More Money, Same Houses
The largest wealth event in American history
When Facebook IPO’d in 2012 at a $104 billion valuation, within 12 months, home values in neighborhoods where Facebook employees lived jumped 20.9%. Zillow Research and Redfin have both documented the pattern. [Source]
It has a name.
Supply and demand.
More buyers. Same number of houses. Prices go up. Facebook created roughly 12,000 millionaires in a single day. What do newly minted millionaires do? They buy houses. Not because houses are great investments. But because when you suddenly have $4M in your brokerage account, a $2.4M home feels reasonable.
Now multiply that by 30.
In the next 12–18 months, three of the largest private companies in history are expected to go public:
SpaceX — targeting a ~$2 trillion valuation
OpenAI — now valued at over $1 trillion
Anthropic — valued at $400 billion
Combined over $3 trillion in market cap. Facebook IPO’d at $104 billion. This is 30x bigger.
Thousands of employees, early investors, and founders are about to convert paper into real money. And many live in California.
Right now, San Francisco is already the #2 appreciating real estate market among the top 40 U.S. metros and the highest appreciating market in California. In February 2026, single-family homes were up 21% year-over-year, going for 16.5% over asking price on average. Competent leadership is another key factor. A San Francisco Chronicle poll gave Mayor Daniel Lurie— a 73% approval rating. The city is coming back. The data reflects it.
What about supply?
It’s not moving. Wealth equals space—and space means fewer homes per acre. The more desirable a neighborhood, the less density it tolerates. Some call it NIMBYism. Others call it zoning. The result: supply stays choked.
As the bestselling book Abundance (2025) describes, governments have spent decades subsidizing demand through Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, without ever fixing supply.
The Bay Area won’t be the only market that feels this. Adjacent tech hubs—New York, Miami—will see their own surge as liquidity spreads. But the epicenter of this wealth is in San Fransisco.
The bottom line
Constrained supply. A city coming back. And $3 trillion in new wealth.
Stay curious. Follow the liquidity. Have fun.