See full version: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates have huge Washington home to split up in divorce
The home’s foundation was built on concrete piers with tiebacks and steel reinforcement to survive earthquakes, U.S. News reported. The home was partially built into a hillside for energy efficiency. Refurbished support beams salvaged from a mill, along with 500,000 board feet of lumber, were used in its construction.
Construction on their Medina, Washington, home nicknamed "Xanadu 2.0" began before their 1994 wedding, and they weren’t able to move in until 1997. The main mansion is more than 48,160 square feet with views of Lake Washington, the Seattle skyline and the Olympic Mountains, according to property records.
However, that may not have been enough of a woman’s touch. Melinda Gates told The New York Times Magazine in 2019 that she was "really looking forward to the day that Bill and I live in a 1,500-square-foot house." here
FOX News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin discusses how the power couple's split will affect their philanthropy more
In 1991, Bill Gates told a local TV reporter about building his custom home, which was then estimated to cost $10 million. The years-long project cost closer to $60 million. Today, property records show its value is appraised at more than $130 million and the annual property tax bill tops $1.1 million. more
The pair began dating in 1984, after meeting at a computer conference, Time reported in 1997. more
“And we marvel about how, as two young overachievers, we began a great adventure on the fringes of a little-known industry and it landed us at the center of an amazing universe.” here
When the Microsoft co-founder met his future wife at a trade show in New York in 1987, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. [links]
Bill reportedly even consulted his ex, Winblad, before proposing and made a pros and cons list about whether to commit.
The Hyde Park house, which is more than a century old, has been completely rebuilt, with only the exterior shell remaining. It has 4½ baths, a new roof, new windows, new wood floors, video surveillance with five exterior cameras, eight-foot doors on the first and second floors, a kitchen with quartz countertops, built-in Viking appliances and custom cabinets, a breakfast area off the kitchen, heated floors in the rec room on the ground floor, two new furnaces, two 260-square-foot brick terraces and a new brick garage that holds 3½ cars. more
Listing agent Shirley Walker of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff said she was not aware of the identity of the buyer of the Hyde Park house. The agent who represented the buyer, Dana Gerstenschlager, initially said that he was unaware that the Gateses were the buyers and claimed that the buyers were from a different Western state than Washington. In a subsequent interview, however, Gerstenschlager declined to comment altogether. here
Representatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did not respond to multiple inquiries for comment. [links]
Bill and Melinda Gates' residential real estate portfolio includes their principal home — a 50,050-square-foot mansion in Medina, Wash. — as well as mansions in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. and in Indian Wells, Calif., among other properties. In recent years, they also bought an entire street in Wellington, Fla. for a reported $37 million.
“His womanizing was well known, although not well reported,” Wallace wrote, singling out the Times for not wanting “the flow of information to stop” from the computer guru.
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And Gates’ bachelor lifestyle didn’t end when he started dating future wife Melinda French in 1988, Wallace wrote in the biography, one of two he has penned about Gates.
The Microsoft co-founder’s wild lifestyle was well known among his inner circle — but newspapers like the New York Times hid the unflattering reports to continue getting “spoon-fed stories,” James Wallace wrote in the 1997 biography, “Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace.”