Need more privacy? Buy out your neighbors.

[SpotcheckBilly]

Gates Buys Nearby Property for Privacy
Fri Jan 16, 3:12 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!



MEDINA, Wash. - What happens when Bill and M@elinda Gates want their privacy? They buy up the neighborhood.



Over the past decade, representatives for the world's richest man and his wife have purchased 11 properties, including nine houses surrounding their massive lakefront estate in this Seattle suburb.


"This is a family that holds privacy very dearly to them," Gates family spokesman Joe Cerrell told The Seattle Times. "The properties create a buffer around the Gates home."


Gates, the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp., has lived in a $110 million home on the five-acre estate since 1997.


According to property records reviewed by the newspaper, 4.2 acres of adjoining properties were acquired for Gates between 1994 and 2003 at a cost of nearly $14.4 million.


"There's not too many non-Gates property owners left here," said Herb Schwartz, a former insurance executive who moved into the neighborhood 13 years ago.


Neighbors say Gates' employees occupy a number of the homes. At least two are still occupied by people who sold their property to Gates in 2003.


But not everyone has welcomed the changes. Paulla Upjohn, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1951, said Gates' purchases have caused more traffic on the narrow streets.


"I have been very happy with them as people," she said. "But it's changed the neighborhood."

He could probably buy Seattle, if he wanted to.
:biggrinfl

[RandomNY]

Why woyuld GATES buying all the land in one spot create more traffic? Wouldn't it make less traffic since he and his wife, and a few employees are the only ones living there?

[Sinn Fein]

On my parents' street there is something we call "The Compound" which is two identical houses next to each other, that are together behind an eight-foot fence on all four sides with green/white privacy slats and barbed-wire on top. The fence has gates for the driveways which are padlocked all the time. It's been like that for close to 30 years. Nobody in the neighborhood really knows anything about the people who own the place, outside of the fact that they constantly block the street when they are coming and going because they have to stop their cars in the street to lock/unlock the gate each time.

The one house is empty, and has only been used for storage since new. The other house is the one they live in. They used to have attack dogs in there, and back in '76 they got out, and a few people in the neighborhood were bitten. The police SWAT team came in, hunted them down and blew them away. I remember that vividly, even though I was only five at the time. The barbed-wire used to be electrified, and I would see dead birds on the ground all the time in front of the place when I would walk past on my way to/from my bus stop when I was a kid.

A few years back, they tried to sell the empty house, but no one bought it. First of all, they wanted way too much for it, especially since it was behind the monster fence with the other house and there were no plans to change that. Also, EACH INTERIOR door had a key lock and each one was different. To get around inside the place you had to carry a big-ass ring of keys like a janitor.

My insurance agent told me that the guy tried to sell both houses to him, saying one was new, the other used and the guy was kinda strange.

The house next-door to this disaster is for sale, and has been for sale for like 2 months. In this neighborhood, houses usually sell in less than a week. It's a nice house, and I'd want it if it wasn't next to that monstrosity. The seller is gonna have to let it go cheap.

It's grandfathered in, I guess because there is no way in hell the township zoning board would allow this type of thing today.

[hairtussler]

what a rip off artist hasnt the jokeman been trying to do this for years with his shanties:loll2: