Elon Musk slashes price on Bay Area mansion by $5.5m to $32m after vowing to rid of possessions

59

View
comments

Elon Musk has slashed the price of his California mansion by $5.5million to $31.99million as he struggles to sell the last of his remaining properties after vowing to ‘rid himself of all possessions’.

On May 1, 2020, Musk – who has a net worth of more than $225billion – tweeted in response to overwhelming criticism of his wealth: ‘I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.’ 

Over one year later the 50-year-old Tesla Inc CEO is approaching his goal as he looks to sell his final property, which will also cut all his ties with California. 

‘Just needs to go to a large family who will live there. It’s a special place,’ he tweeted in June. 

The home spans 16,000 square feet and is located on a 47-acre lot in the Bay Area, according to the Zillow listing.

Located at 891 Crystal Springs Rd in Hillsborough, California, the house, which was built in 1916, also boasts seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. 

As expected, Musk’s home was not without luxuries. There is a library complete with leather walls and a fireplace and music room with a hydraulic lift to combine the space with the dining room for a sweeping event space. 

The ‘five-star’ kitchen has also been fully restored and has an expanded space for a personal chef. There’s also private pool with sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay and city skyline.

According to the listing, ‘behind the scenes, upgrades to infrastructure include fiber optic cable under the driveway, high end security system, interior sound system’ and several other restorations. 

The house is also located just 15 minutes to San Francisco International Airport and private jet center, not to mention an on-property reservoir for landscape irrigation. 

Prior to the nearly 15 percent price cut Musk had the house listed for $37.5million.

In June Musk announced in a tweet that his primary home ‘is literally a ~$50k house in Boca Chica / Starbase that I rent from SpaceX. It’s kinda awesome though’.

He noted that the Bay Area home was only being used as a rental for events.

Musk made the move to Texas in December – 2,066 miles away from his Bay Area home –  after saying the steep housing prices and long commute times in the west coast city was limiting Tesla Inc’s growth.

He announced just last week that the company was officially moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas – where SpaceX developed its new Starship vehicle and Tesla’s new Gigafactory was under construction, according to Bloomberg.

He said that the plant in Texas will closely resemble Tesla’s Shanghai plant, which was built in 11 months and reached high-volume production after a year. 

However, he suggested that potty-mouthed Democratic politician and State Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez inspired him to make the move when she tweeted ‘F*** Elon Musk’ in May of last year. 

Gonzalez also called Musk out for defying California’s state and local Covid-19 mandates, which he violated when he reopened Tesla’s west coast factory during a lockdown.

Musk’s now-permanent dwelling is near the rocket manufacturing plant and costs less than a base Tesla Model S and is a 375-square-foot module home made by the company Boxabl.

It’s set up like a studio apartment with an open floor plan including a living area, kitchen, bedroom and adjacent bathroom. 

Listed by Forbes as the third-richest man in the world, Musk told podcast host Joe Rogan last May: ‘I think possessions kinda weigh you down. And they’re kind of an attack vector. People say, “Hey, billionaire, you got all this stuff.” “Well, now I don’t have the stuff — now what are you gonna do?”‘ 

Before listing the Bay Area home Musk had gone on a spree the past 13 months, selling six of his properties, as well as one in 2019, for a total of $114million.

He started his sell-off in June 2020, with a 20,200-square-foot mansion in Los Angeles’ Bel Air area that sold for $29million. He purchased it in 2013 for $17million.  

It featured a library, fruit orchard, five-car garage, guest suite, theater and ocean and city views, among many other amenities, according to its Zillow listing. 

Then, in October, Musk sold a home near the mansion that he said was particularly special to him because it formerly belonged to Gene Wilder, best known for playing Willy Wonka in cult 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. 

He also bought the property in 2013 for $6.75million, and sold it to Wilder’s nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman for $7.2million.

Musk stipulated: ‘It cannot be torn down or lose any of its soul’ and even helped finance the purchase by giving Wilder’s nephew a loan.

In December 2020, Musk sold four neighboring homes in Bel Air for a combined $61.8million. He had told Rogan on a podcast back in 2018 that he only actually lived in one of them and purchased three as privacy buffers.

They included a two-story, six-bed, seven-bath house on Somera Road that went for $29.7million; a two-story, six-bed and eight-bath on Chalon Road for $21million; a two-story, four-bed, five-bath on Somera Road for $6.7million; and a single-story, four-bedroom, four-bath home on Somera Road built in the 1960s that appears to have not been renovated since for $4.4million.   

Before the selling spree, however, Musk sold his first major California property in August 2019.

It was a three-bedroom, three-bath modern house in Brentwood that he initially purchased in 2014 for $3.7million complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and a salt-water pool.

He sold it for $4million, leaving just the Bay Area mansion, which is set apart from the other homes by its geographical location just south of San Francisco.

As far as his romantic life goes, Musk told Page Six last month that he and singer Grimes have broken up after three years together.

Grimes, real name Claire Elise Boucher, and Musk were initially linked in 2018 and the 33-year-old musician previously expressed that they had met over Twitter after they both made puns regarding the thought experiment Roko’s Basilisk.

Prior to dating Grimes, Musk was married to author Justine Musk from 2000 until 2008, and the pair welcomed a total of six children during their marriage.

The South Africa native then began a long-term relationship with actress Talulah Riley and they were married first from 2010 until 2012 and again from 2013 until their final split in 2016. 

Two years later Grimes and Musk briefly split just months after they met. The pair later reconciled and Grimes was seen accompanying Musk during a business trip to China.

The former couple then spent much of 2019 together and the singer announced that she was pregnant in January of last year, although she did not reveal that the businessman was her child’s father until that March.

On May 4, 2020, Grimes gave birth to a baby boy named X Æ A-12 and a photo of the Tesla CEO holding the child began making rounds over various social media platforms. The youngster’s name is pronounced ‘X asha 12’

The two remained together for about another year before Musk confirmed that the couple had spit, citing that professional obligations as the main reason behind the breakup although they are still cohabiting and focusing on raising their child.

‘We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms,’ he said.

Musk added: ‘It’s mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She’s staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room.’