The luxury real estate industry's traditional playbook of winning clients through brand, volume and visibility may no longer work with the fastest-growing class of wealthy buyers, according to a white paper released by REALM, an invitation-only global network of luxury real estate advisors. The paper, titled Minted: Who the New Wealthy Are, and What They Expect, was written by REALM Founder and Chief Executive Officer Julie Faupel and draws on the network's membership intelligence alongside global wealth research.
The stakes are significant. Global personal wealth rose 10.8% in 2025, the strongest year since 2017, and nearly one million new millionaires were created, more than 2,600 every day. A record $297.8 billion passed to billionaire heirs in a single year. Minted argues this is not simply more wealth but different wealth: younger, faster, more liquid, more mobile and more skeptical of inherited relationships. A founder becomes a principal in one funding round; an engineer with early equity becomes a decamillionaire the day the company goes public.
For advisors, the mismatch is the defining problem of the moment. The industry was built to win clients through brand, while the newly minted choose advisors through introduction, discretion and authority. The paper identifies six findings, including that the minting of wealth is structural rather than cyclical, that new wealth arrives as a liquidity event followed within months by a first major real estate decision, and that the new wealthy assemble residences, citizenships and properties into a portfolio designed for optionality rather than relocating.
Loyalty is no longer inherited. According to the paper, 81% of next-generation inheritors plan to leave their parents' wealth firms, and only 17% of high-net-worth individuals describe their advisory experience as seamless and personalized. Permission, not price, now governs the purchase: 52% of affluent buyers are buying fewer luxury items but expecting more from each, and 47% weigh future regret before committing. Their objection is rarely affordability. It is whether they should buy at all.
Most real estate advisors arrive after the decision has already been shaped by the wealth manager, attorney and family office who meet new wealth first. Minted maps four gates every prospective advisor must pass, introduction, verification, discretion and intelligence, and sets out nine practices defining what REALM calls the Trusted: present before the liquidity event, fluent across borders and generations, and leading with intelligence rather than inventory. The full paper is available at the Minted – REALM Guide.
"Wealth has always been made. What has changed is the speed, and the shape of the people making it," Faupel said. "The brand does not win this client. The advisor does. Trust is the currency, and it is earned one relationship at a time." REALM members echoed that view. Bridget Ramey, a luxury real estate advisor in Austin, said clients often have capital before they have counsel. Jack Cotton, an advisor on Cape Cod, said these clients are found by becoming more referable rather than more visible.
The paper is the opening chapter of a broader effort. REALM will convene 250 invitation-only participants at the REALM Global Collective 2027 in Austin from May 17 to 19, 2027, where working councils will produce positions on the first 90 days after a liquidity event. Those positions will shape a definitive guide to luxury advisory to be published with Greentree Publishing. The network spans approximately 600 advisors across 23 countries and more than 40 U.S. states, representing more than $50 billion in annual member sales.
