PROMISED LANDS
Musk upholds vow, puts more homes on sale
Elon Musk just took another step in his quest to “own no house.”
The eccentric Tesla chief listed five more California properties for nearly $100 million after vowing to ditch most of his possessions.
Musk is seeking $62.5 million for four properties in Los Angeles’s swanky Bel Air neighborhood, according to a Wednesday Zillow listing describing the plots as “a project for the big thinker” with “one of the best views in Los Angeles.”
Musk also put his century-old San Francisco-area mansion with “unobstructed bay views” on the market last week with an asking price of $35 million. He bought the 10-bedroom, 16,000-square-foot spread for $23.3 million in 2017, according to Zillow.
The latest Bel Air listing is down the road from a mansion Musk listed earlier this month following his revelation on Twitter that he was selling “almost all physical possessions” and would “own no house.”
The 48-year-old billionaire is also seeking $9.5 million for a ranch-style property once owned by Gene Wilder. Musk has said the “Blazing Saddles” star’s former home, which he bought in 2013, “cannot be torn down or lose any [of] its soul.”
The homes are part of Musk’s sprawling real estate portfolio comprising nine California properties, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Musk — who is worth $35.9 billion, according to Forbes — has suggested that material possessions are a distraction from more lofty goals like getting to Mars or shifting the world to sustainable energy.
“They’re kind of an attack vector,” Musk said on a recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast. “[Critics] say, ‘Hey billionaire, you’ve got all this stuff.’ Well, now I don’t have any stuff. Now what are you going to do?”
But Musk’s pledge to sell his properties came alongside another May 1 tweet saying Tesla’s stock price was “too high,” which led shares in the electric-car maker to tank as much as 13 percent that day.
The message alarmed corporate governance experts because Musk agreed to have a lawyer review his tweets about Tesla in a 2019 deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission.