No wonder this metro Phoenix city grows millionaires faster than anyone else | Opinion Article originally posted on AZ Central on June 6, 2025 So, it’s official. Scottsdale, Arizona, is now Fat Cat City — America’s fastest growing metro for millionaires, according to the USA Wealth Report 2025, released in May by investment consulting firm Henley & Partners. As reported on Realtor.com, Scottsdale hit a new gear and has overtaken Austin, Texas, as the fastest growing megaplex for millionaires. “Scottsdale has grabbed the attention of high-earning households over the last decade as luxury buyers flock to the area in search of sunshine and access to the area’s amenities, such as golf courses and resorts,” Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones explained. In the 10 years spanning 2014 to 2024, the number of Scottsdale millionaires surged 125%, leaving competing cities like Austin, West Palm Beach and San Francisco in its dust, Realtor.com reports. Scottsdale has almost 15,000 millionaires The website attributes this rapid growth in big bankrolls to the rising tech sector in metro Phoenix. “Many of the ultrawealthy tech executives working in Phoenix and its suburbs choose to live in Scottsdale and nearby Paradise Valley,” the website reports. “As of 2024, 14,800 millionaires, 64 centimillionaires, and five billionaires were known to reside in the area,” the website notes. In sheer numbers of millionaires, Scottsdale is well behind Austin and West Palm Beach and San Francisco. But in pace of growth, Scottsdale is the champ. This “jewel of the Greater Phoenix metropolitan area,” as Realtor.com calls it, has seen its luxury housing market explode “as buyers, particularly from California, take advantage of the area’s appealing standard of living,” Jones said. “Significant investment in the area has only heightened Scottsdale’s appeal as builders and developers cater to these new movers.” I grew up thinking Scottsdale meant poverty I’ve always had this strange relationship with the city of Scottsdale. When I lived there as a 5-year-old in the 1960s, it was the low point on my father’s career path. He was just beginning to build his practice as a pediatrician and the money was tight. We lived in a working-class neighborhood in south Scottsdale, where the homes were small and the backyards a patch of grass. Even as a 5-year-old, I felt fenced in. In a few years we would move to successively larger homes, first the cinder-block ranch homes in northeast Phoenix and later the modern colonials in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Scranton, Pennsylvania. In my mind, I had come to associate Scottsdale with relative poverty. Lots of celebrities have lived in Scottsdale When I was about 14 and living in suburban Philadelphia, I was watching “Let’s Make a Deal” when the grand prize was announced — an all-expenses-paid trip to “beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona.” It just made me laugh. “Scottsdale, Arizona!” I thought. “Who’d want an all-expenses-paid trip there?” It wasn’t until we returned to Arizona that I learned Scottsdale was a resort town, where the Fighting Irish and their rich boosters stay when they play in the Fiesta Bowl and where our own millionaire athletes go to get in bar fights. Scottsdale has been home to Arizona celebrities from David Spade to Michael Phelps to Kurt Warner. Emma Stone was born in Scottsdale. Steven Spielberg mistakenly told the world for decades he had grown up in Scottsdale, when in fact he had grown up in Arcadia, its tony and indistinguishable neighbor. His mother, a classical pianist, had helped organize the Scottsdale Chamber Orchestra. Those were more humble days in that part of greater Phoenix. Its modern persona may be snooty and pushy In modern times, I came to associate Scottsdale with high-toned snobs — big cars and pushy people who were constantly in the faces of anyone who deigned to serve them on their city councils or school boards. It’s not often that newspaper reporters feel pity for government officials, but you did if you covered Scottsdale. It was well known among the reporters that many of the high-paid and high-powered executives, engineers and doctors who made their homes in Scottsdale also made life hell on their public servants.