Peter Thiel would back Ron DeSantis — but he isn't ditching Silicon Valley for Miami anytime soon due to high home prices
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- On a recent podcast appearance, Peter Thiel said he doesn't plan to move to Florida.
- Home prices in the state have been on the rise after tech workers flocked to the state during the pandemic.
- "That kind of economic cost is probably not enough to offset all the wokeness in the world," he said.
Peter Thiel isn't hopping on one of the hottest trends of the tech elite that has emerged over the past few years: migration away from Silicon Valley, and, in particular, to Florida.
Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, said that the Sunshine State has gotten too expensive on an episode of Bari Weiss's podcast, "Honestly with Bari Weiss."
"We've thought some about moving our offices from California to Florida," he said. "It's a tough thing to do at this point because the real estate prices in Florida have doubled and the interest rates have doubled."
"If you buy a house in Miami today versus just three years ago, you're paying four times as much in a monthly
mortgage payment," he added.
Thiel, himself, bought a house in Florida three years ago: an $18 million estate on Miami's Venetian Islands.
Thiel and a representative for his firm, Founders Fund, did not immediately responded to Insider's requests for comment.
A flock of wealthy tech investors began flooding to Florida in 2020 and 2021, as remote work allowed people to move and take advantage of warm weather and lower taxes.
Thiel's Founders Fund was one of a number of VC firms to open offices or expand their presence in the city, including Atomic and SoftBank.
Rising home prices and property taxes followed. The median sale price of Miami homes increased 6.7% from March 2022 to March 2023, per Redfin. Those higher property values have led to higher taxes. Single-family property taxes in the city increased by 12.6% from 2021 to 2022.
"That kind of economic cost is probably not enough to offset all the wokeness in the world," Thiel said on Weiss's podcast.
While Thiel, a Republican megadonor, said "it's necessary to defeat the woke mind virus," he was quick to point out it isn't the only issue on the table.
The discussion came up as he and Weiss discussed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the potential Republican presidential nominee.
He would "make a terrific president," Thiel said, though he added that "focusing on the woke issue as ground zero is not quite enough."