Report: Bill and Melinda Gates buy $43M Del Mar home

The home at 2808 Ocean Front was purchased for $43 million and makes it the second highest home purchase in San Diego County history.

The Del Mar sale is one of the biggest in San Diego County history

By Phillip Molnar

Del Mar Times

April 22, 2020 5:33 PM PT

Bill and Melinda Gates have purchased a home in Del Mar for $43 million, said The Wall Street Journal.

The sale of the massive beachfront property marks the second-biggest home sale in San Diego County history. Ironically, the biggest was for the same house for $48.2 million in 2007.

Real estate agents involved in the sale, as well as spokespeople for the famous pair, did not respond to requests for comment or declined to name the buyers. However, property records show the sale was made to a limited liability company based in the Gates’ hometown of Seattle and they have a history of purchasing property in the area.

In 2014 the couple purchased weight-loss icon Jenny Craig’s 299-acre horse farm in Rancho Santa Fe for $18 million.

The Del Mar property at 2808 Ocean Front has 120 feet of ocean frontage and was built by architect and designer Ken Ronchetti in 1999.

It had previously been owned by Madeleine Pickens, the ex-wife of Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens. Her purchase of the property is a bit complicated. She bought it for $35 million but the total grew to $48.2 million when three adjacent parcels were added to the deal.

The home is 5,800 square feet, has six bedrooms, a glass tile pool, imported limestone flooring and a 10-person hot tub overlooking a fire pit. It also comes with a two-bedroom guest house.

Bill and Melinda Gates face a press conference at the 40th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday Jan. 29, 2010.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $103.4 billion, said Forbes. He is now most visible with his charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The organization has worked to eradicate Ebola and focused on other causes in the developing world. Recently, the foundation has committed more than $250 million to fight COVID-19.

Del Mar has been home to some of the most expensive home sales in recent years, eclipsing Rancho Santa Fe as a place for biggest price tags. Of the five most expensive sales in 2019, four were in Del Mar.

The only non-Del Mar house to make the top 5 last year was the iconic Razor House in La Jolla purchased by singer Alicia Keys for $20.8 million.

— Phillip Molnar is a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune