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What happens when Bill and Melinda Gates want their privacy? They buy up the neighborhood.

Over the past decade, representatives for the world's richest man and his wife have purchased 11 properties, including nine houses surrounding their massive lakefront estate in this Seattle suburb.

"This is a family that holds privacy very dearly to them," Gates family spokesman Joe Cerrell told The Seattle Times. "The properties create a buffer around the Gates home."

Gates, the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp., has lived in a $110 million home on the five-acre estate since 1997.

According to property records reviewed by the newspaper, 4.2 acres of adjoining properties were acquired for Gates between 1994 and 2003 at a cost of nearly $14.4 million.

"There's not too many non-Gates property owners left here," said Herb Schwartz, a former insurance executive who moved into the neighborhood 13 years ago.

Neighbors say Gates' employees occupy a number of the homes. At least two are still occupied by people who sold their property to Gates in 2003.

But not everyone has welcomed the changes. Paulla Upjohn, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1951, said Gates' purchases have caused more traffic on the narrow streets.

"I have been very happy with them as people," she said. "But it's changed the neighborhood."

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