Inside The Richest Zip Code In The US

[Music] so we're about to check out one of the country's most expensive neighborhoods this is fisher island mel brooks julia roberts and oprah have all owned homes here with an average income of 2.2 million dollars it's the richest zip code in the united states and we got a chance to tour it you may have heard of fisher from reports that all the residents and staff got covet 19 antibody tests just three miles from miami where testing was rare yep that's where we're headed you actually have to take a ferry there it's one of the only ways to get on the island the other way to get on the island private yacht only the island's 800 families and their guests are allowed on fisher so security is pretty tight at the ferry terminal but we got special access back in november 2019 thanks to dorapwig one of the island's real estate agents fisher island is a private island enclave with 216 acres dora invited us to tour fisher's newest developments palazzo del sol and plaza del aluna opened in 2019 which is how we ended up on the island's newest ferry taking the seven minute journey from miami beach so right now i'm on the ferry over to fisher island and as you can see i'm the only one here in the passenger lounge most everyone is in their cars we've got a bentley a lamborghini a porsche ferrari i think you won't see these zooming around the island though to enforce strict speed limits most people drive around in golf carts when you go to the beach club you'll have a mini rolls-royce golf cart or you'll have a range rover golf cart or i've seen even vintage old american cars and baby blue the median waterfront home here cost 2.9 million dollars but residents are not only splurging on million dollar apartments they're also paying a hefty membership fee that covers unlimited use of the community pools the 17 tennis courts and the private beaches with sand imported from the bahamas but it doesn't include the golf course or the two marinas the original idea of fisher island was for everyone to live in the community and use the community amenities but even on a private island some residents want even more exclusive perks the newest condos palazzo sol and de la luna don't have beachfront locations but they do have a private gym salon theater and pool and water transport that only condo residents can use come stepping with me dora first showed us a 14.5 million dollar unit in palazzo de la luna she says many of the island's current residents have been looking to trade up for a home like this one so they don't have to share amenities with the whole community this unit has four bedrooms and five baths you walk in you're at ground level just like in a single family home you have your private pool you're on the bay and look at the size of the outdoor entertaining terraces it wraps around the whole corner of the residence you could have a dinner for 200 to 300 people here the selling point the disappearing master suite you walk into a dressing room that looks like a mermaid's shop walk-in dressing room for the lady in white lacquered italian closets the custom bathroom by buffy for us with the floating island and white lacquer the tub is custom made for us and it's called the fisher island and then enter into the master suite with your 12 foot ceilings [Music] because we were curious we went to check out a second apartment a supposedly more affordable unit up a couple floors at nine million dollars it's got three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms here you're walking into the wooded parlor with our little mini library all in blonde oak you have the main living room dining room kitchen areas to the bay and the master suite is also to the bay and then you have the two guest suites on the golf course side you can keep all the furniture for an extra 2 million dollars look at how beautiful it is these two new developments have only made fisher more untouchable pushing home values across the island up by 20 today you'll find price tags of over 40 million dollars for a condo that's only 10 million short of the most expensive home ever sold in miami and that was an entire mansion the palazzos were the first developments on fisher in nearly a decade and are targeting a new generation of buyers traditionally we had a little bit older demographic because the island is so beautiful and it's it's expensive we've really seen it switch to a much younger crowd so we've seen a nice migration towards younger families some come from generations of family wealth others come from selling oil companies selling financial instruments technology hedge funds even still half of the residents are over 60 making them particularly vulnerable for cobia 19. the island has always been a place for the one percent to get away ever since it was formed in 1906 when a canal was dredged so boats could go from the port of miami straight to the ocean the interesting part about this is that fisher island today would have been south of 5th street in miami beach because it was actually connected to the tip of miami beach peninsula miami's first black billionaire real estate mogul dana dorsey was one of the first owners of the new island he wanted to build a black resort here but he had trouble getting workers out to the island to build it so he sold it to billionaire developer carl fisher who named it after himself next up the vanderbilt family carl fisher and william vanderbilt well known to party and have a lot of fun here and one very late night i'm sure there were drinks involved they traded the island carl fisher traded his island with his winter home which is today the club to william vanderbilt for his over 200 foot yacht so they did the trade and then the alva later on sunk and william vanderbilt kept the island so i think he was the better businessman after vanderbilt's death the island passed hands between millionaires and then it was left vegan for 15 years in the 1980s fisher's current developers started work on the community you see today and now fisher is a full-blown town the old vanderbilt mansion is a hotel with suites running for almost fifteen hundred dollars a night vanderbilt's old airplane hangar is now a spa and you can even rent a property here on airbnb for about seven hundred dollars a night but this doesn't happen in a vacuum it takes about 600 workers to run this island they live off island and have three separate ferries during the day they staff a school post office fire station a security force and a medical center it was from that private health clinic that residents and workers got those infamous antibody tests we're back on the ferry we just finished our tour of fisher island it's really hard to wrap your brain around just the amount of well squished into one place how that exists so close to reality across the bay as visitors pre-covered we got this sense that even with all its normal town functions fisher island is anything but normal it's like a live-in resort community manicured eerily perfect and as secluded as ever hey guys my name's abby i'm the producer on this video obviously things have changed a lot for fisher since we visited back in november 2019 but i honestly wasn't that surprised when i heard that they were able to get antibody tests for everyone on the island not only did they have one of the first cases of coven 19 in miami-dade county they also have the means the wealth to get them but i want to know what else you want to see from us what other luxury apartments private enclaves do you want us to explore let us know in the comments below and make sure to subscribe

Channel: Insider Business

Views: 2,977,092

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, fisher island, miami, florida, zip code, wealthy, rich, money, real estate, private island, vanderbilt

Id: -ANzj8cByBs

Length: 7min 52sec (472 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020