Billionaire Jeff Bezos sold one of his Seattle mansions for $63 million in March, making real estate history in Washington with the highest residential sale in state history. In an area long attracting the country's top wealth, the sale only adds to the Hunts Point neighborhood's storied history of being an enclave for those with deep pockets.
Bezos sold his mansion at 4053 Hunts Point Road to an undisclosed buyer masked by Cayan Investments LLC, according to King County property records.
The sale beat the record set by Gurpreet Singh, CEO of the Bellevue-headquartered healthcare data company Edifecs. Singh purchased a house in the same Hunts Point neighborhood for $60 million in 2021.
'If you're rich, you want to be on Lake Washington'
Built in 2003, Bezos' former two-story single-family residence overlooks Lake Washington and is nestled on 3 acres with a 300-foot view of the water and forest in the far distance. The 10,940-square-foot house has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a powder room, a bamboo garden and a dock.
"If you're rich, you want to be on Lake Washington," said Michael Luis, a third-generation resident of Seattle's Medina neighborhood and city councilor for Medina. Luis has written several history books on the ritziest pockets of Seattle, including Medina and Hunts Point.
Medina and neighboring Hunts Point landed on the map for the well-to-do at the turn of the last century. The areas had long been the go-to spot for vacationers, sitting across from Seattle on Lake Washington. A streetcar system at the turn of the century sparked renewed interest. Men deposited their families in their mansions and made the 15-minute commute to Seattle. Later, the opening of Interstate 90 in 1940 connected the two bodies of land and allowed a more convenient route between home and work.
"That changed everything," Luis said. "The area along the water had been prized as prime real estate."
Area has long attracted the uber-wealthy
The Hunts Point neighborhood is within a 15-minute drive of the corporate offices for Amazon, Google and Microsoft. It’s also a short distance from Bellevue Square, one of the community’s largest malls, with 200 shops and restaurants. The area has long attracted the uber-wealthy, including former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer, Nordstrom’s heir John Nordstrom and Costco co-founder and former CEO James Sinegal.
The house sits on a land mass jutting out from the eastern shore between Evergreen and Yarrow points. The community is one of many within the 98004 ZIP code, where the annual median household income hovers at $176,367, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 decennial survey. That's 85% higher than the annual median household income for the state of $94,952.
“This is the most expensive area in the state,” said Tere Foster, a real estate agent with Compass. “If people can afford it, they know it’s the neighborhood to move into. If I had enough money, it’s the area where I would live.”
The sale far exceeds recent transactions in the 98004 ZIP Code: It was five times higher than the one for the 7,975-square-foot residence at 3252 Hunts Point Road, which went for $12.5 million this month.
Bezos' sale "will help the Seattle market with future pricing,” said Helena Chen, a real estate agent with eXp Realty in Seattle. “Right now, the [sales] market isn’t very strong, but now it’s $63 million. That means there’s room to grow.”
Bezos bought the home from Barney Ebsworth
Bezos bought the home in 2019 for $37.5 million from the estate of Barney Ebsworth, a globetrotter, businessman, early investor in Build-A-Bear Workshop, and one of the founding chairmen of Royal Cruise Line, an affiliate of Royal Caribbean Group. Ebsworth hired Seattle-based Olson Kundig to design the residence with the purpose of showcasing an art collection he bought over his lifetime. Olson Kundig has designed a range of projects, from the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences in Telluride, Colorado, to The LeBron James Innovation Center at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and student housing for one of the country's oldest women's colleges, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
At the time of Ebsworth’s passing in 2018, his residence was known for housing a collection of noteworthy artwork, including Edward Hopper’s “Chop Suey” painting, which later sold for nearly $92 million at auction, one of the highest prices fetched for an American artwork at auction.
The community has its own local town governance. Incorporated in 1955, it is one of the smallest municipalities, with about 400 residences. Long before it was a haven for the area’s wealth, its first inhabitants included the Sammamish Native American tribe.
By 1870, Leigh S.J. Hunt, owner and publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, owned property there and named the area after himself. He's said to be one of the first people to have built a mansion in Washington's uber-wealthy pockets: Clyde Hill, Medina, Yarrow Point, and Hunts Point, according to The Seattle Times.
While Bezos still has residences in Seattle, he calls South Florida his home base. In the summer of 2023, Bezos purchased a single-family home in Miami’s Indian Creek, an island nicknamed "Billionaire Bunker." He’s bought another two residences on the island since then. The move was a return to his roots for the businessman, who grew up in Miami, attending Palmetto High School in Pinecrest, and whose parents continue to live in Miami-Dade County.