Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly purchased four houses adjoining his five-bedroom 5,617-square foot residence in Palo Alto, California.
Zuckerberg has apparently done so in a bid to keep intact his privacy, sheling out more than $30 million in the process.
The information is courtesy of San Jose Mercury News, which cites a "person with knowledge of the transaction." The 29-year old multibillionaire apparently has no plans to build on the property and is "leasing the existing homes back to the families that live there."
Zuckerberg reportedly acted after he learnt that a developer was going to purchase a property next door and use the Facebook co-founder's name to market the same.
"The developer was going to build a huge house and market the property as being next door to Mark Zuckerberg," per the publication's source.
Zuckerberg's current residence was purchased in March 2011 and cost the Facebook CEO $7 million at the time. Built in 1903, Zuckerberg's five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath two-floor Palo Alto house is three miles from both Stanford University and Facebook's headquarters.
Palo Alto also has Google's Larry Page among its residents, and was also home to Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away in 2011.
Zuckerberg's purchase of four houses to keep his privacy intact has not raised eyebrows amidst real estate brokers and isn't seen as anything out of the ordinary.
"These are very affluent people, they can pay anything they want," said Ken DeLeon, owner and founder of DeLeon Real Estate, who was named the number one real estate agent in the U.S. by The Wall Street Journal in 2012. "People in this category don't care about $100,000, or even million extra dollars, that's really nothing, they just want their privacy and their peace."
Zuckerberg has paid different prices for each of the four homes and he has reportedly shelled out more than $14 million for one of the homes.
The CEO of the world's no.1 social network which went public last year, also owns a home in San Francisco and his personal fortune is estimated at $19 billion.
