REALM, the invitation-only global network of luxury real estate advisors, has published a white paper arguing that the fastest-growing class of wealth in nearly a decade is not simply more numerous but fundamentally different, and that the difference exposes a structural weakness in how the luxury real estate industry wins clients. The paper, Minted: Who the New Wealthy Are, and What They Expect, was written by Founder and Chief Executive Officer Julie Faupel and released to REALM's membership of approximately 600 advisors across 23 countries.
The central claim is quantitative. Global personal wealth rose 10.8% in 2025, the strongest year since 2017, according to the paper. Nearly one million new millionaires were created, more than 2,600 every day, and a record $297.8 billion passed to billionaire heirs in a single year. Faupel argues these figures describe a wealth class that is younger, more liquid, more mobile and more skeptical of inherited relationships than the clients the industry was built to serve. The luxury real estate business, the paper says, was constructed around brand, volume and visibility, while the newly minted choose their advisors through introduction, discretion and authority. That mismatch is described as the defining problem of the moment.
Minted sets out six findings drawn from REALM's membership intelligence and global wealth research. The minting of new wealth is structural rather than cyclical, with entrepreneurial creation and the largest intergenerational transfer in history arriving simultaneously. New wealth typically arrives as a liquidity event, and the first major real estate decision often follows within months. The new wealthy do not relocate so much as assemble residences, citizenships and properties into a portfolio designed for optionality. Loyalty is no longer inherited: 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, with 52% of affluent buyers buying fewer luxury items but expecting more from each and 47% weighing future regret before committing.
The implications for advisors are direct. 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 four gates every prospective advisor must pass, introduction, verification, discretion and intelligence, and sets out nine practices defining what 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."
The paper is also the opening chapter of a larger effort. REALM Global Collective 2027 will convene 250 invitation-only participants at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin on May 17 to 19, 2027, including 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, and those positions will shape a definitive guide to luxury advisory to be published with Greentree Publishing. "This paper defines the client," Faupel said. "The work that follows will define the standard." Minted is available now at the Minted – REALM Guide.
