What Family Office Services Fit $15 Million to $100 Million Families

A private single-family office generally requires $100 million or more in assets to justify its cost, with the operating budget typically starting around $1 million a year. A family with $15 million to $100 million sits in a specific middle zone: past the point where a standard advisory relationship covers everything, but below the level where building a private office makes economic sense. The question for that zone isn’t “do I qualify for a family office,” it’s which specific services actually earn their cost at this size, and which ones are overkill until the number is meaningfully larger.

This article covers which family-office-level services generally fit at the $15 million to $100 million range, which ones typically don’t yet, and how families in this zone usually access the services that do fit without building a private office of their own.

What Actually Changes Between $15 Million and $100 Million

The $15 million to $100 million range is not a single tier. A family with $15 million and a straightforward portfolio has different needs than a family with $80 million, multiple business interests, and real estate across several states. Industry data on family office structures places multi-family offices in roughly the $25 million to $100 million band, and virtual or outsourced models as low as $10 million, both well below the $100 million-plus level generally associated with a private single-family office. What changes across that range is less the presence of complexity and more its degree: more entities, more advisors to coordinate, and a bigger cost to getting any one piece wrong.

The Services That Generally Fit at This Level

Coordinated investment management. A single point of accountability for asset allocation, manager selection, and rebalancing across accounts, rather than several disconnected relationships reporting differently and on different schedules.

Tax planning coordination. Working proactively with a CPA on asset location, timing of gains and losses, and charitable strategies, rather than a once-a-year filing conversation disconnected from the investment decisions made throughout the year.

Estate plan coordination. Making sure wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations reflect the family’s actual asset base and stay aligned with an attorney’s work, particularly after a liquidity event or other change that outdates existing documents.

Consolidated reporting. A single, clear view of net worth across accounts, entities, and asset classes, instead of piecing that picture together from several separate statements.

Coordination around a liquidity event or business sale. For many families in this range, the $15 million to $100 million threshold was crossed through a single event, a business sale, an executive compensation vesting, an inheritance, and that event itself often creates the specific planning gaps a coordinated relationship is built to close.

The Services That Generally Don’t Fit Yet

Dedicated in-house staff. A private single-family office’s fixed costs, commonly cited around $1 million a year, are largely staffing and infrastructure. At $15 million to $100 million, that overhead typically consumes too large a share of the portfolio to justify hiring employees dedicated to one family.

Full family governance infrastructure. Formal family councils, multi-generational education programs, and dedicated governance staff are more common once a family office is managing complex, multi-generational structures. Below $100 million, the same goals, a shared understanding among heirs, clear decision-making, are usually addressed directly through the estate planning process rather than a separate governance function.

Concierge and lifestyle services. Property management, travel coordination, and similar services sometimes bundled into a private office are generally a function of scale and dedicated staffing that isn’t cost-effective to build for one family below the point where a private office itself makes sense.

How Families in This Range Typically Access the Services That Do Fit

The realistic path for most families in this range is not building a private office; it’s an outsourced or coordinated relationship that delivers the services that matter without the fixed overhead that doesn’t yet make sense. A single fiduciary advisory relationship, one firm managing investments directly and coordinating with the family’s existing CPA and attorney, generally delivers the five services described above without requiring a private staff. Our guide to how the outsourced family office model works covers this structure in more depth.

Hypothetical Illustration

This is a hypothetical situation used for education purposes only. The information does not represent a current client, and the results shown are hypothetical — they do not reflect actual results achieved by any client and are not a guarantee of future performance. Actual results will vary based on an individual’s specific circumstances.

Assume a family with $40 million in investable assets, following the sale of a business two years earlier, holding accounts across three custodians, a revocable trust drafted before the sale, and a CPA who prepares an annual return without visibility into investment decisions made during the year. Coordinating those pieces under a single advisory relationship, aligning the trust with the current asset base, sharing tax-relevant investment decisions with the CPA proactively, and consolidating reporting across the three custodians, addresses the specific gaps created by the liquidity event without adding the fixed costs of a private office the family’s asset level doesn’t yet support.

Approaches at a Glance

A general comparison of common approaches, not a recommendation for any individual’s circumstances.

Where This Fits for a Naples-Area Family

A Southwest Florida family in this range often arrives here through a business sale, and the move to Florida itself, and its interaction with a former state’s tax rules, frequently overlaps with the same window when the family’s advisory structure needs to be reassessed. Our guide to how Florida relocation affects business sale planning covers the residency side of that timing; this article addresses what typically needs to happen with the advisory relationship itself once the proceeds are in hand.

When Coordination Alone Is Not the Full Answer

A coordinated advisory relationship addresses the five services described above, but it does not resolve several other questions:

It does not replace the attorney or CPA relationship. A coordinating advisor works alongside a family’s attorney and CPA; it is not a substitute for either, and complex trust drafting or tax return preparation still requires those licensed professionals directly.

It does not eliminate the need to periodically reassess the structure itself. A family growing from $20 million toward $100 million may eventually outgrow a single coordinated relationship in favor of a multi-family office, just as a family office itself eventually gets reassessed at much higher levels.

It does not address non-financial family governance on its own. Shared understanding among heirs and clear decision-making processes are typically built through the estate planning conversation itself, not assumed to follow automatically from good investment coordination.

It does not substitute for the specific expertise a genuinely complex holding, an operating business, cross-border assets, or a large concentrated position, may still require beyond what a generalist coordinating relationship provides.