SpaceX employees have accumulated enough paper wealth through the company’s anticipated IPO to purchase roughly 40% of all homes in San Antonio, Texas.
That striking figure comes from a new report by Redfin, the real estate brokerage powered by Rocket, which analyzed the hypothetical purchasing power of current and former SpaceX employees.
San Antonio is the closest major U.S. metro area to SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas headquarters, making the comparison both geographically and financially relevant.
The total value of all homes in San Antonio stood at approximately $297 billion as of 2024, according to Redfin’s data, giving context to just how large the SpaceX windfall could be.
Redfin estimated that SpaceX employees stand to earn a combined $120 billion through the IPO, a figure large enough to reshape housing markets across multiple Texas cities.
Employees could theoretically purchase every single home in McAllen, Texas, a city roughly 80 miles from Starbase, and still have approximately $74 billion left over.
Houston, with a total residential real estate value of $801 billion, would see SpaceX employee wealth represent about 15% of its entire housing stock.
Even in Los Angeles, where SpaceX was headquartered before relocating to Texas in 2024, employees could hypothetically purchase close to 5% of all homes in the metro area, which had a combined residential value of nearly $2.2 trillion in 2024.
“While these calculations are purely hypothetical and aren’t meant to suggest a realistic use of IPO proceeds, they illustrate the staggering scale of wealth being created by the SpaceX public offering,” said Redfin Head of Economics Research Chen Zhao.
Zhao added that “large liquidity events like this do have meaningful effects on local real estate markets,” with employees likely to buy first homes, upgrade existing properties, or purchase vacation and investment properties.
Based on SpaceX’s S-1 filing, the company plans to sell 555,555,555 shares of common stock, potentially making it the largest IPO in history.
Up to 4,000 SpaceX employees, ranging from engineers to cafeteria staff holding stock options, are estimated to become millionaires overnight once the offering closes.
Texas real estate agent Gary Dolch said he is already seeing interest from SpaceX employees in the greater Austin area, with some considering margin loans ahead of the IPO and others waiting for the lockup period to expire.
Because SpaceX has historically compensated employees with equity rather than cash, much of that accumulated wealth has remained illiquid until now, making the IPO a particularly significant financial event for its workforce.
