Will this super exclusive suburb decide the election?

The once quiet, rural enclave an hour outside of Philadelphia, and two hours from New York City, has had an uptick in wealthy residents and second (or third or fourth) homeowners in recent years, and notably since the pandemic. Just as the Covid-era exodus from New York City brought one percenters to tony suburbs like Greenwich, Connecticut and Chappaqua, New York, so too did it bring new residents to Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

“People with money who wanted to leave the center of New York City found that they could buy rural farms and estates here,” says Petrina Calantoni Unger of Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty in New Hope, PA. And those people—largely families motivated to spread out and take advantage of good school districts and golden age couples buying large estate with plans for their adult children to build houses of their own, compound-style on the grounds—have brought with them a rise in real estate. Of the 172 houses Trulia currently lists for sale in Bucks County, 29 are listed for over $3 million, 15 for over $4 million, and seven for over $5 million. But as Calantoni Unger points out, “For a million dollars you are going to get a nice home on half an acre. But when you add land of any amount, the numbers are going to tick up pretty fast.”

For many, Bucks County’s appeal is in the county’s location as off the beaten path of the see-and-be-seen. It’s an alternative to the oversaturated Hamptons and the new wave of new money in Palm Beach. It’s a place where you can have horses, raise animals, but not be so far off the mainstream as to be remote. Still quaint towns like New Hope, and Doylestown; a longstanding art museum, the Michener; and eye-watering prices for rooms and meals (and private memberships) at Odette’s have kept things interesting, and brought broader-reaching attention. Next year sees the opening of two hotels in the area: the Radcliff Inn, a boutique nine-room hotel in a historic stone building and The Hopewell, a 24-room manor house style retreat—which already looks like the county’s answer to Soho Farmhouse.

Local residents seem committed to keeping things as stealthily wealthy as possible, with more family-run stores and health food grocers outpacing global brand boutiques. A number of small, private airports—Doylestown, Van Sant, and Quakertown—have helped high-net-worth residents come in and out without fanfare. Townships are trying to preserve more and more land and keep things calm. Yet despite the quiet reputation, it’s well known that the actor Bradley Cooper recently purchased an historic $6.5 million, 33-acre estate outside of New Hope. Yolanda Hadid, the reality TV star and mother of Cooper’s girlfriend Gigi, owns a farm nearby in Solebury—as does Gigi’s former boyfriend Zayn Malik.

Rumors abound that even Taylor Swift has bought a property in the area. Surely more will follow. “Celebrities can still buy land here and have privacy,” says Calantoni Unger. “Bucks County lends itself to that clientele.”

Politically things are changing too. Perhaps more notably, for the first time since the Bush years, there are now more registered Republicans in the county than there are registered Democrats. In 2020, one town in the county went to Donald Trump by just a two vote lead. While the county-wide Republican majority is small, with under 2,000 registered voters, there’s added weight to the county’s over 80,000 Independents. Politicians are noticing, too, of course. Both major parties have been fiercely campaigning. Kamala Harris held an October rally at Washington Crossing Historic Park, and—perhaps representative of the divide of the county itself—was joined by former Trump aides and GOP lawmakers. In September, J.D. Vance spoke at Bucks County’s Newtown Athletic Club’s Sports and Events Center. Whether or not they caught the attention of the new wave of residents will all be revealed come November.