• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just sold his Seattle mansion. He and fiancé Lauren Sanchez moved there about 18 months ago and own $237 million worth of property there. The Seattle mansion sale was the biggest on record for Washington state.

Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos just sold his Seattle mansion after nearly two years of living in Miami with his fiancée Lauren Sanchez. It’s the most expensive home ever sold in Washington state, the Puget Sound Business Journal first reported last week, at an eye-popping $63 million, property records show. The property was sold to Cayan Investments LLC.

Bezos, who is worth more than $200 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, bought the 9,420-square-foot property in 2019, the same year as his divorce from novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. He bought it for $37.5 million, so he made more than $25 million from the sale. 

The sprawling mansion sits on 3.27 acres in the elite neighborhood of Hunts Point in King County, Wash., which overlooks Lake Washington. It’s just about 7 miles away from Amazon headquarters in downtown Seattle and other major tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. The average home price there is nearly $8 million, according to Zillow. Home prices in Seattle have been rising ever since the city became a tech hub, and now it’s one of the priciest housing markets in the country.

Bezos’ former Washington home has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, an elevator, massive walk-in closet, a secondary kitchen, a rooftop terrace, and a glass walkway that connects the property to a two-story guesthouse. The mansion stretches more than 300 feet across Lake Washington’s waterfront.

According to property records, the home was previously owned by late art collector and luxury travel executive Barney A. Ebsworth, who was also one of the initial investors in Build-A-Bear.

Bezos and Sanchez made the move from Seattle to Miami about a year and a half ago, claiming the reason for the change was to be closer to his parents. 

“My parents have always been my biggest supporters,” he posted to his Instagram account, adding that his aerospace company Blue Origin is increasingly shifting operations to Cape Canaveral in Florida. Sanchez recently took a Blue Origin flight to space with Katy Perry and Gayle King. 

Seattle had also been Bezos’ home ever since he started Amazon in 1994.

“I’ve lived in Seattle longer than I’ve lived anywhere else and have so many amazing memories here,” Bezos said in his Instagram post announcing his move. “Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart.”

Meanwhile, it’s also been speculated Bezos made the move to Miami to avoid paying a capital gains tax. In March 2023, a Washington State Supreme Court decided to uphold a 7% tax on capital gains, which would’ve become increasingly costly for Bezos.

“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, previously told Fortune’s Alicia Adamczyk. “They make it very cost effective for folks like Jeff to live down there. It’s ideal, it’s nirvana.”

Now he and Sanchez live in a three-mansion compound in the highly exclusive Indian Creek neighborhood in Miami, also known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” Bezos bought his latest Miami mansion in 2024 for $90 million, bringing the total value of property he owns in Indian Creek to about $237 million. The latest property he purchased is a six-bedroom, nine-bathroom mansion spanning more than 12,000 square feet. There are only roughly 40 homes on the island, according to Robb Report.

Other celebrities including Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner have lived in this 300-acre gated community, which is “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

Joining the gig economy used to be considered an “alternative” career path—but it’s fast becoming the norm. By 2027, half of the developed world’s workers will be part of the gig economy, according to a new report from Ogilvy. While it was initially a combination of advancements in technology and corporate cost cutting that drove workers to freelance and side-hustle jobs, the motivation for independent work has evolved. 

“Young people are really driven to take control over their own work life balance and craft their own career and narrative,” Reid Litman, global consulting director at Ogilvy and co-author of the report, tells Fortune. “They don’t trust the old system.”  

Members of Gen Z have come of age in an era marked by uncertainty and turbulence, from pandemics to political unrest to mass layoffs in various sectors. Traditional education is not the guarantee of a stable career that it once was, with many employers finding entry level candidates lacking the necessary skills to begin their ascent on the corporate ladder. 

A critical subset of the growing gig economy is the community of creators, influencers, independent entrepreneurs and consultants, a category that includes “anyone who publicizes or monetizes their own persona or skill set,” according to Litman. Content creation, once seen as a frivolous hobby, has become more and more lucrative, and the creator economy is set to reach $529 billion by 2030, according to a report from Coherent Market Insights. 

In order to stay competitive and not lose future talent pipelines, companies should learn to embrace Gen Z’s modern approach to work. Litman argues that today’s employers frequently use the negative associations with Gen Z, such as high turnover rate, as justification for why they shouldn’t invest in them further. “This is kind of a race to the bottom, because while there is truth to higher turnover among Gen Z, these realities are rooted in more macro-shifts, like the idea that Gen Z will have many more jobs and careers than past generations,” Litman says.“It’s not a Gen Z decision so much as it is like a socio-economic and technological outcome.” 

Litman believes that employers need to embrace all aspects of an employee’s life, and break down the “invisible walls” between consumer, creator, and employee identity. Some ways to build up loyalty among Gen Z employees include hosting network-building events, where they can make connections and receive mentorship from internal and external experts, as well as “repotting days” that allow employees to spend half a day per quarter in another team. 

Upskilling access is another critical element to retention among younger workers, and companies should be investing in top-tier e-learning platforms via corporate membership. “Let [employees] choose courses aligned with both their interests and manager feedback—directly tied to their reviews,” he suggests. Especially when more young people are forgoing traditional education, Litman believes employers can step in and “be the university [employees] never had.” 

Finally, Litman thinks that companies can gain favor with Gen Z by supporting their employees’ side-hustles and passion projects, not discouraging them. He suggests that as opposed to focusing on top-down philanthropy, company resources should be directed to employee-led initiatives. “Whether it’s an Etsy side hustle or teaching skills on Maven, aligning with what matters to workers creates more energized, innovative teams,” he says. “Shaping the future of learning and earning includes changing how you see Gen Z. So in a world where they have more options and flexibility, in order to win with them, you have to appeal to their whole selves.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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