Move over LA and NYC – with Trump’s re-election, South Florida is now the political, business and celeb capital of the US
The Sunshine State is red hot.
President-elect Donald Trump’s historic win has cemented South Florida as the new political, business and celeb capital of the US, insiders tell The Post.
“People used to want to retire here or have a second home, but it’s not the Golden Girls’ Miami anymore, South Florida is a real place for business people to live,” one high profile source in business said. “After the [financial] crash in 2008, there wasn’t industry here. Now we have banks and jobs to rival some of the biggest tri-county areas.”
Miami-Dade county — where Trump became the first GOP presidential candidate in over 30 years to win — is home to a raft of celebs from Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen to David and Victoria Beckham, alongside some of the nation’s biggest power brokers.
Titans of industry such as Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell — both of whom call South Florida home — were quick to congratulate Trump, who, of course, has his pink palace, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, once again set to become the Winter White House after he assumes office.
“Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love,” Bezos wrote on X hours after the election.
“Congratulations to President Trump on a successful campaign and election win,” added Dell, who bought Boca Raton Resort for $875 million in 2019.
Of course, Bezos’s post came after days of turmoil at his newspaper, the Washington Post, where staff were raging that he had banned the iconic outlet from formally endorsing a Presidential nominee. Journalists quit in protest, claiming they had been curtailed from stumping for Kamala Harris.
The Amazon founder and his fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, left the West Coast — where he built his empire — for Miami in November 2023.
“I want to be close to my parents, and Lauren and I love Miami,” he announced in an Instagram post.
Bezos was quick to snap up three homes on Indian Creek Island, nicknamed “Billionaire Bunker” — a place so exclusive it has its own police force — for a total of $237 million.
He and Sanchez are now neighbors and good friends with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner.
The couple moved to Miami in 2021 with their three children after leaving Washington D.C. following a tough stint in Trump’s last administration. They were happy to make a fresh start after losing more liberal friends during their time in the White House.
Their move, as Kushner told the New York Times last month, was also a result of NYC’s schools being closed for Covid and the fact that Miami is “a city on the rise,” and “it’s a lot safer than being in New York right now.”
A society source in Miami told Page Six that Ivanka — who called her dad’s conviction over his hush money trial in May “painful” — is “loved” in the city. And while neither she nor her husband will be back in the White House, it will not stop her from making an impact in public life.
“I expect that we could see Ivanka work with tech leaders and talk about child safety on the internet, as well as her concerns about child trafficking,,” said the source. “I think we’ll see her utilize her power in that way.”
NFL Hall of Famer Brady, whom Trump once wanted to date Ivanka so they could forge a “power dynasty”, is also now based in Miami, after moving there shortly after signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.
He, too, bought a house on Indian Creek Island with his then-wife Bündchen, and the couple razed it to the ground to build their dream eco-home.
However, those dreams were shattered when they split in 2022. Brady still lives there, with supermodel Bündchen now living across the creek in a $9.1 million home with their two kids, Ben, 14, and Vivian, 11, allowing them to co-parent between the two houses.
Bündchen is now pregnant by her jiu-jitsu instructor lover Joaquim Valente. Indeed, things are so entwined that Ivanka also practices jiu-jitsu with Valente and his brothers Pedro and Gui, who own their own studio in Miami.
Disgraced WeWork founder Adam Neumann moved with his wife Rebekah and their children to a $30 million ‘fixer upper’ on a high security Miami island after being pushed out of his company amid a botched IPO in September 2019. They also consider Ivanka and Jared friends.
As the high profile industry person told The Post, “When people think about Miami and Florida as a whole, they think about the lifestyle they want. They want to be in sunshine and they don’t want to deal with winter, and the taxes here versus New York are not even comparable; in New York you have city and state taxes — here there are none.”
California, meanwhile, has a graduated state individual income tax, with rates ranging from 1% to 13.3%.
Plus, the perks of the Big Apple have also come south.
“You have all the New York restaurants in Miami, like Carbone and Catch, which opened over the summer,” the insider added.
Citadel also moved to Miami from Chicago in 2022 amid the end of Covid. Its founder, billionaire Ken Griffin, is building a new 54-story headquarters there. Construction will begin next year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The bank was motivated significantly by Florida’s corporate kindness and Chicago’s high crime rate. “What Ken Griffin has done for Miami is unbelievable,” the insider said, pointing out that Griffin has also donated $50 million to the two biggest hospitals in South Florida.
The insider also praised Florida’s Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis, for defiantly keeping things open the during Covid-19, prompting business to grow.
In fact, since the pandemic, South Florida has become a top destination not only for celebrities of all stripes – but also tech bros sick of Silicon Valley with its spiraling crime and woke policies.
And it’s not just the NBA that brings the Miami Heat. David Beckham chose Miami to launch his MLS team and signed soccer god Lionel Messi on a $20m contract
By the end of 2025, Messi’s career earnings will reach an estimated $1.6 billion, including playing salaries, bonuses and endorsements, according to reports. His deal ranks among the five highest in the history of sports.
The Beckhams also recently splashed out on a $80 million mansion in Miami Beach.
On top of soccer and basketball, there’s F1 and the annual cultural event, Art Basel, which lures stars like Leonard DiCaprio to the area.
In Delray Beach, close to Miami, Steve Cohen, the billionaire owner of the Mets, lives in a stunning $24 million estate in Stone Creek Ranch, a gated community where he moved in 2021.
And billionaire Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies was able to this year refinance the Boca Raton resort, with a $1 billion loan.
All those things
“The property value in Boca and Delray beach and Palm Beach County have gone through the roof,” said the industry insider.
Big players in the state also include real estate billionaire Jorge Perez and his wife, Darlene, who reportedly donated their luxury condo to the local Miami Foundation this year, which sold it for $10 million, and British billionaire brothers David and Simon Reuben, who spent more than $565 million on U.S. acquisitions in 2020 alone, including a minority stake in the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa.
According to Forbes, the brothers have a personal net worth of $7.9 billion. “Miami is my second home; I feel inspired when I visit,” wrote Jamie Reuben, one of David Reuben’s two sons, to the Miami Herald in 2021.
“I don’t think it’s all to do with Trump — it’s a pro-business place,” said the insider. “Look, I love New York, there’s no city in the world like it, I love London and Paris, but they are not as pro-business as Miami, and some of these cities have become too liberal … [and I even] have liberal friends in LA who have called me to say ‘I need to get out because of the homelessness.’”
At the end of the day, the big bucks continue to swell in Miami.
“If you take one look at the Setai (a 5-star Miami hotel), it’s packed every single night,” said the insider, “You have the biggest names from New York coming down here.”
