The entrance to Capone’s mansion in Palm Island, Florida, located at 93 Palm Avenue. Capone bought the estate in 1928 as a winter retreat and lived there until his death in 1947. Photograph Source: Marine 69-71 – CC BY-SA 4.0

Back in 1928, the bold and brassy mobster Al Capone spent $40,000 — about $851,000 in today’s dollars — on “a stately Spanish Colonial-style villa” that sat on an isle right off Miami’s coast.

Local historic preservationists would end up cherishing that villa for years after Capone’s 1947 passing. They apparently didn’t cherish it enough. The property’s current corporate owner demolished Capone’s villa last summer and now has the empty lot on sale for $23.9 million.

Meanwhile, in nearby Miami Beach, deep pockets are buzzing about a $125-million “two duplex penthouse” that’s going to be topping a brand-new 15-story luxury tower. The co-developer on the project expects no problems selling off his tower’s 30 opulent abodes. And why should he? Luxury dwellings are selling quite nicely in America’s most fashionable rich people-friendly neighborhoods.

Greater Miami — in 2023’s last quarter alone — saw its typical luxury-home sale price jump nearly 9 percent over the year before. In the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, last-quarter prices for luxury dwellings in 2023 rose 9.5 percent over 2022. The sellers of those dwellings pocketed a median $4,559,500 after having their homes on the market for just 15 days.

In New York City, luxury realtors are flashing even broader smiles. One Manhattan property sold for $75 million in 2023’s last quarter, with another topping $65 million and still another grabbing close to $50 million. Out west, Colorado’s Aspen registered two last-quarter sales in the nation’s top ten, one at $60 million and another at a mere $40 mil.

What do deep pockets spend their time doing once they’ve closed on one of these super deals? They start concentrating, the Wall Street Journal reports, on their closets. Today’s rich are hiring “closet designers” and then throwing “closet reveal” parties to share their favorite new storage spots with friends and family. One elite closet designer, Design Galleria CEO Matthew Quinn, has collected over $1 million “for a two-story closet” that features “both an elevator and a spray-tan booth.”

An outrageous display of out-of-control conspicuous consumption? Sure. But the proud owner of that manse with the two-story closet also figures to get that million-plus back — and then some — when that luxury abode goes back on the market. The demand for housing fit for billionaires is simply exploding. Four decades ago, the United States hosted just 13 billionaires. Now we have some 735.

Fabulous mansions, in other words, figure to be fetching top dollar deep into the foreseeable future. Could these sales possibly have any redeeming social value for the rest of us? A growing corps of progressive local lawmakers believe they most certainly could.