer is more likely thinking of how to decorate several homes because gathering far-flung family together is a top priority. That likely means several homes strategically placed across the country – or the world.

Most of all, the new well-to-do buyer also wants more of the thing that’s hardest to buy – time.

This, in short, is a generation of individuals who have redefined luxury not as ponderous “things” so much as freedom and flexibility.

Understanding the spirit of today’s luxury buyer is Boomsma’s business, and his savvy has made the Luxury Portfolio Fine Property Collection™, a division of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, a key player in the luxury-home category in its first year. Boomsma, who was recruited in 2005 to create the Luxury Portfolio, knows what draws the wows from today’s new wave of wealthy – that vast generation with its oldest turning 60 and its youngest still in the early 40s – who enjoy reaping the fruits of individuality.

“We’re dealing with the baby boomers,” he says. “If you asked them to describe themselves, they’d think, ‘middle class.’ But they have money.”

In this new wave of well-to-do buyers, only 8 percent inherited their wealth. Of the people who have money, 70 percent have had it 11 years or less.

First to go is Old Money’s stuffy mantra: If you have to ask what it cost, you can’t afford it.

“That’s not true anymore,” Boomsma says. The current buyers know the value of a dollar and want to keep tabs on costs.

So the question is what entices them?

“When they get in this bracket, people don’t buy houses because they need roofs over their heads. This is a truly 100 percent emotional purchase,” says Boomsma, a 20-year veteran of the luxury real estate business.

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