Real estate mogul and Million Dollar Listing New York star Fredrik Eklund is clued in on all the hot trends in high net-worth housing. Serving celebrity clients including Sex and The City icon Sarah Jessica Parker, musician Nick Jonas, and popstar Jennifer Lopez, the agent delivers on whatever amenities they’re looking for.
And the new must-have for wealthy homeowners is at-home biohacking: luxury pads complete with infrared saunas, IV drips, cold plunges, and hot tubs.
“Celebrities have their own things because they can be weird, very specific about things including privacy. There are certain trends that come and go,” Eklund tells Fortune. “Right now—and it’s been going on for a very long time, of course—is the wellness trend.”
Rich people espousing the benefits of morning cold plunges and sauna steams is no new fad—American entrepreneurs like Dave Asprey and flamboyant venture capitalist Bryan Johnson have been strong proponents of “biohacking” in their quest for trillion-dollar success. And many business leaders including Square’s Jack Dorsey, philanthropist Melinda French Gates, and food TV icon Gui Fieri can’t deny the benefits of a good cold soak. But the push for wellness has gone beyond the gym or wellness spa—Eklund says that his wealthy clientele want these perks in the comfort of their own homes.
“Especially in a city like New York or Miami, it’s in the building or in the compound. But now it’s gone further, because now people want it in their home, like in the apartment,” Eklund explains. “We’re doing a building now which has cold plunge, hot tubs, and even infrared inside the apartments—not only in the common gym of the building, or in the spa.”
Having these amenities at home requires some cashing out—saunas can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, while quality cold plunges run up a $13,000 check. Eklund even notes that one of the luxury residential buildings he sold out a few years ago, 40 Bleeker St. in Manhattan, was one of the first properties he worked with that had these amenities. It was originally a retail space, but Eklund saw an opportunity for his lavish clients to have headache-saving IV drips right in the building.
“The trend is intensifying, which is great,” Eklund adds. “We purposely picked that tenant so that, let’s say you’re hungover, you just go down from your penthouse to the ground floor and you get a vitamin IV [drip]. This is a few years ago, but that’s a good example of what people are looking for right now.”
The popularity of CEO and celebrity “biohacking”: cold plunges, IV drips, and saunas
Johnson has become a poster child for rich individuals who want to live forever—and other CEOs see the potential of wellness activities in boosting their performance.
In true Nordic fashion, the CEO of $1.8 trillion bank Norges Bank Investment Management, Nicolai Tangen, wakes up at 6 a.m. and starts his day with an exercise. He then immediately follows up his workout with a dip in the ocean and sauna session—calling his steaming ritual “a key to happiness.” And Jason Buechel, leading $9.5 billion grocery giant Whole Foods, has lived by a wellness routine for years that he calls a “great protocol hack”: 30 minutes inside an infrared sauna, followed by two to three rounds of alternating three-minute cold and hot plunges, and ending with a cold plunge.
“While the cold is definitely painful while you’re doing it,” Buechel told Fortune last year, “your body feels amazing afterward.”
Another grocery executive swears by his daily wellness rituals that he can complete in the comfort of his own home. Thrive Market cofounder and CEO Nick Green lives by his business’ mantra for people to live healthier lives—for him, that means de-stressing with cold plunges right outside his bedroom.
“I’ve also gotten into hot-cold therapy,” Green told Fortune in 2022. “I installed a barrel sauna and an ice bath on the balcony of our bedroom and try to do 20 minutes hot, and 5 minutes cold, two to three times per week.”
