Erin Mulvaney of the Houston Chronicle reported on a recent survey done by the high-end sales and marketing company Wealth-X, which says the sixth and seventh highest concentration of the ultra-rich can be found in Houston and Dallas, respectively.
Wrote Mulvaney:
The group defines these wealthiest individuals as anyone with at least $30 million in accumulated assets, like real estate cash, private planes and art. The rankings are only based on primary residences, because many of the ultra rich have multiple homes.
As Paul Toscano of CNBC further explicated, the report says there are 57,860 such people in America, with 27,540 of those living in the top ten cities. Those 27,540 people represent $3.6 trillion, or 6.2 percent of the United States’ net worth.
As CNBC explained, this group of “utlra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals” accounts for roughly five percent of the nation’s population. (The “Five Percenters” just isn’t as catchy, though.)
“Certain geographic clusters generate and attract wealth,” said Wealth-X co-founder David Friedman. “A concentration of UHNW individuals is certainly indicative of an area’s overall economic health.”
Unsurprisngly, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco topped the list.
Houston, which came it at numer six, has a UHNW population of 2,250, according to CNBC. The city’s energy-fueled Gross Metropolitan Product of $384 billion is greater than the GDP of Austria. Toscano writes that “one in every 2,643 people is worth over $30 million” in H-Town, including Kinder Morgan CEO Richard Kinder, fund manager Fayez Sarofim, and Bob McNair. The city is also home to several incredibly profitable companies, including ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Sysco, and Halliburton.
Dallas came in at number seven with 1,855 UHNW people, nearly twice as many as Atlanta (number eight) has. Credit for that goes to AT&T, Dean Foods, Texas Instruments, and Southwest Airlines, with UHNW individuals H. Ross Perot, Ray Lee Hunt, and political donor powerhouse Harold Simmons singled out for their wealth.
