The real estate splurges of the ultrawealthy

One of the biggest differences between you and a billionaire is that your ideal vacation might involve lounging on the sand, while their ideal Tuesday entails buying the whole beach.

Billionaires be shopping for waterfront property:

• A stretch of land in Palm Beach, Florida, nicknamed Billionaires’ Beach, is home to the mansions of 58 billionaires, according to Fortune. About 70 miles down the coast, Jeff Bezos and 88 other very rich residents live on the tightly surveilled private island of Indian Creek Village, which has been dubbed Billionaire Bunker.
• In Hawaii, Oprah Winfrey has a pad, Michael Dell recently bought the land that his Four Seasons Resort sits on, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff quietly amassed ~600 acres (much of which he donated), and Mark Zuckerberg is building a compound.

Why share when you can have the whole island to yourself? Oracle CEO Larry Ellison paid $300 million for the 90,000-acre Hawaiian island of Lanai in 2012, Google co-founder Larry Page bought a large Puerto Rican island in 2018 (his fifth tropical isle on record), and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson owns—you guessed it—one of the Virgin Islands (Necker).

Hosts and their guests spare no expense traveling between houses, either. Yacht and private jet sales grew 13% last year, according to Bain.

Billionaire decor may include: extensive art collections, trophies won by the pro sports teams they own, a first-edition copy of the US Constitution, and a 14-foot shark preserved in formaldehyde.

This story has been updated to reflect Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's donation of land in Hawaii.