MUSK’S HOME RUN
Tesla boss lists Bel-Air mansions after tweet rant
Elon Musk has listed two of his Bel Air mansions for sale, just days after a bizarre Twitter rant in which he said he “will own no house” even as he tweeted that Tesla’s stock had gotten “too high.”
The swanky Los Angeles properties include a six-bedroom, 11-bath, 16,000 squarefoot mansion complete with a tennis court and a twostory library for $30 million. Musk likewise listed a 2,700square-foot ranch-style spread just across the street that used to belong to actorcomedian Gene Wilder for $9.5 million.
Skeptics on Monday immediately questioned whether Musk was serious, latching onto the fact that the properties were listed by owner and that Musk’s asking price for the bigger house was well above the $20.6 million value estimate assigned by Zillow. Musk paid $17 million for the house in 2012.
Musk on Friday tweeted that he was “selling almost all physical possessions,” and “will own no house” as he seeks to devote his life “to Mars and Earth.”
“Don’t need the cash,” the eccentric billionaire said. “Possession [sic] just weigh you down.”
Musk bought the Wilder house — a five-bedroom, 4.5-bath with an oval pool overlooking the Bel-Air
Country Club’s golf course — in 2013 for $6.75 million.
“Just one stipulation on sale: I own Gene Wilder’s old house,” Musk had tweeted on Friday. “It cannot be torn down or lose any its [sic] soul.”
The listings surfaced late Sunday after a wild week for
Musk and his investors. On Friday, after a profanitylaced rant against “fascist” Bay Area coronavirus lockdowns during Tesla’s earnings call last week, Musk tweeted that Tesla’s “stock price is too high imo,” sending the company’s shares down nearly 10 percent.
The South Africa-born Musk’s tweet about Tesla’s stock price provoked an outcry from corporate-governance experts, who said it will likely get him into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Indeed, the tweets came almost a year to the day after Musk was forced to cut a settlement with the SEC over a misleading 2018 tweet in which he had said he was thinking of taking Tesla private at $420 a share.
Nevertheless, Musk as of midday Monday still hadn’t acknowledged the weird ruckus he had created for Tesla shareholders, proceeding with a few more eccentric tweets over the weekend, including one that the popular video game Minecraft “has amazing legs.”
“Anyone think they can get a good multiplayer Minecraft working on Teslas?,” Musk, who also tweeted Friday that he is expecting his first child with pop star Grimes on Monday, asked his followers early Sunday morning. “Like a complex version of Pac-man or Mario Kart?”
Tesla shares increased 8.5 percent, or $59.87, to close at $761.19 on Monday.