The ultrawealthy don’t house hunt anymore. They subscribe

By the time a luxury home in Palm Beach hits the market, it’s already sold—and has been for months. The buyer is someone who’s hacking the luxury housing market by working with a broker and quietly joined a developer’s private waitlist before the blueprints were even drawn. 

This is the subscription economy for billionaires, and it’s reshaping how the ultra-wealthy buy homes across America. Ultrawealthy buyers are now securing spots on private waitlists months—or even years—before a home breaks ground. 

This is happening particularly in the custom luxury space where buyers are heavily focused on quality and craftsmanship, said Robert W. Burrage, founder and CEO of RWB Construction Management in Palm Beach County, Fla.—a metro area growing increasingly popular among billionaires and other ultrawealthy individuals like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The region, often dubbed “Wall Street South” for its influx of hedge funds and finance executives, has seen luxury home prices soar 187% over the past decade, more than any other major metro, according to Redfin.

“We’re seeing more clients approach us early and ask to be considered for future builds, sometimes before a project is even designed,” Burrage told Fortune. “Because there’s a limited number of builders doing this level of work, buyers are willing to wait to get the right house.”

In the past, the wealthy were more similar to the average American, having more time and freedom to go to attend viewings or browse for the right home with their real estate agent—and there was even an era in which luxury buyers trialed homes by having sleepovers in multimillion-dollar mansions. But the hot luxury market today often requires planning years in advance, especially in popular elite markets like South Florida, New York City, and other coastal metros.

And while the regular housing market stalls with homeowners frozen in place and younger generations unable to break the barriers of high mortgage rates and home prices, the luxury housing market is so competitive in many metros that buyers have to try new tactics to get exactly what they want. It mirrors the K-shaped economy at work, in which high-income earners continue to benefit from rising asset prices and spend more, while lower- and middle-income Americans struggle to afford even basic necessities.

Luxury real estate is getting even more exclusive

The backdrop of this trend is a record-shattering luxury real estate market. In 2025, all 10 of the most expensive home transactions in the U.S. exceeded $100 million, up from just five in 2023 and 2024. (The Wall Street Journal even minted 2025 as the “year of the $100 million house”).

Globally, more than 2,100 ultra-luxury homes priced at more than $10 million were sold over a 12-month period through late 2025, according to global real estate consultancy Knight Frank. And just in the U.S., luxury home prices rose 4.6% year-over-year in December 2025, according to Redfin, which is more than triple the gain in the non-luxury housing market. 

“Homebuyers are very selective because prices and mortgage rates are high—they want a house that has everything,” Alin Glogovicean, a real estate agent in Los Angeles, told Redfin. “Even super wealthy buyers are hesitant to pull the trigger because there’s not a lot of great inventory and they don’t want to settle.” 

So, this trend of buyers claiming properties before they’ve been built or even hit the market could fundamentally change how luxury real estate transactions are done in the future.

“It’s compressing the timeline. By the time a building launches publicly, a lot of the demand has already been identified,” Peter Zaitzeff, a New York City-based broker for Serhant who specializes in luxury new development, told Fortune. “That’s why you’ll see buildings announce ‘50% sold’ shortly after launch—those buyers were already lined up.”

It’s not what you offer—it’s who you know

In new luxury development, transactions increasingly happen privately before any listing is ever made public. 

Buyers typically get on waiting lists through brokers, Zaitzeff explained, because brokers maintain relationships with developers to secure clients’ priority months before a new development launches. Some buyers also register directly with developers through their website, but “serious buyers almost always come through agents,” he added. While not all of these transactions are done off market, many are, Zaitzeff said, particularly penthouses, trophy views, and prime lines.

Harrison Polsky, a principal at Dallas-based luxury developer Catēna Homes, told Fortune it’s a “very relationship-based” process, with most buyers getting on lists through brokers, past transactions, or direct connections to the builder. 

“If someone has bought from us before or has been referred by a trusted agent, they’ll often get early notice about upcoming projects before anything is announced publicly,” Polsky added.

Commissioning a home, not buying one 

The primary reason buyers subscribe to homes is that there is a very limited number of builders doing this level of luxury work, Burrage explained, so buyers are “willing to wait to get the right house.”

It also gives buyers a say in home details, finishes, and layout, he added, which fundamentally reframes what it looks like to purchase a luxury home.

“At the high end, it’s becoming more like commissioning something than buying something off the shelf,” he said. 

Above all, subscribing to developers gives luxury clients access to the best homes, experts agreed. So if you’re not ahead of the curve, it could make it much more difficult—or even impossible—to get the exact home you’re selling out millions of dollars for.

“The downside is that it puts more pressure on relationships,” Polsky said. “If you’re not working with the right builder or broker, you may never see the highest-quality opportunities.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com