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For the ultrawealthy, it used to largely be the case that they wanted their flashy home purchases and sales to be made very public: Think drone shots, a glossy listing, and a splashy press release naming the owner and buyer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All of that served as a way to show off and solidify their wealth. But now the upper echelons of the housing market want to be much more private, and a lot of it has to do with privacy being the new sought-after luxury.<\/p>\n
A growing class of ultrawealthy buyers, particularly tech and AI executives who have moved to Silicon Valley, are deliberately routing their home purchases through limited liability companies, privacy trusts, and so-called \u201cwhisper\u201d listings that never touch the multiple listing service.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their end goal isn\u2019t getting the best deal they can possibly get: It\u2019s more about maintaining anonymity and thinning their paper trails to ensure security. This new phenomenon is called stealth wealth buying, Ken DeLeon, founder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based DeLeon Realty, told Fortune.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The shift started about three years ago, said DeLeon, who is one of Silicon Valley\u2019s top-producing luxury brokers and was once ranked the nation\u2019s No. 1 real estate agent by the Wall Street Journal and RealTrends.That was when the market capitalization of tech companies began to grow again, and more wealthy people began flooding Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy DeLeon Realty<\/p>\n
\u201cIncreased wealth brought about greater security concerns and a stronger desire for privacy,\u201d he said. \u201cOver the last year, AI has driven some of the greatest wealth creation Silicon Valley has seen in 25 years, while also becoming an increasingly controversial topic. As a result, the desire for privacy has grown even stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, home prices in Silicon Valley have continued to rise. Atherton posted a median sale price of $8.33 million in 2025, a 5% gain from the previous year and a new high for the longtime Bay Area billionaire enclave, according to PropertyShark. The town\u2019s top deal of the year was a $51.5 million sale of a 10,000-square-foot estate once owned by tech executive and multimillionaire Stephen Luczo, and it traded off-market, Palo Alto Online reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That detail is key: For the buyers behind these transactions, exposure about their home transactions is more of a liability than a flex.<\/p>\n
Think back to April, when a man threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u2018s North Beach home in San Francisco, setting fire to an exterior gate. Authorities\u00a0later alleged\u00a0the 20-year-old suspect had traveled from Texas, intending to kill Altman, and had written about AI\u2019s purported risk to humanity.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvents like this have made people want to distance themselves further from public attention and increased their desire to remain anonymous,\u201d DeLeon said.<\/p>\n
Inside a \u2018whisper\u2019 listing<\/p>\n
The mechanics of stealth-wealth home transactions look nothing like a standard sale. There is no Zillow notification, no open house, and often no sign in the yard. A listing might circulate among just three to five elite brokers in a given metro before quietly trading hands, DeLeon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome sellers prioritize privacy over price and are willing to sell off market to avoid exposure,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Outside of Silicon Valley, off-market residential sales have surged at least 30% year-over-year in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens between 2024 and 2025, with Brooklyn alone logging roughly $5.4 billion in privately marketed sales, according to data reported by The Real Deal.<\/p>\n
Anonymity extends beyond just the listing. For higher-end clients, DeLeon said, he routinely recommends taking title through an LLC or a privacy trust\u2014but with one key detail.<\/p>\n
\u201cSophisticated clients want to structure things carefully, making sure the manager of the LLC is not someone directly associated with them, such as their personal attorney,\u201d he said. \u201cThe goal is to ensure that, even if someone digs into ownership records, they still cannot easily connect the property back to the principal owner.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the effort toward maintaining privacy doesn\u2019t stop at closing.<\/p>\n
\u201cUtilities, deliveries, and even small packages, such as toys ordered for their children, are often placed under the LLC or trust name rather than their personal name,\u201d DeLeon said, in order for owners to maintain a low profile.<\/p>\n
The broker as a buffer<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the buyers\u2019 or sellers\u2019 effort to keep a low profile. The job of luxury agents has shifted, too. DeLeon said he\u2019s routinely asked to act as a buffer by meeting vendors, signing for inspections, and fielding questions and details that an owner would normally handle.<\/p>\n
Sometimes clients won\u2019t even want agents or sellers to know who they are, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some cases, both sides of the transaction conceal their identities,\u201d he said. \u201cI try to serve as a buffer for my clients throughout the entire process, ensuring that vendors and other involved parties do not know the identity of the principal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cost of maintaining a low profile<\/p>\n
While stealth-wealth buyers win privacy, they pay for it\u2014literally. That\u2019s because off-market sales tend to reach a smaller pool of buyers, which means less competition and often lower offers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMost sellers understand that when they sell off the market, they are usually accepting a lower sales price,\u201d DeLeon said. \u201cIn general, studies have shown that off-market listings across nearly all price points tend to sell for less than they would if they were fully exposed to the open market.\u201d<\/p>\n
A February 2025 Zillow Research analysis of 2.7 million home sales also shows that homes sold off the MLS in 2023 and 2024 typically went for almost $5,000 less than those listed on the MLS. That represents a median 1.5% gap,\u00a0totaling more than $1 billion in lost proceeds for sellers. In California, the gap widened to 3.7%, or roughly $30,075 per home.<\/p>\n
That tradeoff has caught regulators\u2019 attention. The National Association of Realtors\u2019 Clear Cooperation Policy requires agents to submit listings within one business day of publicly marketing them. As of March 2025, sellers can instruct agents to use a new \u201cdelayed marketing exempt listing\u201d option, but only after signing a written disclosure acknowledging the trade-offs.<\/p>\n
DeLeon said brokerages still push off-market sales for the wrong reasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, many brokerages encourage off-market sales not to protect sellers\u2019 privacy, but to minimize marketing costs and increase the likelihood of double-ending their commission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Whether stealth wealth practices will become even more prevalent is still in question.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf sellers are told the true cost of selling off-market\u2014that protecting privacy will likely lower their sales price\u2014then I think the pendulum may swing back where sellers prefer to get full exposure for their home and thereby maximize their sales price,\u201d DeLeon said, \u201ceven if it means some loss of privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
#stealth #wealth #playbook #Silicon #Valleys #elite #buy #mansions #records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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