California and Florida have more millionaire households than any other state in the nation, according to the latest findings from the Phoenix Marketing International Affluent Marketing Service (AMS) program. But the top-ranked city and perhaps the easiest place to find a millionaire is Los Alamos, New Mexico, where nearly 10% of its 8,000 residents are living large.
Following Los Alamos with 9.7 percent of millionaires compared to the total population, the next top cities are: Naples-Marco Island, Florida (8.6); Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut (7.2%); Vero Beach, Florida (7.2%) and San Jose-Sunnyvale, California (6.9%).
Phoenix AMS, which runs the largest continuously fielded survey of affluent and high net worth households in the country, reports that the top 25 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), or CBSAs in the U.S. as measured by the percentage of millionaire households to the overall population, are dominated by two states: California and Florida.
California has eight MSAs in the top 25 nationally as ranked by the percentage of households with $1 million or more in investable assets: San Jose-Sunnyvale et al, CA (6.9%), San Francisco-Oakland et al, CA (6.4%), Napa, CA (6.4%), Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA (6.2%), Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA (6.1%), Truckee-Grass Valley, CA (5.9%), Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA (5.9%), and Santa Barbara et al, CA (5.8%).
Florida has six MSAs in the top 25 nationally as ranked by the percentage of households with $1 million or more in investable assets: Naples-Marco Island, FL (8.6%), Vero Beach, FL (7.2%), Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, FL (6.7%), Punta Gorda, FL (6.3%), Palm Coast, FL (6.1%), and Port St. Lucie-Fort Pierce, FL (6.0%).
“It turns out that millionaire households can be found in unexpected places,” said David Thompson, vice president of the Affluent Practice at Phoenix Marketing International. “In order to reach this group effectively, one may need to use less intuition and more concrete data.”