Forget a dream home, the world's richest billionaires can essentially afford to buy entire cities.
Jeff Bezos spent much of his childhood in Texas, and it turns out the Amazon CEO is now wealthy enough to buy every home in state capital Austin, which would cost about $129.9 billion, according to real estate site Redfin. That's approximately 280,000 single-family homes, condos and townhouses, according to the company.
He could also afford the Washington, D.C.'s 200,000 homes, worth a total of $131.5 billion, according to Redfin.
Of course, a billionaire's net worth isn't isn't comprised of cash alone. Bezos, the richest person in modern history, who is currently worth $134.4 billion, would have to liquidate his roughly 80 million shares of Amazon stock, which accounted for more than 90 percent of his wealth as of October. And he might have to sell his handful of multimillion-dollar properties around the country.
Redfin calculated the aggregate value of homes in US cities with more than 1,000 homes in order to determine which of the world's richest people could hypothetically afford to buy every single home in the city. Aggregate values are based on Redfin's own estimates for each home's value and exclude properties like apartment buildings with rental units.
Ironically, Bezos doesn't have enough wealth to buy every home in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered. Redfin estimates that Seattle's roughly 230,000 homes are worth a total of $182.9 billion.
