Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren is the richest real estate baron in the United States with an estimated net worth of $15.3 billion, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires 2021 list.
Sun Hongbin, a U.S. citizen and the founder of Sunac China Holdings, followed Bren with a $9.5 billion fortune on the list. According to the 2021 Forbes Billionaires list, Donald Bren and Sun Hongbin also ranked among real estate’s richest people in the world. Let us look at others on the list.
- Donald Bren
Donald Bren is the richest real estate baron in the United States. Donald Bren’s Irvine Company owns 126 million square feet of real estate which includes more than 560 office buildings, 125 apartment communities with 65,000 units, 40 retail centers, one coastal resort, two hotels, three golf courses, and five marinas.
Irvine Company’s investment property portfolio is largely located in Orange County, with about thirty-five percent of the portfolio located in Silicon Valley, San Diego, West Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Bren earned a degree in economics and business administration from the University of Washington. Following his education, he served three years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Bren joined the Mission Viejo Company in 1963 as president, initiating the master planning and master building of the 11,000-acre new community of Mission Viejo, California. In 1967, Bren sold his interest in the Mission Viejo Company to expand his activities in new master-planned communities within Southern California including Westlake Village and Newhall Ranch, and Foster City in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 1977, Bren became a member of the investment group that purchased Irvine Company from the Irvine Foundation. Bren was elected Chairman of the Board in 1983 and later became the sole shareholder.
- Sun Hongbin
Sun Hongbin, a U.S. citizen, is the founder and chairman of Sunac China Holdings, one of China’s largest real estate developers.
Sunac China Holdings, headquartered in Tianjin, is a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Sun Hongbin is the group’s founder, the chairman of the board of directors of the company, an executive director, the chairman of the nomination committee, and a member of the remuneration committee of the company. Sun commenced his real estate business in 1994 and has accumulated over 20 years of ample experience in the real estate industry in the PRC over the years.
Sun obtained a master’s degree in engineering from Tsinghua University in the PRC in 1985 and completed an advanced management program at Harvard Business School in the United States in 2000.
- Stephen Ross
Stephen M. Ross is the chairman and founder of Related Companies and formed Related in 1972. Related Companies is a privately-owned real estate firm in the United States with over $60 billion in assets owned or under development including mixed-use, residential, retail, and office properties in premier high-barrier-to-entry markets like the 28-acre Hudson Yards neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side, The Grand and Related Santa Clara in California and The 78 in Chicago.
Headquartered in New York City, Related has offices and major developments in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, South Florida, Washington, D.C., Abu Dhabi, and London, and boasts a team of approximately 4,000 professionals. Related was named to Fast Company Magazine’s list of 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.
Ross graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, from Wayne State University Law School with a Juris Doctor degree, and from New York University School of Law with a Master of Laws in Taxation. In 2004, the University of Michigan renamed its business school the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and in 2011 the University of Michigan awarded Mr. Ross an honorary degree, Doctor of Laws.