This three-bedroom property, located on a quiet suburban street east of Seattle, is the very house where Jeff Bezos founded Amazon three decades ago, and it is available for sale. Spotted by Geekwire, the 1,540 square-foot, single-family house is listed for just $2.28 million, despite the history of this place, which is quite surprising. In fact, it’s one of the most affordable properties on sale in the neighborhood. However, the listing team made sure the prospective buyers were well aware it was the house that Bezos rented in the early 1990s to start Amazon. It includes creating a life-sized replica of the famous blue Amazon.com sign that can be seen behind Bezos in many photos from the early days of the company.
The house, located at 10704 NE 28th St. in Bellevue, Washington, previously changed hands in 2019 when it was sold for $1.5 million, up from $620,000 a decade prior. It was still surprisingly affordable back then as the house next door had sold for $3.1 million, while other nearby properties went for anywhere between $1.3 million and $2.6 million. Yet, the value of the house has appreciated by more than three-quarters of a million over a period of 5 years, giving a healthy return of 52%. Despite the pandemic adversely affecting the housing market in large cities, real estate prices have been continuously soaring higher in Seattle thanks to the stellar growth of Amazon and other companies operating out of the area.
“Welcome to the birthplace of Amazon. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in the humble garage of this West Bellevue house in 1994,” the listing reads. Originally built in 1954, the listing notes that the home was “meticulously rebuilt in 2001 to offer modern comfort and style.”
It features an enormous great room, granite & maple kitchen, and a fully fenced backyard with a big party deck and a hot tub. However, the renovation has made it difficult to recognize the location of Bezos’s office and the exact spots where he was photographed in many of the historic pictures. Nevertheless, the listing agents have put a small collection of framed photos and newspaper articles next to the replica sign of Amazon.
The efforts made by Sea to Sky Realty, the listing company, surely have worked as it attracted a of attention. Learning about the historical significance of the house, many people showed up, some to get pictures clicked next to the Amazon sign and the work desk next to it. This makes us wonder whether Bezos himself should buy the property and restore it to its original design.
After all, it’s the same house from where Amazon grew from being a tiny e-commerce startup to one of the biggest multinational companies. Very few people believed in Bezos when he started Amazon in 1994, except for his parents and siblings, who were part of a small group of people who invested early in the company. The meteoric rise of Amazon turned them all into some of the richest people on this planet.
