Larry Page has quietly become one of South Florida’s newest ultra-luxury homeowners, snapping up two sprawling estates in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood for a combined $173.4 million in a matter of days. The purchases place Page among a growing list of tech billionaires establishing an increasingly serious real estate footprint in Florida as California flirts with a one-time wealth tax on its richest residents.
In late December, Page paid $101.5 million for a 4.5-acre waterfront compound known as Banyan Ridge, one of the most significant residential transactions in Florida history. Just days later, he followed up with a second purchase nearby, paying $71.9 million in an off-market deal for a modern waterfront mansion less than a mile away. The two properties are not adjacent, but together they give Page a rare blend of scale, privacy, and direct access to Biscayne Bay.
While neither Page nor his representatives have commented publicly, the timing of the deals has drawn attention across both the tech and real estate worlds. The purchases come as Page reportedly winds down his California presence and reorganizes parts of his business operations outside the state, moves widely interpreted as preparation for California’s proposed billionaire wealth tax.
A $101.5 Million Legacy Estate
The larger of the two purchases is Banyan Ridge, a secluded compound sitting on roughly 4.5 acres in one of Coconut Grove’s most exclusive pockets. The estate sold in December after previously being listed for as much as $135 million, making Page the second person ever to own the property.
Banyan Ridge had long belonged to the estate of Jonathan Lewis, a prominent Miami restaurateur and the son of the late Progressive Insurance CEO Peter B. Lewis. The property itself is something closer to a private resort than a single residence. It includes multiple structures connected by winding paths through dense tropical landscaping, along with expansive terraces, meditation gardens, and resort-style amenities. Here is a video tour of Banyan Ridge, courtesy of YouTube (which Larry owns and therefore will surely have deleted within a few days):
One of the main residences dates back to the 1920s and was originally designed for William Jennings Bryan, the former U.S. Secretary of State and three-time presidential candidate. A second primary home was built decades later for Lewis’ father. Together, the structures total roughly 11,800 square feet, spread across grounds that are almost impossible to replicate in modern Miami due to zoning and land constraints.
Despite its size and prestige, Banyan Ridge is notable for what it does not offer: direct water frontage. That gap appears to have been filled almost immediately by Page’s second acquisition.
A Second Home With Waterfront Access
On January 5, Page closed on a second Coconut Grove property for $71.9 million, purchasing the home in an off-market deal from heiress Sloan Lindemann Barnett and her husband, Roger Barnett, the CEO of health-supplement company Shaklee.
Built around 2015, the contemporary mansion spans roughly 17,000 square feet and sits on a corner lot with water frontage on two sides, directly on Biscayne Bay. The home features a distinctly modernist design, with clean lines, expansive glass walls, and an emphasis on blending indoor and outdoor living. Previous listing descriptions said the structure appears to “float” above the surrounding greenery and water. Here is a video tour, once again, courtesy of YouTube:
The Barnetts had purchased the home in 2021 for $45.9 million, meaning Page paid nearly $26 million more, less than five years later. The deal was never publicly marketed.
Together, the two purchases give Page both scale and shoreline: a sprawling private compound and a sleek waterfront residence, separated by just a short drive.
Why Miami, Why Now?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin currently rank as the #2 and #3 richest people on earth, with respective net worths of $285 billion and $266 billion. The vast majority of their respective net worths comes because they each own roughly 6% Alphabet (Google’s parent company name). At the current market cap of $4 trillion, a 6% stake is worth $240 billion. The roughly $45 billion and $26 billion differences in their net worths come from assets and wealth built from stock sales and other investments.
California is currently proposing a so-called “Billionaire Tax” where anyone who owns a stake in a business that’s worth more than $1 billion would have to pay 5% of the value of that fortune as a tax. You may be thinking, “5% of $240 billion is $12 billion. That’s not soooooo bad…” but there’s a catch. Alphabet’s dual-class structure gives their shares 10× voting power, translating into roughly 30% of the company’s voting control for each founder.
That distinction is crucial.
Under Section 50303(c)(3)(C) of the proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, ownership for tax purposes is presumed to be no less than a taxpayer’s percentage of voting or control rights, regardless of their actual economic interest. In practice, that means Page and Brin would not be taxed as 6% owners. They would be taxed as 30% owners.
That assumption inflates each founder’s taxable wealth from roughly $240 billion to $1.2 trillion. Apply the proposed 5% one-time wealth tax, and the result is a $60 billion tax bill for each founder.
In other words, a tax branded as 5% would effectively wipe out a quarter of their actual Alphabet holdings, forcing massive stock sales or the surrender of control. For founders whose wealth is inseparable from governance, the math makes remaining a California resident economically irrational.
The Paper Trail Is Already Moving
The real estate purchases are only the most visible part of a broader repositioning.
In late December, an LLC tied to Page and Brin called T-Rex, formed in 2006 and long registered in California, was converted into a Delaware entity and renamed T-Rex Holdings. The conversion was completed on December 24, 2025, just days before the proposed tax’s residency cutoff. The new filing lists a principal office in Reno, Nevada, with both founders remaining as managers.
Around the same time, Page also converted his family office out of California and into Delaware. Additional entities linked to Page, including vehicles tied to advanced aviation projects and medical research, have likewise been reincorporated outside the state.
None of these moves, on their own, constitute proof of a permanent relocation. But taken together, they form a familiar pattern to tax attorneys and wealth managers: reduce California nexus, establish alternative residency options, and create defensible distance before a retroactive tax takes effect.
The proposed ballot measure would apply to anyone deemed a California resident as of January 1, 2026, making the final weeks of December effectively a high-stakes deadline. California residency is determined by a constellation of factors, including time spent in the state, business operations, and personal ties. Owning major residences elsewhere and shifting control entities out of state materially changes that analysis.
