{"id":363766,"date":"2026-07-07T09:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T09:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/363766\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T09:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T09:41:08","slug":"texas-oil-tycoon-buys-28m-seattle-area-waterfront-compound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/363766\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas oil tycoon buys $28M Seattle-area waterfront compound"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Texas oil billionaire<\/a> who made his fortune pulling gas out of South Texas shale is now buying up waterfront real estate more than 2,000 miles away\u2014this time on the shores of Lake Washington.<\/p>\n

Rodney Lewis, founder of San Antonio-based Lewis Energy Group<\/a> and a longtime Eagle Ford shale heavyweight, is linked to a $28 million Mercer Island home purchase spanning nearly 56,000 square feet, according to property records and reporting by\u00a0The Seattle Times.<\/a><\/p>\n

Lewis, now based in San Antonio, built Lewis Energy Group from a single natural gas well in the 1980s into one of Texas’ major private energy producers, eventually amassing hundreds of thousands of acres across the Eagle Ford shale, according to Forbes. He was ranked No. 1756 on Forbes’ 2018 Billionaires List<\/a> with an estimated net worth of about $1.3 billion. He later dropped off Forbes’ published World’s Billionaires rankings<\/a> after 2019, though financial publications continue to estimate his wealth in the $1.3 billion to $2.4 billion range.<\/p>\n

He’s also known for something far less typical in the oil patch: vintage warplanes. Lewis founded Lewis Air Legends, a Texas-based collection and restoration group that operates one of the world’s largest private fleets of World War II aircraft, including rare fighter planes recovered and rebuilt from remote sites.<\/p>\n

Now, he’s reportedly part of one of the Seattle area’s biggest luxury real estate deals of the year.<\/p>\n

The Mercer Island purchase involves two neighboring homes on Lake Washington that together form a sprawling waterfront parcel. The properties were acquired in an off-market deal alongside Seattle-area pilot Hanne Maureen Zak, according to The Seattle Times.<\/p>\n

Together, the homes were assessed at roughly $15.2 million but sold for about $28 million, nearly doubling their assessed value, records show.<\/p>\n

Lewis’ $28 million Mercer Island purchase is a notable move in a region where some luxury real estate observers have questioned whether wealthy buyers are being pushed away by Washington’s tax policies. The state’s 9.9 percent capital gains tax and upcoming “millionaires tax”<\/a> have fueled concerns that high-net-worth buyers could look elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Chron reached out to Lewis Energy Group for comment on the purchase, but has not yet heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas oil billionaire who made his fortune pulling gas out of South Texas shale is now buying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46004,87139,1836,1704,85744,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-363766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-alertable-realestate-chr","tag-chronbiz","tag-chronnews","tag-chronstaff","tag-chrontexas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}