Welcome

The Sotheby’s International Realty® brand’s newly released 2026 Mid-Year Luxury Outlook® Report provides insights into the trends and developments affecting the global luxury real estate market, which continues to maintain its strength and outperform the general housing market.1 Still, there are nuances in luxury real estate to explore.

At Sotheby’s International Realty, we are seeing the buyer pools for the high-end market continue to diversify. We see new homebuyers enter the market because of the rise of intergenerational wealth transfers, as well as homebuyers who continue to benefit from the extraordinary wealth creation generated by stock market investments and escalating real estate valuations. At the same time, real estate markets are affected by older populations looking to age in place in a healthy environment with a lifestyle they enjoy.

Expanding pools of luxury homebuyers are great news for the high-end housing market. For sellers, this offers more opportunities. It means they need to curate their homes for double-duty attractiveness, as a place where a young millennial family and older homeowners can envision themselves.

Where people choose to buy is just as revealing as why they buy. “Location, location, location” is perhaps the most iconic real estate mantra. This report delves into markets that remain eternally attractive for luxury homebuyers alongside markets experiencing a resurgence in attention. The world’s great cities—New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong—remain centers for wealth creation.

Once generational wealth has been achieved, the priorities of ultra-high-net-worth-individuals shift to wealth preservation. There’s a push and pull, with different seasons in life that draw people to own homes in various places. For example, while young entrepreneurs in tech and finance look to buy luxury properties in San Francisco and New York, a wave of ultrawealthy homebuyers continues to pour into Miami and Palm Beach, for the lifestyle, proximity to friends and wealth preservation.

To navigate these nuances, this report draws on perspectives from Philip A. White Jr., president and CEO, and Sotheby’s International Realty-affiliated real estate professionals specializing in properties priced at US$10 million and above, alongside leading voices from the National Association of REALTORS®, UBS and more to provide both ground-level market expertise and broader economic context.

In addition to reporting on global luxury housing markets, this report provides in-depth analysis into the wellness and lifestyle goals of the aging millionaire population and the global longevity market, projected to grow from US$5.3 trillion in 2023 to US$8 trillion by 2030,2 as well as the rise of young luxury buyers in this sector. Health, wellness and lifestyle continue to be a priority across all age groups, including the desire for social connectivity.

This year, Sotheby’s International Realty turns 50. The brand was born from a simple observation: collectors who trusted Sotheby’s auction house with their most valued possessions needed homes that could hold them. That early understanding—that luxury real estate is as much about how people live as what they own—has shaped how we serve clients across more than 1,100 offices worldwide. Fifty years of that perspective is what informs this report.

That attention to what moves homebuyers and home sellers is reflected in our results: our brand frequently outperforms the general real estate market because of our close attention to the motivations that move homebuyers and sellers. In 2025, Sotheby’s International Realty achieved 9.3% sales volume growth in the U.S. over 2024, more than triple the performance of the overall housing market. In addition, we reached US$182.4 billion in global sales volume, an increase of 16% year-over-year.

With our Luxury Outlook report, we dig beneath the surface data and provide a real-time perspective about how our clients are managing their real estate portfolios. It’s this level of commitment to deepening our knowledge that allows us to outperform the housing market on a worldwide scale and provide the high-quality advisory services our clients have come to expect.