Griffin's $238M Penthouse Still The Priciest Home In U.S. History
A four-floor, 23,000 square foot penthouse overlooking Central Park, bought for $238 million in January 2019. The record still stands.
By the Rich vs Reality desk January 2019 10 sources

Could have paid a year of rent for
13,338
homeless veterans.
To Griffin, it felt like $922.
In January 2019 Citadel founder Ken Griffin closed on a penthouse overlooking Central Park for $238 million, the most ever paid for a home in the United States. Seven years later, that record still stands.
It spans four floors and about 23,000 square feet. Griffin has since spent about $450 million assembling a 25-acre oceanfront estate in Palm Beach.
$238 million could pay a full year of rent for 13,338 homeless veterans. Against a fortune Forbes puts at $49.8 billion, it cost Griffin what about $922 costs a typical family.
$238 million could have changed these lives
Instead, it went on this.
13,338
years of rent for a homeless veteran
At the U.S. median rent of $1,487 a month (Census, 2024), about $17,844 a year. Source
2.2 million
hungry kids fed three meals a day for a whole year
No Kid Hungry: $1 can help provide 10 meals for kids. Three meals a day for 365 days is 1,095 meals, about $110 per child per year. Source
43,273
lives saved from malaria, most of them children under five
GiveWell estimates its top charities save a life for $3,000 to $5,500. We use the higher figure: $5,500, the cost through Against Malaria Foundation bed nets. Source
Or: 6 million people given clean drinking water; 6,669 families escaping domestic violence given a safe home for two years. Every rate and source.
Ken Griffin
$238 million
For everyone else, that's
$922
That's what it felt like to Griffin: the same share of a typical family's net worth.
Could have paid a year of rent for 13,338 homeless veterans.
Drag the seam between the two worlds.
Measured against a typical American household: $87,460 a year, $192,900 net worth.
The receipts
- Forbes, Jan 2019
- NBC News, Jan 2019
- Net worth: Forbes, The World's Billionaires 2026
- U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2025 (Sept 2026)
- Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022
- No Kid Hungry, What your dollars can do
- GiveWell, How much does it cost to save a life?
- charity: water, How much clean water will my donation provide
- U.S. DOJ Office on Violence Against Women, Transitional housing
- U.S. Census Bureau median gross rent, via USAFacts
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