Global personal wealth surged 10.8% in 2025, the strongest year since 2017, creating nearly one million new millionaires—more than 2,600 every day—and transferring a record $297.8 billion to billionaire heirs in a single year. That surge is the subject of Minted: Who the New Wealthy Are, and What They Expect, a new white paper from REALM, the invitation-only global network of luxury real estate advisors. Written by Founder and CEO Julie Faupel, the paper argues that this wave of wealth is not simply larger but fundamentally different: younger, faster, more liquid, more mobile, and more skeptical of inherited relationships.
The stakes for the luxury real estate industry are high. According to Minted, the industry was built to win clients through brand, volume, and visibility, but the newly minted choose their advisors through introduction, discretion, and authority. That mismatch, the paper says, is the defining problem of the moment. Drawing on REALM’s membership intelligence and global wealth research, Minted identifies six findings, including that the minting of new wealth is structural rather than cyclical, that new wealth often arrives as a liquidity event followed by a major real estate decision within months, and that the new wealthy assemble residences, citizenships, and properties into portfolios designed for optionality rather than relocating.
Loyalty, too, is no longer inherited. The paper reports that 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 “I can’t afford it.” It is “I’m not sure I should.”
For advisors, the implication is clear: the new wealthy choose people, not brands, and they choose early. 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 the four gates every prospective advisor must pass—introduction, verification, discretion, and intelligence—and sets out nine practices that define the advisor this generation requires, a figure REALM calls the Trusted: present before the liquidity event, fluent across borders and generations, and leading with intelligence rather than inventory.
“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 who contributed to the paper describe the same pattern in their markets. “When wealth is created quickly, someone’s life can change faster than their trusted circle can form,” said Bridget Ramey, a luxury real estate advisor in Austin. “They often have the capital before they have the counsel. When you consistently show up for them, you become more than an advisor; you become the person they trust for whatever comes next.” Jack Cotton, a luxury real estate advisor on Cape Cod, added: “You don’t find these clients by becoming more visible. You find them by becoming more referable.”
Minted is the opening chapter of a broader effort. On May 17–19, 2027, the REALM Global Collective 2027 will convene 250 invitation-only participants at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin—200 senior advisors and 50 ultra-high-net-worth capital gatekeepers. Working councils will produce positions on the first 90 days after a liquidity event, covering the heir, cross-border counsel, stewardship, and the role of AI, among others. Those positions will shape REALM’s definitive guide to luxury advisory, to be published with Greentree Publishing following the Collective and renewed annually. “This paper defines the client,” Faupel said. “The work that follows will define the standard.” The full paper is available at the Minted – REALM Guide.
