https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/cashiers-north-carolina-wealthy-residents-978bfbab
‘People in Cashiers aren’t wearing sport coats,’ said finance executive Rob Palumbo, who owns a house at Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club. ‘It’s not a place to be seen,’ he said. ALAN RHEW
By E.B. SolomontFollow
Nov. 26, 2025 12:02 pm ET
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 center, 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 socialize.
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 favor of retaining its small-town character, which provides relative anonymity to its wealthiest residents.
About 65 miles southwest of Asheville, Cashiers sits 3,484 feet above sea level with cool mountain temperatures that have made it a popular destination for quiet money, mostly from the Southeast. Brookings Fly Shop is a popular store with a bar.John Cayton for WSJ (2); Brookings Fly Shop
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.