Jeff Bezos might be the biggest snowbird of them all. In November 2023, the founder and former CEO of Amazon announced his move from Seattle to Miami, which was surprising at the time—until we learned how much he’d be saving in taxes thanks to Florida’s billionaire-friendly tax code.
Now, Bezos has bought his third mansion on South Florida’s Indian Creek Island, according to a Bloomberg report. The Miami home in this exclusive neighborhood, known as Billionaire Bunker, set him back $90 million. Bezos already owns $147 million worth of property there, split between two mansions. He also owns properties in Washington, Maui, and Beverly Hills.
But Bezos doesn’t plan to split his time between these three mansions. Instead, he’ll reportedly raze all three properties to build a megamansion, according to Realtor.com. He’ll live at the home he most recently purchased at 28 Indian Creek Island Road while construction is underway. The six-bedroom, 10-bathroom home is more than 15,000 square feet and was most recently sold in 1998 for just $2.5 million, according to Miami-Dade County property records.
Bezos and Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment from Fortune about the transaction.
Why Bezos moved to Florida in the first place
Bezos announced that the reason behind his cross-country move was to be closer to his parents—and that he and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, “love Miami,” according to an Instagram reel. He had lived in Seattle since 1994, when he started his e-commerce empire from his garage. Now he’s worth about $200 billion, according to Forbes.
Aside from family ties, it’s no wonder that Bezos would want to hang on to as much of his money as possible—especially after his blockbuster divorce from MacKenzie Scott, which cost him a whopping $38.3 billion. Bezos joins a roster of ultrawealthy figures who have made the move to Florida likely as a way to save more money in taxes.
In 2022, Washington’s capital gains tax had reached 7%, while Florida had no capital gains tax. Indeed, the difference between Washington’s and Florida’s capital gains tax rates had already saved Bezos almost $300 million as of mid-February, Fortune previously reported. That was just after Bezos sold 24 million Amazon shares, worth more than $4 billion. Since then, he’s offloaded a total of 50 million shares, netting him $8.5 billion.
“Florida is very, very favorable for someone like Jeff Bezos,” John Pantekidis, managing partner and general counsel at TwinFocus, which manages over $7 billion for ultra-high-net-worth families, told Fortune’s Alicia Adamczyk in mid-February. “They make it very cost effective for folks like Jeff to live down there. It’s ideal, it’s nirvana.”
Other figures who have flocked to Florida—and this Billionaire Bunker neighborhood in particular—include Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner. Aside from the financial break they get in taxes, Indian Creek Island residents enjoy a 300-acre gated community and a man-made barrier island, and there are only 41 properties in the neighborhood. That makes it “one of the wealthiest, private, most secure communities in Miami Beach, and the world,” according to Florida-based luxury real estate firm the Light Group.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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