Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in 2023.
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Add former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to the list of ultra-rich guys fleeing other cities for the billionaire’s playground of Miami. The man responsible for the ubiquity of the coffee brand that gave us the Frappuccino and the Pumpkin Spice Latte (AKA the PSL) announced this week that he and his wife have ditched their longtime home of Seattle for South Florida’s sunnier (and more billionaire-friendly) shores.
“We have moved to Miami for our next adventure together,” Schultz wrote in a Wednesday post to LinkedIn (where else?), on which the comments are disabled. “We are enjoying the sunshine of South Florida and its allure to our kids on the East Coast as they raise families of their own.”
Technically speaking, the couple has relocated not to Miami proper but to nearby Surfside. They forked over about $44 million for a penthouse at the Surf Club, Four Seasons Private Residences, the Wall Street Journal reports in an exclusive piece attributed to “people familiar with the situation.” This was something of a steal: the Journal notes that the condo was first listed in November 2024 with a price tag of $55 million.
The historic Surf Club was a 1930s-era playground for the rich.
Credit Four Seasons photo
Opened in 2017, the palatial Collins Avenue condo building towers 12 stories over the historic Surf Club, itself a 1930s-era playground for the rich. The development — 144 units with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Atlantic — touts itself as having “all the advantages and amenities of living in a grand hotel.” A few of the 14 penthouse units have their own pools. Schultz’s new digs, per the Journal, boast five bedrooms and sprawl 5,000 feet. An LLC called Stockbridge Holdings paid $18 million for it in 2018, the Journal noted.
Fellow rich person Daniel Nadler, founder of medical AI company OpenEvidence, is apparently one of Schultz’s new neighbors. The Journal reported that the entrepreneur plunked down $38.2 million in cash for a furnished penthouse unit in July 2025. Nadler told the newspaper his swanky home “actually just feels almost like one of those Venetian palazzos, but in the sky,” adding that he thought it’d double in value within five years.
Schultz, a onetime Xerox salesman, says in his LinkedIn post that Seattle was his home for more than 40 years, having moved there in 1979 with his wife and golden retriever. He started at Starbucks, then a single outpost selling only whole bean coffee, in 1982. Before leaving the company’s board of directors in 2023, he helped transform it into a household name, one that has faced allegations of union-busting in recent years. He toyed with running for president in 2020 as an independent but ultimately decided against it.
In his announcement, Schultz said he and Sheri “have entered the ‘retirement’ phase of our lives.”
A Growing Exodus to Miami
News of the couple’s move came as Washington state considers legislation that’s been branded a “millionaire’s tax,” the Seattle Times notes. The measure, which would impose a 9.9 percent tax on earnings over $1 million to help fund services, passed the state legislature later Wednesday. Schultz did not bring it up in his LinkedIn post, though he did mention hoping “that Washington will remain a place for business and entrepreneurship to thrive.”
Billionaires are increasingly joining an exodus to Miami, a trend some attribute to West Coast states passing legislation taxing the rich. Schultz is just the latest addition to a long list of ultra-wealthy people defecting to the 305 in what the New York Times dubbed “The New Miami Gold Rush.” Others snapping up local properties in recent years include Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. It’s gotten to the point where millionaires are being gentrified out of Indian Creek by billionaires.
In fact, with a reported net worth of $3.5 billion, Schultz actually appears to be on the poorer end of Miami’s richest billionaires.