Karwai Tang/WireImage; Getty; Michael Walmsley; Insider
- Jeff Bezos announced earlier this year that he's moving to Miami with fiancée Lauren Sanchez.
- The Amazon founder leaves behind a collection of eight properties in ritzy Seattle suburbs.
- Five of the properties — one of which is currently for sale — have not been previously reported.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos injected some serious cash into Seattle's real estate market in 2019. On the heels of his high-profile divorce announcement, Bezos went on a $45 million homebuying bonanza — snatching up not one, not two, but four previously unreported properties in the ultra-exclusive Hunts Point enclave.
Those new purchases combined with his existing Seattle-area luxury properties — including a newly identified property bought in 2015 — means Bezos, who announced earlier this year that he is moving to Miami with fiancée Lauren Sanchez, will leave behind a Washington state real estate empire worth as much as $190 million, based on Zillow estimates.
Bezos spent $45 million on the four properties in the months after his divorce from novelist MacKenzie Scott in 2019. Business Insider discovered the properties by cross-referencing property tax records against addresses associated with Bezos' business ventures and other properties he is known to own.
Hunts Point is a peninsula east of Seattle with just 400 residents. It's been home to big names in business, including former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, members of the Nordstrom family, telecom magnate Craig McCaw, and former Costco CEO James Sinegal.
Through a trust, Bezos snapped up a waterfront Hunts Point estate for $37.5 million in April 2019. The home has 300 feet of coastline, a rooftop deck with a fireplace, and a glass bridge connecting to the two-story guesthouse.
Even before his 2019 shopping spree, Bezos already owned pricey nearby real estate on the shores of Lake Washington. He bought a $45 million waterfront estate in 2010, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, immediately adjacent to another two-home waterfront property Bezos bought for $10 million in 1998. The sprawling compound is located just south of Hunts Point in the Medina neighborhood, where Bill Gates lives up the street.
When he's in town, Bezos stays at the Hunts Point residence, neighbors say.
A representative for Jeff Bezos declined to comment.
A trio of homes for the help
The three other homes Bezos purchased in 2019 are more modest, relatively speaking. All three are within a mile of his new waterfront estate; the priciest sold for $3.3 million, while the least expensive went for $1.8 million. One of the homes, a four-bedroom, is currently for sale for $4.4 million. (Business Insider twice asked the listing agent for a tour but received no response. The agent, Tere Foster, has represented Bezos on other transactions.)
Andrew Webb / Clarity Northwest Photography
Similarly, in 2015, Bezos purchased a comparatively smaller property across the street from his huge Medina compound for $3.9 million, another previously unreported purchase. The home was purchased through a trust managed by the same law firm, and with the same property tax address, as the other Medina properties Bezos and Scott purchased before their divorce, according to King County records. It's unclear whether Bezos now controls those properties or if they went to Scott in the divorce, records of which are not public.
All four of Bezos' 2019 properties were similarly purchased through trusts and LLCs that mask the owner's identity, but they send their property tax bills to a PO box also used by Blue Origin, Bezos' rocket startup, according to county records.
Broker Rick Moux said he wasn't aware the LLC that purchased a Hunts Point property he listed in 2019 was linked to Jeff Bezos until Business Insider asked him about it. The broker representing the buyer told Moux that the client would walk if Moux didn't lower the price by $100,000, Moux recalled. Moux refused, and the buyer purchased the property anyways. "I guess I got Jeff for $100,000," the agent said, laughing.
Four Hunts Point residents, who asked not to be named, told Business Insider that Bezos' staff and security live in those smaller properties. One resident said they had spoken to the people living in all three properties, who confirmed in conversations that they worked for the Amazon founder.
"Great commute," this resident said.
That resident added that they routinely saw Bezos' security staff working out in the driveway of one of the homes, which is located next to the only entrance and exit to the exclusive peninsula and is studded with cameras, BI confirmed by visiting the property. Public records suggest two Gavin de Becker & Associates security agents have ties to the home. Bezos is known to employ the firm for his security detail.
A second Hunts Point resident, who confirmed that the people who had resided in the home were Bezos' security detail, added that the guards were pleasant neighbors who appeared to take yard care seriously.
At another property, known by neighbors as the "chef house," employees cook food and deliver it to Bezos' main residence in a "golf cart with a warming oven," a third resident said. No one at the property responded to a knock on the door, but from the doorstep, BI could see a large number of sheet pans and other cookware stacked in the kitchen.
When Sanchez is in town, she's seen walking around the neighborhood, the third resident added.
The former Amazon CEO, who is the 24th-largest landowner in the US according to The Land Report, also owns a massive ranch near the town of Van Horn, Texas, multiple apartments in Manhattan, the largest home in Washington, DC, a record-breaking Los Angeles estate, and a $78 million home in Hawaii.
His most recent purchases — neighboring $79 million and $68 million properties — are on Indian Creek, a man-made island off of Miami. Known as the billionaire bunker, the heavily guarded island is home to the ultrarich, including Carl Icahn, Tom Brady, and Ivanka Trump.
The new digs are a nice set-up for the second-richest man on the planet. The only problem? Bezos' yacht, a $500 million vessel called Koru, which is the largest sailing yacht in the world, is reportedly so large it's forced to slum it amongst oil tankers at a Florida port.