Elon Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, has sold the seven homes he owned in California to fulfil his promise to “own no house”.
The properties — which include mansions in Bel Air, one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in Los Angeles — sold for about $128 million, giving him a profit of about $25 million.
He is thought to be the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $221 billion. Among the houses he sold was the former home of the actor Gene Wilder, whose nephew bought it on condition that it would not be “torn down or lose any of its soul”. Jordan Walker-Pearlman told The Wall Street Journal: “I decided to write to Elon to see if he’d consider selling it to me.”
Four of Musk’s homes in Bel Air were sold to Ardie Tavangarian, 63, a Los Angeles property developer. He said he was considering combining the properties but his plans depended on planning permission.
Kirill Evstratov, 37, who runs a technology company, bought Musk’s estate in Hillsborough, northern California, for $30 million. William Ding, a Chinese billionaire and founder of a mobile gaming company, paid $29 million for a mansion in Bel Air.
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Musk, 50, who promised to get rid of his properties in May 2020, has downsized from his collection of mansions. “My primary home is literally a $50k house in Boca Chica/Starbase that I rent from SpaceX,” he said in June, referring to a town in Texas near to SpaceX’s rocket-launch site. “It’s kinda awesome though.”
• Musk’s former girlfriend, the Canadian singer known as Grimes, with whom he recently had a second child via surrogacy, is dating the WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning, according to reports at the weekend. The website Page Six reported that Grimes, 33, who was born Claire Boucher, and Manning, 34, who is transgender, have been living together at Grimes’s home in Austin, Texas, where she lives with her two children since splitting with the Tesla boss for a second time.
