America’s Top Cities With the Highest Percentage of Millionaires

July 24, 2014 by Jon C. Ogg

It seems as though being a millionaire isn’t as rare as one might imagine, at least not in some of the greatest cities around the world. In fact, it turns out that some cities are literally teaming with millionaires.

Spear’s magazine, in association with wealth consultancy company WealthInsight, has released a city-by-city breakdown of the global top 20 cities for millionaires by population density. 24/7 Wall St. wanted to see how many cities were in the United States from this list. It was only three: New York, Houston and San Francisco.

As far as what the study really means and how it was derived, WealthInsight maintains a proprietary database of over 100,000 high net worth individuals globally. “Millionaires” are also known as “high net worth individuals” and they are defined technically as being among those individuals with net assets of $1 million or more, excluding their primary residences.

New York City came in first place in the American cities with millionaire density — with a whopping 4.63% of its residents considered millionaires. The Big Apple also came in fourth place on the Spear’s/WealthInsight global millionaire density list. This may seem like it just proves that Wall Street isn’t dead. While many high financiers and investment bankers will be among that category of millionaires, do not forget that New York City is also the corporate headquarters for many of America’s largest and greatest corporations and foundations.

Houston, Texas, was ranked as second highest in America with 2.09% of the city’s population being considered millionaires. Houston ranked as number 18 on a global basis. While this is less than half of New York, it turns out that the oil boom has contributed handily to all of that wealth. This has to have the city of Dallas in an uproar!

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San Francisco was the third highest millionaire density of cities in the United States at 2.07%. That ranks it just behind Houston, and you can thank the proximity to Silicon Valley and the technology boom for this success. On the global list of the top 20 cities, San Francisco finished in 19th place. And to think that technology helped trump the entertainment capital of the world of film and movie stars of Los Angeles.

If you include Canada in this mix, then another surprise on the top 20 cities for millionaire population density is that Toronto made the list as well. It ranked as 15th on the global millionaire density list at 2.29%. While Toronto is the finance capital of Canada, it is also headquarters to many of Canada’s largest companies. Talk about cold winters and wealth. Do all those millionaires stay there in the winter?

As a reminder, this is not a list of cities with the absolute highest number of millionaires, but of the cities with the highest population density of millionaires. The full list of global cities by population density of millionaires has been provided with the Spear’s/WealthInsight ranking and percentage of population density without commentary on the second page.

Full List of the Top 20 Global Cities by Millionaire Density

1. Monaco (29.21%)

2. Zurich (27.34%)

3. Geneva (17.92%)

4. New York (4.63%)

5. Frankfurt (3.88%)

6. London (3.39%)

7. Oslo (2.90%)

8. Singapore (2.80%)

9. Amsterdam (2.63%)

10. Florence (2.59%)

11. Hong Kong (2.58%)

12. Rome (2.54%)

13. Dublin (2.40%)

14. Doha (2.31%)

15. Toronto (2.29%)

16. Venice (2.25%)

17. Brussels (2.11%)

18. Houston (2.09%)

19. San Francisco (2.07%)

20. Paris (2.04%)

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Other recent studies on millionaires have also been seen. The Wall Street Journal ran a report earlier in 2014 using data from Phoenix Marketing International, showing a state-by-state ranking of millionaires.

WealthInsight showed that Tokyo was the highest city in absolute millionaires in 2013.

CapGemini and RBC recently released the 2013 World Wealth Report covering millionaires around the globe as well.

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