Shopping at the Bravern, a luxury mall for Seattle’s ultra-rich

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer — these are just some of the ultra-rich tech moguls that reside in Bellevue, Washington, a city of around 150,000 people just across a lake from Seattle.

Bellevue’s median listed home price is $925,000 according to Zillow, which is more than double Washington State’s median listing price of $425,000 and around four times the US median listing price of $226,800.

Why is Bellevue so expensive? Tech companies like Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Expedia have headquarters in the city. And that’s just in Bellevue. In nearby Seattle, Amazon’s headquarters have transformed a former warehouse district into a metropolis of shiny towers, not to mention the smaller branches of companies like Facebook, Uber, and Twitter. Before China instituted new rules limiting the purchase of real estate abroad, Seattle was also the top destination for Chinese homebuyers.

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I went to The Shops at Bravern, the most expensive mall in Bellevue and a Microsoft campus, to see what it’s like to shop there.