From Cleveland to Turks & Caicos: Here’s Where Luxury Home Buyers Are Headed in 2025
Thinking of moving next year? The latest trends in luxury real estate show just where wealthy homebuyers are headed in 2025. Looking at the coming months, The Agency’s fifth annual Red Paper report has revealed the global hot spots experiencing an influx of high-net-worth property shoppers in the wake of the pandemic—and no, it’s not the usual New York City or Los Angeles.
The most popular areas where luxury home purchases are on the upswing include some not-so-surprising international locales, such as Portugal, Mexico City, Turks and Caicos, and Panama City, along with some rather unexpected areas in the United States; Cleveland and Northwest Arkansas, of all places, have emerged as hubs for deep-pocketed out-of-state investors and remote workers in recent years.
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According to the report, Panama City—aka the“ Singapore of the Americas”—is doing especially well as a tax-friendly retreat for those who hail from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and China. “Panama is quickly becoming the premier destination for luxury real estate investment,” said Victoria Levitam Cohen, managing partner at The Agency Panama. It’s poised to be the next Miami or Los Cabos.” Buyers seeking a waterfront lifestyle have settled down in affluent beachfront and resort communities, including Buenaventura and Coronado, for example. Also in the mix were Boquete, Pedasi, Santa Maria, and the Pearl Islands, where a Ritz-Carlton Reserve Hotel and Private Residences is taking shape.
Turks and Caicos, long a second or third home oasis for wealthy investors, has lately seen more interest from buyers seeking primary homes. As a result, new developments are going up to meet the expat demand. It’s a similar story in popular Mexico City, where the population has grown 1 percent in the last year alone, pushing home prices up in previously off-the-radar neighborhoods, the report noted.
Closer to home, prices have hit record highs in places like Cleveland, Ohio, where a 6,000-square-foot house that sold for $700,000 in 2020 is now going for double that. At the same time, the report found that parcels that were trading for $100 to $200 per square foot pre-pandemic have now jumped to $300 to $400 per square foot. Indeed, optimism reigns at the top end of the property market in the self-proclaimed Rock and Roll Capital of the World. “In the summer of 2024, we listed two properties—one for $20 million and one for $14 million, which are records not only for the city but also for the entire state,” added David Ayers, managing partner at The Agency Cleveland.
The Federal Reserve dropped interest rates this week by a quarter percent, and next year’s housing forecasts have predicted that home prices in the U.S. will continue to climb, albeit at a slower rate than in years past, while existing home sales will generally remain sluggish and mortgage rates will likely hover above 6 percent.
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