What an insane prank and a exploitative one at that. The rich can be such dicks sometimes.
This hardly counts. You would probably be surprised how many people have this level of assets - liquid or in property. All those houses you can't afford because people were grandfathered in with low property tax rates? Yeah you probably don't want to know.
these aren't the same edible rich people that the populist furor is being made towards
Pensioners are living for 30+ years these days.
Index funds, real estate held for 30-60 years, an inch of entrepreneurial effort to make any of those properties cash flow, maybe a couple actual wins.
It's not that improbable. The only problem is that people want to do all that before they are a 70, not when they are 90.
When you walk through a city, like Toronto which this article was about, and see any block, or apartment building, remember that there is an actual human that actually owns that. Each and every one. Even in the run down parts of town, all that stuff has a book value of at least $1 million and is liquid enough to borrow against at the lowest interest rates for further investment. Start counting.
It is a lot. As in, not rare. Not exceptional. Not the same as common, or most. A lot.
It should be evident enough for you not to need a dissertation to modify your worldview.
B) even the person from OP’s article owned business interests in various properties
But most city apartment buildings aren't owned in full by a single person.
The numbers are even more stark for more recent [0]
[0]: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/who-owns-rental-properties....
Much of the benefit of commercially owned real-estate comes from being leveraged. Paid-off property will cash flow better per door, but usually not per million of equity.