It’s been a battle of surging real estate empires versus sagging technology and other fortunes in the past year for Orange County’s wealthiest.
In the end, real estate prevailed, leading a $1.5 billion rise in the collective fortunes of the wealthiest people here.
That’s according to the Business Journal’s annual list of OC’s Wealthiest, which appears in the Aug. 7 edition of the paper.
The 27 people on our list count a combined estimated worth of $27.8 billion, up 5% from a year earlier.
The group’s gain could have been greater,some real estate owners posted estimated gains of 10% or more. But those were tempered by declines among some of the top people on the list,namely the founders of Broadcom Corp. and the owner of Ameriquest Mortgage Co.
The list’s perennial No. 1, Donald Bren, added an estimated $700 million in additional wealth in the past year, thanks largely to the resurgent office market. We estimate Bren at $8.7 billion.
Even at Forbes’ $5.7 billion estimate for Bren, he’s the richest real estate owner on the magazine’s rich list,richer than the other Donald, Donald Trump.
In all, the list includes eight billionaires.
For more on this story, see the Aug. 7 edition of the Business Journal.
