Check out this charming rambler in Bellevue that hit the market a few weeks ago. It features hardwood floors, granite countertops, and a fenced backyard. And oh, by the way, the world's largest online retailer was born there.

That's right: it's the house where Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com.

The sellers, for some reason, didn't play up the house's role in technology history, and the new buyer, T-Mobile engineer Brian Olsen, wasn't aware of it — until TechFlash filled him in.

"I knew Amazon started in a garage but I had no idea it was the same place," said Olsen, who's due to close on the house Nov. 18. "It was a total surprise."

As noted in the TechFlash Geek's Guide to Seattle, the house still sports some clues to its past, including an oversized mailbox for all the book catalogs Bezos used to receive.

Bezos rented the house in the mid-1990s, and founded Amazon.com, originally called Cadabra, in what was once a converted garage there.

After Bezos moved out, a couple named Mitch and Kelly Rundle took up residence in the house in 1995, first renting it and then buying it in 1998.

The Rundles were initially unaware of the house's pedigree, but clued in after Amazon went public and became a dot-com star in the late 1990s. Television crews started to arrive, and Jeff Bezos himself showed up at one point for a TV shoot — driving up in a Honda Civic dressed in a T-shirt. He took pictures of the place with a Kodak camera, pictures he later showed Oprah Winfrey on her talk show.

For years, the Rundles kept getting catalogs addressed to Bezos in the mail. They used to fantasize about delivering them to the Amazon CEO. "We would stack it up and say, 'Hey, we got your mail,' and hang out with him some more," Kelly Rundle told me when I visited the house a few months ago. "But we didn't because we respected his privacy."

During their years in the house, the Rundles did a complete remodel, transforming the garage where Bezos launched Amazon into a living room (they joked the garage had a "Saturday Night Fever" floor because its checkered pattern looked like a disco).

I couldn't reach the Rundles again, but Kelly Rundle told me this summer that her family had outgrown the house and needed something bigger.

Interestingly, the house, at 10704 NE 28th in Bellevue, seems to attract techies. Mitch Rundle, at last report, was a developer at Microsoft. And soon-to-be owner Brian Olsen is with T-Mobile.

Much like Amazon stock, the house has appreciated well. Its 1998 sale price was $182,000, and Olsen said he's buying it for around $625,000.

Olsen said he'll keep the oversized mailbox. Asked if he might one day found his own company while living in the house, he joked that he's intimidated.

"Amazon is one in a million," he said. "It's a tough thing to live up to."

Apparently Jeff Bezos didn't want to buy the house and turn it into a museum.

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