Thursday, August 25, 2016

"The super-rich are making their homes ‘invisible’"

"Privacy is perhaps the greatest luxury anyone can buy, hence the trend for properties hidden from prying eyes and online searches."
What the area’s occupants — who reportedly include Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Jennifer Lopez — value above all is privacy. That includes banning Google’s photography vehicles from entering (and declining to talk to the FT; a spokeswoman for the area’s management company said it had a policy of not giving interviews to the press).

Academics have long used the names “hidden communities” or “invisible communities” to denote areas with high concentrations of deprivation and social marginalisation. Yet some of the world’s most privileged people are choosing to hide from the public eye to protect their homes from burglars and other forms of unwelcome attention.

In an evermore connected world, privacy is perhaps the greatest luxury anyone can buy.

“There was a time when people really flaunted their wealth; now they don’t,” says David Forbes, head of private office at estate agent Savills who advises wealthy buyers. “People’s priorities over the years have shifted. Now right at the top of the list it’s security.” (more)
"In 1916, the average person owned a horse and was "rich" if they owned a car. In 2016, it's the other way around." via r/

3 comments:

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

For celebrities, this is driven by papparazzi.

edutcher said...

They think this will help when the Moslems come for them.

Amartel said...

It's not privacy. Privacy is easy. You want privacy? Live in a rural area, preferably a wooded rural area (drone-avoidance). What these people want is to be unaccountable. When some richie rich celeb lectures us about water-conservation, they don't want us to see their sprinkler system operating at 12 noon in the middle of August or their ultra-dark-green lawn contrasted against the parched hillsides of Malibu. That sort of thing. When they lecture about global warming, they don't want us to see their 10,000 sf mansion with all the lights on. They don't want anyone seeing the help, including the politicians, coming and going.