Home to at least four billionaires, the low-key, ‘no frills’ enclave of Cashiers has one of the country’s highest concentrations of wealth.
7 min
CASHIERS, N. C.—Shortly before 4 p.m. on a recent November afternoon, Buck’s Coffee Cafe was buzzing with a steady stream of customers that included a local chef, the scion of a hot-sauce empire, a real-estate developer and others.
Two Porsches and a pickup truck were parked in front of the shop, which serves as a de facto town hall at the intersection of North Carolina Highway 107 and U.S. Route 64.
If Cashiers had a town centre, this would be it: a crossroads surrounded by a smattering of retail.
In the Blue Ridge Mountains, the unincorporated village has no mayor, no local police force and no central public water supply. There is a limited public sewer system, just a handful of sidewalks and one Ingles supermarket, affectionately known as “Mingles” because it is where locals tend to socialise.
But what Cashiers does have is lots of uber-wealthy homeowners who have been coming to the area for more than a century.
With a full-time population of just 825—and at least four billionaires with homes—Cashiers has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the country, according to data from Altrata, a wealth-intelligence firm.
Drawn to the area’s climate and natural beauty, most deep-pocketed homeowners, including billionaires like Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, and members of Nashville’s Ingram family, own property in a half-dozen private golf communities fanning out from the main intersection.
Even as real-estate values in Cashiers (pronounced Cash-ERS) nearly doubled over the past five years, locals have resisted overdevelopment in favour of retaining its small-town character, which provides relative anonymity to its wealthiest residents.
A September article in The Wall Street Journal, disclosing the presence of four billionaire families, got the community talking.
“People said, ‘Four? What an insult. We’ve got more than that,’” said Ann McKee Austin, who summered in Cashiers as a child and who co-developed, with her brother William McKee, the Wade Hampton Golf Club in the 1980s. “It attracts low-key people, not jet-set people,” said Austin.
South Carolina politician Wade Hampton III, a Confederate general, was among the first to build a summer lodge in Cashiers in the 1800s.
By the 1980s, golf communities with courses designed by Tom Fazio, Arnold Palmer and others began sprouting up in the area.
Today, there are at least 15 clubs on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, a roughly 25-mile area that includes Cashiers and its sister town of Highlands, a quaint tourist destination with high-end shops, restaurants and hotels.
By contrast, Cashiers has no Main Street and is “no frills,” said real-estate agent Kati Miller of Caliber Fine Property, comparing it to the fictional town of Mayberry. “You’re not going to see Prada or any sort of chain. It’s hard to get to—the closest airport is 45 minutes away on windy one-lane roads.”
Life in both places largely revolves around the clubs, where the average home-sale price was roughly $5.4 million over the past three months, said Ali Moody of Caliber.
Owning property is often a prerequisite to membership, which costs upward of $100,000 plus annual dues. Besides amenities like golf, tennis, croquet and dining, clubs also provide infrastructure like roads, water and sewer systems, making construction of luxury homes possible.
“Clubs are like mini-cities, quite frankly,” said Jody Lovell of Highlands-Cashiers Sotheby’s International Realty. Some clubs even provide workforce housing.
Over the years, the ranks of wealthy residents have swelled to include Langone, who paid less than $1 million combined to buy 5.77 acres at Wade Hampton in the 1990s, records show. (For many years, the late Bernie Marcus, another co-founder of Home Depot, also had a place there.) Martha Ingram, who succeeded her late husband as chairman of the billionaire family’s conglomerate Ingram Industries ,bought at the Chattooga Club more than three decades ago.
Langone said he was visiting a friend for the weekend when he toured Wade Hampton and was “blown away” by the newly-built golf course. He bought land before he left and built a four-bedroom home that he has added to over the years.
He said people in Cashiers are civic-minded, hard-working, and kind. “I go there, and they treat me like I’m just anybody else,” he said, “which is the way it should be. ”
Martha’s son, David Ingram, and his wife, Sarah, own several properties at Chattooga—and they recently purchased the club from his uncle (and Martha’s brother) John Rivers, who developed it in the 1980s.
Members of the McIlhenny family, which has been making Tabasco in Louisiana since the 1800s, also own in Cashiers, as does billionaire Scott Hardman Ward, a scion of Russell Stover candies, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent , who spent $4.6 million in 2022. He is now looking to sell his property for $5.25 million.
Billionaire energy mogul William Doré owns two homes in Wade Hampton, which he purchased for about $3 million combined in 2016 and 2019. And Ric Elias, the billionaire CEO of Red Ventures, recently sold a roughly 2.6-acre lot at the Club at High Hampton for $2.5 million, after paying $2.25 million in 2023. Elias and Bessent didn’t comment. Ward, Doré and the McIlhenny family didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Year-round residents say wealthy “summer people” don’t get any special attention. Pro golfers with homes in the area regularly grab a slice at Slab Town Pizza, said restaurant manager Scott Mulchay. No one bats an eye.
Langone said one of his favourite events is a July Fourth get-together hosted by a family at High Hampton, who serve barbecue; people dress in Americana, sing patriotic songs and fire off a mini-cannon, he said.
“We don’t need to prove what we have or show what we have,” he said. “We just enjoy everyone’s company.”
Despite its unpretentiousness, a turning point for the Cashiers luxury market came in the early 2000s, when Discovery Land Co., the developer behind Montana’s Yellowstone Club, opened Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club, drawing more well-heeled buyers not just from the Southeast, but other parts of the country. The McKee family’s sale of the High Hampton Inn in 2017 to the operator of Tennessee’s popular Blackberry Farm, which renovated the historic property, had a similar effect. undefined
Rob Palumbo, who works in the financial services industry in Atlanta, fell in love with Cashiers’ tranquillity 25 years ago, and for years he owned a log cabin on the Tuckasegee River. In 2013, he and his wife, Melanie Palumbo, paid $800,000 for a 2.3-acre lot at Mountaintop and built a six-bedroom house.
Like other resort areas, Cashiers experienced a Covid boom that turbocharged home prices.
Between 2020 and 2024, the average home sale price jumped 88.8% from $1.05 million to $1.98 million, according to data from the multiple listing service. Despite economic uncertainty that has slowed the luxury market nationwide, Cashiers recently had a string of sales above $7 million—a once-untouchable price point.
“For the longest time, $6 million was the ceiling,” said Caliber’s Miller, who said prices are rising as new homes sell for the first time.
The record in Cashiers was set in July, when a house at Mountaintop with a glass-and-steel facade sold for $11.11 million, said listing agent Liz Harris of Cashiers Sotheby’s International Realty. The prior owner paid $600,000 for the 1.85-acre lot in 2020, records show. “What kept [the market] down before, honestly, was people didn’t know about it,” Harris said. The buyer couldn’t be determined.
Earlier this month, a 6.5-acre estate at Cullasaja Club—halfway between Cashiers and Highlands—sold for $12 million.
Some real-estate insiders say the market, as it currently exists, can only grow so much.
Cashiers has six months’ worth of world-class golf between May and October, but there is less to draw people there during the “shoulder” seasons, said developer Sam Lupas.
A bigger issue is inventory. Many of the clubs have waiting lists, Miller said, even Mountaintop, where the initiation fee will be $275,000 starting January 1. “I hate to say it, but we need another club up here,” she said. “They’re all full.”
In 2003, locals voted against incorporation out of fear of paying higher taxes or ceding autonomy to government bureaucracy. Instead, local philanthropists have supported a local charter school, library, boys and girls club and volunteer fire department.
Two decades ago, when a hotel developer tried to build an Econo Lodge near the main intersection, residents swooped in to purchase the land. They designed a Village Green that is encircled with a low stone wall, and a hard-to-find entrance in the rear. “It was meant to be for the people that live here, and you access it from behind the scenes, rather than ‘Stop here and have a picnic lunch,’” said Austin.
Over the past few years, Cashiers has experienced growing pains amid its newfound popularity. During the summer months, traffic can back up for miles, said the Rev. Steve Hines, a retired clergyman who is a member of the Chattooga Club. “There were wealthy people here before, but not at this level,” he said. The growth “has gotten a little out of hand.”
Affordable housing is also an issue, said Jackie Hooper Hernandez, a clerk at Lulu & You clothing boutique, who said she is lucky to live with a relative about 8 miles from the shop. Other family members drive more than 30 minutes to work. But she puts up with the inconveniences of the summer influx because her livelihood depends on it. “We might hate the traffic,” she said, “but you know, if we didn’t have that, I wouldn’t have a job,” she said.
Some people think Cashiers would be better off incorporating, so that it could benefit from having its own tax base and public infrastructure.
But others believe there is reason to fear overdevelopment. “I’ve witnessed an overbuilding [at other clubs], where going to dinner or getting a tee time for golf almost became a lottery system,” said Hufstetler, who just bought the $12 million house in Cullasaja. He previously owned homes in Destin, Fla., and on Lake Oconee, Ga., that he sold when those areas became too crowded.
Lupas said he and his partners are working on an effort to bring hospitality, retail and housing to Cashiers in a way that is both appropriate and “authentic” to the community. “Some people think I’m an evil developer,” but he said the opposite is true. He believes a certain amount of growth is good for Cashiers, if not necessary. “Everybody wants it to stay like it was in 1950, but it’s not possible.”
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Jenna and Michael Morton’s Summerlin home has a 60-foot outdoor slide, a DJ booth and a wine room that holds hundreds of bottles.
3 min
Jenna and Michael Morton have created some of the best-known nightclubs and restaurants in Las Vegas.
But when building a home in the area for their family, they veered away from the glitzy excess of the Strip in favour of a calming, desert retreat.
That’s not to say entertainment was an afterthought: The roughly 2-acre property in the Summerlin neighbourhood has a 60-foot outdoor slide and a DJ booth.
“We are in Las Vegas,” Jenna said. “It’s part of what we do in this town. We do fun.”
Now, after about 20 years of fun, the Mortons’ three children are out of the house, and they are listing the home for $19.5 million.
Michael is a son of Chicago restaurateur Arnie Morton, who founded Morton’s The Steakhouse, which has more than 50 locations nationwide.
His brother Peter Morton co-founded the Hard Rock Cafe, and Michael and Jenna operate restaurants including Crush at the MGM Grand and La Cave Wine and Food Hideaway at Wynn Resorts .
The couple paid $1.25 million for the vacant Summerlin site in 2003. At the time, they were living in Chicago but planning to move to Las Vegas to be closer to their work.
Located in the Ridges, a gated community about 15 minutes from the Strip, the property is at the end of a cul-de-sac abutting the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
“The first time we were there, there were wild burros behind us,” Michael said.
The single-story house spans about 9,400 square feet and curves toward the canyon for privacy and mountain views.
“The curve is an embrace of the mountains,” said Jenna during a video call as she walked outside, the vista framing her face.
In contrast to the over-the-top vibe of Las Vegas hotels and casinos, the couple’s aesthetic at home is what Jenna described as “Japan meets desert,” with clean lines and neutral colours.
The house has seven bedrooms; the primary bath has a soaking tub made out of a boulder.
A wine room has colour-changing Lucite pegs that hold hundreds of bottles. A separate, roughly 530-square-foot guesthouse has a roof deck.
The property is mostly flat, with the exception of a sloped section where the Mortons built the tiled slide, which drops into the pool.
“I looked at it and said, ‘There will be a slide on that hill,’” Michael recalled. It isn’t just children who have enjoyed it—he and Jenna and many of their friends have taken a turn. “A lot of adults hit that slide,” he said.
The Mortons said they entertained frequently, from fundraisers to a birthday party where their son filled an outdoor trampoline with bubbles.
For Jenna’s 40th birthday, the couple hosted a 1960s-themed party that began with a 200-person sit-down dinner, followed by toasts and karaoke.
Michael enlisted the rock band Cheap Trick to make a surprise appearance during karaoke.
As Jenna took the microphone and started belting out their song “I Want You to Want Me,” the band began playing behind her. “We took the rods out of the reactor that night,” he said. undefined
Although selling is bittersweet, the Mortons said they want something smaller now that their children are grown.
The couple—he is 61, she is 59—have a second home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., and they plan to build a smaller house in Las Vegas.
The luxury market in Las Vegas has exploded over the past few years, said listing agent Kristen Routh-Silberman of Douglas Elliman.
There were 76 sales in the Las Vegas area above $10 million in 2025, up from 59 a year prior, she said. The record is held by a home at the Summit Club that traded for $35 million in 2024.
A recent building boom means inventory is finally catching up to demand, according to Routh-Silberman.
The spring market has started early this year, and there seems to be more activity thanks to demand from California and Washington transplants seeking tax advantages, she said.
