← All 50 obscenities
Lot 4/5 · Mansions & Palaces1997
#4 Most Expensive
The ItemXanadu 2.0, Bill Gates' Estate

It took seven years and $127 million to build the house that software money made possible.

~$127,000,000 (build cost)

The Item

Named after the pleasure palace in Citizen Kane, Gates's roughly 66,000-square-foot compound reportedly includes a 2,500-square-foot library, a trampoline room with a 20-foot ceiling, and an early custom home-automation system.

The automation adjusts lighting and temperature as guests move through the house — futuristic for its time and still notable decades later.

Why It's Obscene

Construction alone reportedly ran about $127 million in the late 1990s, and the estate's current market value is estimated well above that today.

The man who built the software empire also built one of software money's most expensive physical monuments.

Xanadu 2.0, Bill Gates' EstateVerified · Public record
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