In areas surrounding high-tech communities, upscale suburbs are known affectionately as nerdistans, and their inhabitants as millionerds, entreprenerds, dot snots, or (if they are very young) sneaker millionaires.

To be sure, for most young people, rejection has a way of modulating dreams and making the dreamers tougher, more skeptical, less beamish. To older dot-commers, the promise of easy riches rings hollow. "I have friends who were millionaires for a week and a half," says Von Ronne. "I was not a sneaker millionaire — I was in the store but never got to try on the shoes."

Those fears are miles away from the streets of Brookline, Mass., as agent Debbie Gordon steers her Jeep between listings, her two cell phones at the ready. Lately Gordon has been selling million-dollar homes to sneaker millionaires, her nickname for Boston's young fund managers and silicon CEOs.