Musk chooses Mars over houses
Like many an ambitious homeowner, Elon Musk eventually noticed that planning his dream house was diverting his attention from more pressing questions. In his case, how to send humans to Mars.
So the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX devised a characteristically ostentatious solution: he would sell off his entire property portfolio.
The plan gathered momentum this week when Musk, 48, put five of his properties in California up for sale for a combined $97.5 million (NZ$164m).
Four of the houses are clustered near to each other in Bel Air, one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in greater Los Angeles. One of the smaller properties is a three-bedroom house once owned by the actor Gene Wilder. The fifth property is in Hillsborough, one of the most expensive areas of Silicon Valley.
They arrived on the market on Wednesday, just over a week after two of Musk’s other mansions in Bel Air were listed for a combined US$39.5m. All seven homes have been posted on the property website Zillow and are listed simply as ‘‘for sale by owner’’.
Musk had flagged up the sales at the start of the month. ‘‘I am selling almost all physical possessions,’’ he tweeted on May 1. ‘‘Will own no house.’’
A few days later the South African-born entrepreneur told Joe Rogan, the comedian and podcast host, that he had collected so many houses because of ‘‘privacy issues where people would just come to my house and you know, start climbing over the walls and stuff’’.
He ‘‘sort of like bought a house and some of the houses around my house’’.
At first he wondered about how he could use the space to construct his ideal home from scratch. Then he had a moment of revelation. ‘‘Does it really make sense for me to spend time designing and building a house? Or should I be allocating that time to getting us to Mars?’’ He decided ‘‘I should probably do the latter.’’
The property moves come in the midst of a frenetic period for Musk. Last week he became a father for the sixth time. The boy is his first child with the singer
Grimes and they named him X A˜ † A-12.
Business concerns then intervened as Musk, who tweeted in March that ‘‘the coronavirus panic is dumb’’, made himself a figurehead for the increasingly rancorous American debate over lockdown orders.
First he announced that Tesla, ‘‘the last car manufacturer left’’ in California, would move its headquarters and future programmes to Texas or Nevada ‘‘immediately’’ because of his frustration with the restrictions on doing business during the pandemic. He added that he would sue county officials for keeping the factory in Fremont closed. Then on Monday he reopened the plant in defiance of an order prohibiting the manufacture and assembly of nonessential goods.
The Alameda County authorities refrained from arresting him or any of the Tesla employees who reported for work. Some staff told reporters that they had felt pressured to return to work and were unhappy with the risks, even though Musk said in an email that if they ‘‘feel uncomfortable coming back to work at this time, please do not feel obligated to do so’’.
One California assembly woman, Lorena Gonzalez, a vocal critic of tech industry labour practices, expressed her thoughts in a terse tweet: ‘‘F... Elon Musk’’.
In his interview for the podcast Musk hinted that he was selling his homes partly for spiritual reasons and to deny ammunition to his critics. He intends to rent but has not said where.
‘‘Possessions kind of weigh you down,’’ he said. ‘‘They’re kind of an attack vector, you know? People say, ‘Hey, billionaire, you’ve got all this stuff.’ Well, now I don’t have stuff. Now what are you going to do?’’
The Times
EMBATTLED sports organisations will learn today what help is on its way from the Government.
The Minister for Sport and Recreation, Grant Robertson, is set to unveil his sport recovery package to the sector, as part of a series of Budget announcements being dripfed to the public.
A key theme of Thursday’s 2020 Budget announcement was continuing the wellbeing focus from 2019, with support targeted at vulnerable and marginalised groups.
It is expected the sport recovery package will be similarly focused.
Investment will likely be funnelled into programmes targeting Ma¯ ori and Pasifika, deprived communities, those with disabilities and women and girls.
Robertson has previously indicated there will also be money for the high-performance end, noting the aspirational value of sport.
The recovery package will be in addition to the short-term relief measures unveiled over the past two months.
Last week Sport NZ announced a $25 million relief package targeted towards community and regional sport.
The focus on grassroots level sport followed an initial package of support to national sports organisations and regional trusts announced early last month, which guaranteed 2020 funding levels will roll over into 2021 – a commitment of $70m.
Both initiatives were the result of funding redistribution at Sport NZ HQ rather than new investment.