He is celebrating the sale of a house—for $50m. As for the skyscraper, 830 Brickell, its bottom few feet are a little shabby, yet it contains one of America’s most expensive office spaces, per square metre.
He will not name his buyer but says he mostly sells to tech moguls and fund managers. ON A FRIDAY night in Miami, a luxury-property agent emerges from a swanky lounge and stands outside a skyscraper. It is home to Citadel, a big hedge fund; an investment firm owned by the family office of Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire; and two leading law firms.
Francis Suarez, Miami’s Republican mayor until 2025, travelled the world courting investors, with notable success in the Persian Gulf. At least 150 financial firms have migrated, including the private-wealth business of Wells Fargo, a giant bank, and Citadel’s fellow investment firms, such as Icahn Enterprises and Elliott Management. Palantir, a controversial AI-analytics firm with lots of government contracts, moved from left-leaning Denver in 2026.
“Look,” says one official, “in the president’s view, a lot of the smartest people in the country are already members at Mar-a-Lago. “Our border guard and defence ministry”, says one consul-general, “need to be able to reach Palm Beach. Over the past five years three waves of activity have broken on the south Florida shore. One brought foreign money. Hotels are crammed with the region’s hedge-fund managers, traders and consultants. Some have moved permanently since the start of Mr Trump’s war on Iran. Saudi Arabia has opened an office; Gulf governments have invested in businesses from hotels to crypto exchanges. In addition, yet more Latin American investors have headed to Miami since several right-wing governments in that region loosened capital controls. For companies, various levels of government in Florida offer tax breaks and incentives—for example, relief to firms paying employees above the state’s average wage. Miami’s officials are determinedly business-friendly. Tech is also well represented. Arrivals from San Francisco include Anaplan, a software firm, and three firms belonging to Mr Thiel. At Mar-a-Lago Mr Trump has hosted foreign leaders and decided to blockade Cuba’s oil supplies and to capture Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s dictator. As political activity has headed south, money has followed. Ballard Partners, America’s biggest lobbying firm (founded in Florida), now has its largest office in Palm Beach. Foreign governments, too, have reacted to the gravitational shift, many sending extra civil servants. Officials from three European countries say their consulates in Miami have more staff than those in New York.
When Mr Griffin began to complain about crime rates and taxes in Chicago, where Citadel was previously based, Mr Suarez rang to suggest a move south. His staff met company bosses there before the federal budget in the spring and health-care providers before the president amended Medicare in July.
In 2025 the sector accounted for 18% of Miami’s economy, up from 14% in 2014. The number of construction jobs has risen by 12% since the pandemic (see chart 2). Mr Griffin is spending roughly $2bn on a new 54-storey skyscraper. Finance is thriving, too: survey data indicate that, thanks to the migration from Wall Street, back-office jobs have increased by 20% since 2019. Of Mr Trump’s four speeches at business conferences in 2025, he gave two in Miami. Firms and universities in Florida, which has the fourth-biggest economy among America’s states, spent just $13bn on research in 2023, less than those in the rest of the top ten.
“We’ve always been spectacular,” says an entertainment agent at Faena, a luxury hotel, “but the new guys give us exclusivity. No surprise, then, that the property business is booming. The share of corporate services, such as law and consulting, in local GDP has risen by two percentage points. Hospitality, the old mainstay, is also doing nicely. It employs a tenth of metropolitan Miami’s workforce, one of the highest shares in the country. Miami is the only city with a team in all four of America’s main sports, a top-class motor race and a leading tennis tournament, the Miami Open. Another hurdle is a lack of brainpower. Cities such as New York, Seattle and San Francisco are knowledge economies, attracting hordes of skilled people and the capital to harness them. Yet despite the recent influx of clever clogs and money, Miami is some way from matching its rivals’ scale. Florida has fewer graduates, relative to its population, than the national average. Most capital deployed by Miami’s newly flush venture capitalists still goes to startups in San Francisco.
