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Bill Gates’s stated reasons for keeping his Medina, Washington, home are personal: he likes the houses he has, and his children enjoy coming back to the family home. In a 2025 interview with The Times, he called his Seattle-area house “gigantic” and said, “I can’t” downsize. Later reports about nearby properties do not show that he sold or left Xanadu 2.0, which 2026 coverage still identifies as his main home.
Why Gates says he is keeping his home
Gates’s explanation was not about investment returns or a real-estate strategy. He said he likes the houses he has, and that his children like to return to the family home. In the quotation reproduced by Fortune on January 29, 2025, he said: “My house in Seattle, I admit, is gigantic. My sisters have downsized. I can’t. I like the houses I have.” He added that his children liking to come back was “a luxury.”
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He also said he does not cook or make his own bed, but does not mind if the bed is left unmade. That detail was part of his explanation of how he lives in the house, not a claim that household staff or services are the reason he stays.
What Xanadu 2.0 is—and where it is
Xanadu 2.0 is Gates’s estate in Medina, Washington, overlooking Lake Washington—not in Seattle proper. Architectural Digest described the roughly 66,000-square-foot estate as his main home in 2026. The same coverage notes features including a trampoline room, a swimming pool with an underwater sound system, and a domed library.
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Gates has used the estate as his main home since the 1990s. Although his children enjoy returning, the 2025 Fortune account described him as an empty nester; his comment does not mean they still live there.
What the reported $2 million and $130 million figures mean
The figures attached to the estate refer to different things, and should not be treated as interchangeable sale prices.
| Figure | What it refers to | Source and timing |
|---|---|---|
| $2 million | Reported price Gates paid for the lakeside property in 1988; it is not the all-in cost of the finished mansion. | Fortune, 2025 |
| About $63 million | Fortune’s reported estimate of Gates’s spending on the mansion and renovations. | Fortune, 2025 |
| $130 million | Fortune’s estimate of the estate’s value—not a confirmed sale price. | Fortune, 2025 |
| Roughly $132 million | A 2025 appraisal value for the main residence, as described in a later Fortune report. This is an appraisal, distinct from Fortune’s earlier estimate. | Fortune, 2026 report |
Fortune also reported that the estate took seven years to complete. In a 2008 Fortune interview, Melinda French Gates characterized it as “a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare” and reportedly considered not moving in. That was her description of the house, not Bill Gates’s stated reason for keeping it.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Did Gates later sell or leave the mansion?
Later property coverage adds context to the 2025 “can’t downsize” remark, but does not establish that Gates sold Xanadu 2.0 or moved away. In February 2026, Fortune reported that a 2,800-square-foot neighboring home—bought for about $1 million in 1995—had been listed for $4.8 million. Fortune’s follow-up said a representative confirmed Gates did not own certain other properties previously attributed to him.
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Realtor.com reported on February 19, 2026, that a buyer had been found for the neighboring house. That report is not confirmation that the transaction closed; it also said records indicated Gates still owned at least two nearby homes and several vacant parcels. Architectural Digest’s 2026 overview continued to identify Xanadu 2.0 as his main home. The distinction is between changes involving surrounding holdings and a reported sale of the main residence: the cited coverage supports the former, not the latter.
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