With an interior decked out in sterile tones of corporate gray, the 1,540 sq ft rental bungalow at 10704 NE 28th St in Bellevue, Washington, is rather unremarkable compared to the imposing facades of its neighboring properties.

Unremarkable, too, is its asking price of $2.28 million, which places it in the more "affordable" end of this quiet suburban street.

However, with just three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a vast open-plan kitchen and living area, what the realtors want to draw attention to is the home's double garage - and not because of the space for "soccer mom" cars:

Jeff Bezos' first business lair is back on the market for the first time since 2019, and we don't know what's more depressing - that it sold back then for $1.5 million, up from $620,000 ten years earlier, or that the listers are banking on a bunch of Prime subscribers turning up to tour it. For the sake of fan service, there's a replica of the hand-sprayed "Amazon.com" sign seen in early pictures from Bezos' workplace.

As Luxury Launches notes: "The value of the house has appreciated by more than three-quarters of a million over a period of five years, giving a healthy return of 52 percent. 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."

Of course the property didn't always look so clinical. Bezos rented it three decades ago, and subsequent refits mean this isn't a shrine to the retail and cloud billionaire.

Some "Amazon lore" regarding the house is that Jeff and his co-workers needed desks so he went to a nearby Home Depot and bought doors, which he attached legs to, because they were cheaper. The property also once had a "larger-than-usual letterbox" so the online bookstore startup, as it once was, could handle the catalogs of stock it received.

But visitors should be aware that Amazon isn't a rags-to-riches fairytale. Bezos' parents invested nearly $250,000 in 1995, and who among us has folks willing and able to drop that amount on our harebrained schemes?

Amazon has since put bricks-and-mortar stores out of business, worked its warehouse staff to exhaustion, spied on us through smart speakers and Ring doorbells, and locked down the cloud computing market.

We'll let touring real estate agent Lisa Schwartz have the last word: "Small home, overpriced." ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/01/24/birthplace_amazon_for_sale/