virtual tour bill gates house

Bill Gates Built a Lakeside Paradise With His Massive Net Worth

Bill Gates’ house in Medina, Wash., is a 66,000-square-foot residence on five acres of lakeside land. Read more about the Microsoft co-founder’s home.

Feb. 5 2021, Published 3:34 p.m. ET

For decades now, Bill Gates ’ house has been in the spotlight. The Microsoft co-founder even included a walkthrough of the lakefront property on the CD-ROM included with his 1995 book The Road Ahead .

Dubbed Xanadu 2.0, the five-acre property sits on the shore of Lake Washington in Medina, Wash. Although the lavish residence is worth a nine-figure tally, it's just a sliver of Gates’ net worth.  

How long Bill Gates has owned his house

Gates purchased the lot in 1988 and it took hundreds of workers seven years to build the house, according to The Street . Architects James Cutler and Peter Bohlin designed the house in a Pacific Northwest lodge style with half a million board feet of lumber used. The construction work also included moving a preexisting house off the lot with a barge, and then fixing a runoff problem by building an artificial stream, as U.S. News & World Report explained in 1997.

What Bill Gates’ house includes

The 66,000-square-foot property includes a family wing (with an exercise room, a trampoline room, a swimming pool with an underwater music system), a guest wing (with a theater, a domed library, a formal dining room, and a reception hall), a guest house, an underground 10-car garage, a boathouse, a gatehouse, an outdoor spa, a multi-sport court, a putting green, and two boat docks, according to U.S. News & World Report .

All told, the property includes seven bedrooms, 24 bathrooms (including 10 full baths), six kitchens, and six fireplaces. Of course, the house is decked out in smart-home technology adjust lighting and other settings. Visitors wear electronic pins that track their location.

What Bill Gates’ house is worth and how much he paid for it

The lot cost Gates $2 million, while the house cost him $63 million, according to The Street . A Kings County Department of Assessments valuation in 2017 valued the property at around $127.5 million.

Between 1994 and 2003, Gates bought 11 surrounding properties—including nine houses—at a cost of nearly $14.4 million, according to the Chicago Tribune . “This is a family that holds privacy very dearly to them,” family spokesperson Joe Cerrell said at the time. “The properties create a buffer around the Gates home.”

Bill Gates’ net worth

Gates’ net worth is currently $123 billion, according to Forbes . That puts him behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and the family of LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault.

Gates and his wife, Melinda, are famed philanthropists. USA Today reported in 2020 that he has given away $50 billion to charity throughout his career. The couple also joined with Warren Buffett in 2010 to create The Giving Pledge , which is “an open invitation for billionaires, or those who would be if not for their giving, to publicly commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.”

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Peek inside Bill Gates' $124 million mansion Xanadu 2.0

Take a look at Bill Gates' new house

With a net worth of $82.2 billion, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is the richest man in America. It shouldn't be too surprising that one of the wealthiest people in the world also has an insanely extravagant home. It took Gates seven years and $63 million to build his Medina, Washington, estate, named "Xanadu 2.0" after the fictional home of Charles Foster Kane, the title character of "Citizen Kane." At 66,000 square feet, the home is absolutely massive, and it's loaded to the brim with high-tech details.

Natural surroundings to reduce hit

Xanadu 2.0 is an 'earth-sheltered' house, meaning that it's built into its surroundings to regulate temperature more efficiently.

Rotational artwork

The artwork on walls can be changed with just the touch of a button. Situated around the house are $80,000 worth of computer screens. Anyone can make the screens display their favorite paintings or photographs, which are stored on devices worth $150,000.

Pool with underwater music system

The 60-foot pool is in its own separate, 3,900-square-foot building — the large brown building in the photo above. People in the pool could swim underneath a glass wall to come up to a terrace area on the outside. There's also a locker room with four showers and two baths.

Trampoline room

No word on how big the trampoline is, but we can imagine it would be a fun alternative to your standard exercise routine. The exercise facilities total 2,500 square feet and also include a sauna, steam room, and separate men's and women's locker rooms.

Library full of books

The 2,100-square-foot library has a dome roof and two secret bookcases, including one that reveals a hidden bar. On the ceiling you'll find a quote from "The Great Gatsby" that reads: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." The library is also home to the Codex Leicester, a 16th-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Gates bought at auction for $30.8 million in 1994.

Gates' favourite maple tree

He reportedly became fond of a 40-year-old maple tree that grew close to the home's driveway. It's monitored by computer, and if at any point it becomes too dry, water is automatically pumped into it.

How the garage looks

There are several different garages at different points around the property. The most interesting one, however, is an underground cave made out of concrete and stainless steel. That garage alone can park 10 cars. Some of the concrete was purposely broken to give it a rough, "deconstructivist" look.

Sand on Gates' beach is imported from Caribbean

The lakefront shore contains sand that's delivered in large quantities by a barge from St. Lucia each year.

Enormous reception hall for 200 guests

The 2,300-square-foot hall could seat up to 150 people for a dinner party, or 200 people standing up at a cocktail event. A 6-foot-wide limestone fireplace dominates one wall, while another wall has a 22-foot-wide video screen.

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Bill Gates's $130 Million Mansion Xanadu 2.0 Boasts Tech That Tracks Inhabitants' Location

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Bill Gates is among the longest-reigning holders of the title “world's richest man.” The billionaire founded the tech empire Microsoft Corp. , which propelled him to his 12-figure net worth. And as many would expect from someone who founded one of the largest tech companies in existence, he spared no expense in building his own home.

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When you enter the home, you receive a key that stores your preferences for everything from room temperature to lighting and music. The key tracks your location, and as a security measure, if you are walking on the floor and no key is detected, you will set off the alarm system. The impressive mansion boasted a number of tech-forward features long before the modern-day smart home was imagined.

The Rise Of Everyday Smart Homes

Nearly everyone has some form of a smart feature in their homes today. Basic thermostats can be programmed to maintain certain temperatures throughout the day and night. And companies like Amazon.com Inc. , with their Alexa-brand products, can allow most basic smart homes to have speech-to-action features. Startups like RYSE even allow regular homes to have luxury products like smart shades and blinds for a fraction of the cost. RYSE is a popular startup that’s been featured on the reality TV show “Dragon’s Den” and recently launched an investment campaign that anyone can invest in .

Bill Gates’s Mansion Technology

Built on a large plot in Washington state, Xanadu 2.0 is surrounded by properties that Gates paid $14 million to ensure privacy. Inspired by Charles Foster Kane's home in “Citizen Kane,” The construction of this unique dwelling involved 300 laborers and took seven years. The home, valued at over $130 million today, cost $63 million to build because of the vast technology integrated into it.

Architects James Cutler and Peter Bohlin were behind the design of the Pacific lodge-themed house, while architect and designer Thierry Despont was appointed by Melinda Gates to design the interior. This grandiose home, made out of 500 Douglas fir trees and seven types of stones, was a bachelor's dream but reportedly a "bride's nightmare," according to Melinda Gates. The mansion, filled with state-of-the-art software and high-tech displays, gave an impression of living inside a video game, causing Melinda Gates to halt construction at one point.

Despite its massive size at 66,000 square feet, Xanadu 2.0 only has seven bedrooms but makes up for it with 24 bathrooms. But the real fascination lies in its cutting-edge technology. Upon visiting, guests are given a pinlike device that captures their personal preferences — from temperature and lighting to music. The mansion’s floors are embedded with sensors that instantly detect the presence of anyone without a pin.

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Technology isn't just for the inhabitants — it extends to the trees. A 40-year-old maple tree, Bill Gates's favorite, is under constant surveillance. If it becomes too dry, water is automatically pumped into it. But the amenities do not stop there. Xanadu 2.0 is a true pleasure dome with a trampoline room that has a 20-foot ceiling, six kitchens, a steam room, a sauna, a 25,000-square-foot gym and an artificial stream along the lake filled with sand delivered from St. Lucia.

One of the mansion's crowning jewels is the 2,100-square-foot library housing two secret bookcases, a hidden bar and a quote from “The Great Gatsby” inscribed on the ceiling. It also contains a 16th-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript — the “Codex Leicester” — that Gates bought for $30.8 million. Gates's youngest daughter Phoebe is particularly fond of this space, spending ample time reading and exploring its vast collection.

Though Melinda Gates had expressed her desire for a simpler, cozier home in the future before separating from Bill Gates, the couple's children have created memories in Xanadu 2.0. Their daughter Jennifer had her bridal shower organized at the mansion, turning it into a fairytalelike setting.

Xanadu 2.0 is so extravagant that in 2009, a tour of the mansion was auctioned off for $35,000 as part of Microsoft's annual charity drive. Despite its hefty price tag and arguably excessive use of technology, Xanadu 2.0 continues to stand as a symbol of the power of technology and a testament to the tech visionary that is Bill Gates.

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This article Bill Gates's $130 Million Mansion Xanadu 2.0 Boasts Tech That Tracks Inhabitants' Location originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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The $35,000 House Tour, Guided by Bill Gates

November 11, 2009 at 3:25 pm PT

If you want to buy Bill Gates’s house, you’ll need something like $150 million . But a tour of the place, guided by the Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder himself? That’s a mere $35,000.

That’s how much an unnamed bidder has ponied up, via a Microsoft charity auction, for a look-see at Gates’s place. After the tour of the 48,000-square-foot complex, which is located outside Seattle on the shores of Lake Washington, the winner gets to nosh on some appetizers, TechFlash reports.

A year ago, the same tour, of the same house, fetched just $8,600. Go figure.

All of that is out of your price range? I understand. Here, for us proles, is a free, “virtual” tour of the place:

[ Image credit: Tiktik ]

Tagged with: bidder , Bill Gates , charity auction, digital , House, Lake Washington, MediaMemo , Microsoft , Peter Kafka , Seattle , TechFlash , video , virtual tour

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