I live in a neighborhood where the cheapest home bought in the last few years was $2.6 million. There are some houses on our street that are probably close to $7 or $8 million, and a street or two away there are $10 million plus estates. I run my own law firm and the guy across the street is a doctor. Both of us had solid upper middle class parents who made us get good grades. I had college paid for but took out student loans to pay for law school. Both my neighbor and I benefited from having parents who helped us succeed along the way. My siblings had the same parents I did, however, and they are successful in their own way but making middle class wages or in some cases wages closer to the poverty level (despite advanced degrees). My folks help those siblings out financially but not me. The guy two houses over just bought his house for an insanely high price, and he comes from a family with vast real estate holdings, so he is a beneficiary of generational wealth. But one of my neighbors is a widow and she and her late husband bought the house decades ago when prices were much lower. The neighbor on the other side of the house is in commercial real estate, but he bought 10 or so years back before prices went insane. The neighbor across the street has lived there forever and probably paid less than $100K for his house when he bought it. It seems like a mix of old people and young people with their own businesses or people who have timed it right. We no doubt got lucky with our timing of real estate purchases that enabled us to buy up into a nicer neighborhood, and we've all gotten some help along the way from our families (or the people who live there are old and have lived there forever).