Tech Billionaires Are Flocking To This Former Bohemian Enclave In Miami. See What Life Is Like Inside Coconut Grove.

Coconut Grove could not be further from a "new" neighborhood.

Widely considered the oldest neighborhood in Miami, the Grove, as locals call it, dates back to the 1870s and is among the earliest settled communities in South Florida.

Its name comes from the area's early coconut groves and the natural resources that attracted early settlers, and it remains one of the city's greenest areas.

"That strip right there of properties — that was where the first settlers, the first wealthy settlers, settled," Ashley Cusack, a Miami luxury real-estate broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, told Business Insider. "They had the most stunning view ever, looking out over Biscayne Bay, unobstructed."

Aside from the views, the neighborhood's location high on the Biscayne Bay ridge provided some protection from natural elements, like changing tides and hurricanes, Cusack said.

In the 1960s, the neighborhood became one of Miami's best-known bohemian enclaves, with artists, musicians, and activists helping shape its identity.

Coconut Grove was the heart of the hippie movement in the city and hosted multiple love-ins during the Summer of Love.

It was also home to the Dinner Key Auditorium, where The Doors famously played in 1969 in a concert that led to lead singer Jim Morrison's arrest under indecent exposure, lewd and lascivious behavior, and public drunkenness charges.

Coconut Grove is one of Miami's most desirable neighborhoods among transplants and locals.

By the 1990s, the Grove had begun attracting high-profile residents, including Sylvester Stallone and Madonna, who purchased homes there. By the 2010s, a new generation of stars had followed, including LeBron James, who lived there during his Miami Heat years.

Coconut Grove sits at the heart of some of Miami's wealthiest enclaves. It's bordered by Coral Gables' old-money Mediterranean estates to the west, Brickell's glitzy glass high-rises to the north, and a string of Miami's most exclusive waterfront gated communities to the south.

The stretch of Biscayne Bay on which the neighborhood sits includes some of the most exclusive and expensive real estate in the country. Still, the area's small-community feel is part of what appeals to the wealthiest home buyers.

Like its neighboring communities, Coconut Grove also preserves a rich visual legacy inspired by its nearby Coral Gables, a 1920s planned community designed to emphasize a Mediterranean look in an organized, resource-rich community.

Just south of Coconut Grove, the gated community of Gables Estates has been ranked by Zillow as the most expensive neighborhood in the US.

Florida, one of nine US states with no state income tax, has been attracting some of the nation's wealthiest, especially as states like California and New York consider proposals that would increase taxation on the ultrawealthy.

Names like Jeff Bezos, Ken Griffin, and Peter Thiel have been among the most notable to relocate to the city.

Griffin, who invested heavily in Miami's future as a hub of commerce and finance by moving Citadel's headquarters from Chicago to Brickell in 2022, purchased a $106 million historic estate in Coconut Grove that same year, marking the first nine-figure single-family home sale in Miami-Dade County history.

The property, a 4-acre waterfront compound in Coconut Grove that includes the 1913-built Villa Serena and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht's 1999-built residence, attracted a new type of homebuyer to the neighborhood, Cusack said.

"That was such a great precedent," Cusack told Business Insider. "It set the table for what is happening now."

While a lot of these mansions don't have the same kind of flashy luxuries of glass high-rises, their residents prioritize different kinds of wealth in their homes, including wellness, privacy, and waterfront access to the bay.

One 1920s property in the neighborhood, located next door to Griffin's estate, is listed for sale for $110 million thanks to its extended dock directly on Biscayne Bay and 1.61-acre lot.

Inside the homes, billionaire homeowners prioritize features that elevate their daily routines over those meant solely to show off wealth, house builder Manny Varas told Business Insider.

Varas, who is the CEO of the Miami-based luxury construction MV Group and has built homes for some of the city's wealthy newcomers from California and New York, as well as the Bezos family and celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Lil Wayne, said that features like cold plunges, large private saunas, padel courts, and indoor-outdoor entertaining areas have become must-haves for the city's wealthiest.

With Miami's luxury real-estate market shifting from a focus on glitzy second homes to full-time primary residences, Varas told Business Insider, buyers now have different priorities, especially when moving their entire families to the city.

Buyers who once might have treated Miami as a winter escape are now looking for neighborhoods that can support day-to-day life for a whole family while still providing easy access to the city's downtown business hub.

"If you have children, it's hard to beat these tree-lined streets," Cusack said. "These beautiful neighborhoods where kids can experience the outdoors, which is what Miami's really all about."

Children of affluent Coconut Grove residents can attend big-ticket schools like Ransom Everglades School or Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart. Annual tuition at these schools can reach $36,790 for preschool, $41,080 for elementary, and $57,300 for high school.

Over the course of 13 years of schooling, some Coconut Grove parents might pay over half a million dollars in private school tuition alone.

The exclusive schools are among the factors attracting wealthy families to the area, Miami-based luxury real-estate agent Josh Stein told Business Insider.

"These families will do anything to make sure their kids go to the best schools," Stein said. "And you can't even get into these schools — I heard it's almost impossible to get into some of these schools right now.

Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart and Ransom Everglades School did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

At the top schools in the neighborhood, admissions involve far more than just sending an application, with both requiring recommendations, interviews, school records, and test scores. Ransom Everglades also requires applicants to complete the Character Skills Snapshot.

For the schools, the influx of wealthy residents also means a growing student community. In March, The New York Times reported that applications to some schools in the area were significantly up.

"We've seen a record number of applicants," Patrick Coyle, president of the Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, told The New York Times. "I don't know when this is going to stop because I thought it would level off at some point, and it hasn't yet."

The Grove's closest grocery options include fresh-focused grocers like Sprouts, The Fresh Market, and Milam's, giving the neighborhood's residents easy access to higher-end grocery shopping.

But for many ultrawealthy homeowners, everyday errands and household routines are often handled by a broader private staff of cooks, cleaners, nannies, drivers, landscapers, and other workers typically hired and managed by a property manager, Stein said.

That volume of service inside the home also influences its design, Varas said. Corridors, dirty kitchens, and back-of-house spaces are often built into the properties to support staff operations while keeping much of that work out of sight of the main living spaces.

"You want to be able to feel a space without having to see how it happens, how it's always perfect, how that came about," Varas said.

The neighborhood is home to Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, a Mediterranean-inspired early-20th-century estate and National Historic Landmark overlooking Biscayne Bay. It is also home to Barnacle Historic State Park, a historic bayfront house just off Main Highway in the heart of downtown Coconut Grove, steps from the neighborhood's shops and restaurants.

Coconut Grove's old-Florida atmosphere also comes with a bit of local eccentricity: roaming peafowl.

The colorful birds have long been a mainstay in the Grove, wandering residential streets and adding to the neighborhood's tropical feel, but they have also become a source of frustration for some residents, who complain they're "being held hostage by pooping, screaming birds," as reported by NPR in 2020.

Their piercing early-morning calls can wake neighbors before dawn, while their droppings, scratched roofs, and damage to residents' cars have turned the birds into a recurring neighborhood complaint.

Researchers working with the City of Miami estimated that the Grove's peafowl population is between 650 and 1,500.

While local protections make it unlawful to disturb, capture, or kill non-native birds, some nearby municipalities, like Pinecrest, have enacted humane relocation programs to manage the peacock population.

Coconut Grove's central commercial district gives the neighborhood a walkable village feel, with boutiques, galleries, bookstores, salons, and design shops clustered around a few main streets.

The Grove's small but refined art gallery scene includes contemporary galleries and showroom-style spaces that mix fine art, furniture, and interiors.

For the city's incoming wealthy buyers, the growing mix of shopping, art, and entertainment in Coconut Grove and Coral Gables has made the area a more compelling lifestyle alternative to Miami Beach, long South Florida's traditional hub for luxury dining, nightlife, and entertainment.

"You're really having a resurgence of art, music, entertainment in that Coconut Grove core area and Coral Gables that makes it unnecessary to go to Miami Beach," Varas told Business Insider.

The neighborhood is home to two one-Michelin-star restaurants: Ariete, a contemporary restaurant on Main Highway, and Los Félix, a Mexican restaurant known for its focus on heritage corn and seafood.

Along with its upscale neighbors, Chug's Diner, a Coconut Grove staple, was tied for the most expensive colada in Miami in an Infatuation ranking, at $5, a striking price in a city where a $1.50 colada can still easily be found.

Dinner Key Marina, a 587-slip marina and the largest wet-slip marina on the East Coast, anchors Coconut Grove's long-running boating culture.

At the ultrawealthy end of Miami's waterfront market, yacht access has become a luxury marker as demand grows for homes, slips, and marina space that can accommodate larger vessels.

On nearby Grove Isle, a single boat slip with a lift on the marina is listed for $1.05 million.

Hiding behind dense greenery and seawalls, billionaires can live close to Miami's growing downtown finance and tech offices, elite private schools, Michelin-starred restaurants, and prominent marinas while still maintaining the privacy of an affluent, tight-knit village.

For Miami's newest class of ultrawealthy residents, Coconut Grove offers something harder to buy than a mega yacht or a mansion: the privacy to disappear into a neighborhood.