Tech CEO Elon Musk is publicly proud of his nomadic life, but apparently owns his own house again. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
In 2020, tech CEO Elon Musk announced that he no longer owns a home.
In April 2022, he emphasized that he was “surfing couches,” as sleeping on the couches of (un)acquaintances is called.
However, documents from his custody battle show that he has owned a 650-square-foot home in Austin for years.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
Elon Musk has been talking about living without his own apartment for about four years. At that time, he publicly vowed to “never own a house” from now on and began selling his various properties. As recently as April 2022, the billionaire Tesla founder claimed in an interview that he leads a couch surfing lifestyle and “doesn’t even own an apartment at the moment.”
However, a Business Insider (BI) review of court records in the custody battle with his former girlfriend Grimes shows that Musk made a quiet about-face in his nomadic life at that point and purchased a home in Austin. In redacted court documents from December, Musk said he bought the home in February 2022 and still lives there.
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“In February 2022 I bought the house [Ortsangabe ausgelassen; Anm. d. Red.]wo [Ortsangabe ausgelassen; Anm. d. Red.] “I’m still alive,” the filing says. The document also states: “Grimes and her children lived with him in the house from April to August 2023.” As the lawsuit reveals, Musk bought the house after the address of a house he was renting became public knowledge. As a result, it was “no longer private and safe for my family.”
The details surrounding Musk’s house remain mysterious
Musk has understandably withheld the address of the new property he purchased. Everything about the house was revealed through his public filings about the house: that he purchased it in February 2022 and has lived there since December 2023. However, Grimes’ lawyers were less discreet in their filings, citing a location in Austin that was described as Musk’s “self-stated home address.”
The home at this address was purchased by a limited liability company, known as an LLC, in February 2022, according to the property’s deed. The month of purchase matches the date Musk said he purchased the home in court filings. The LLC was formed shortly before the home was purchased. It is under the supervision of an asset management company, according to Texas Secretary of State filings. Musk and the organization’s manager did not respond to a request for comment.
Business Insider is withholding the address for data protection reasons. “It is very common for people in the public eye to try to disguise their ownership with an LLC. For obvious reasons, they don’t want people to know where they live. She [die LLC; Anm. d. Red.] “It’s easy to set up and can help maintain privacy,” says Stefan Cassella. He is a former deputy chief of the Asset Recovery and Money Laundering Division at the United States Department of Justice. “I would be surprised if an extremely wealthy person didn’t hold their property under some type of LLC.”
The Austin home was first purchased by a couple in 2018 after being listed online for $4.5 million. This is also evident from the real estate documents. It was later resold in 2022 but was never publicly listed, records show.
Although Musk hasn’t publicly linked himself to the address, there are some signs that the billionaire could be living in the Texas home. A neighbor told Business Insider earlier this year that the home was under 24-hour security. Teslas are often parked on the property.
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The neighbors are puzzled about Musk’s house purchase
The neighbor added that he had heard that Musk lived on the property – but he had not yet seen the billionaire. He, in turn, spotted Grimes there before she moved to California.
“I think he was definitely there once,” the neighbor said in a phone conversation. At the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024, he “saw a Cybertruck pull out and three more Model Ys – like a little escort.”
When a colleague from Business Insider US rang the doorbell outside the house’s tall wooden gate last year and wanted to speak to Musk, the man who answered paused. After about ten seconds of silence, he then said, “I’m sorry, sir. I can not help you. Have a nice day.”
Not as luxurious as Musk’s previous properties
The home isn’t nearly as luxurious as Musk’s previous properties. The billionaire once owned a real estate portfolio worth an estimated $100 million, or around 93 million euros. In 2023, the value of the property in Austin was estimated at the equivalent of almost 6.5 million euros, according to the district’s tax records.
The almost 650 square meter house was built in 2017, according to the real estate platform Zillow. Business Insider is withholding some details to avoid identifying it.
“Almost all material possessions sold”
Musk has not yet publicly admitted that he has changed course and bought a house. In June 2021, he said he had rented a prefabricated house for the equivalent of 46,600 euros. Less than a year later, in April 2022, Musk stated again that he does not own his own house and that he alternates between staying in the guest rooms of friends. The billionaire is also known for sleeping in the offices of X or Tesla.
BI had previously reported that a prefabricated modular home called Casita had been delivered to the site of aerospace and telecommunications company Space-X. At the time, Musk denied living in the modular home. He emphasized that he lives in another small house in Texas. However, in July 2022, he said in a podcast that he was using one of the prefabricated houses as a guest house.
The billionaire originally said in 2020 that he was selling his possessions and giving up his home to focus more financially on his long-term goal for Space-X – colonizing Mars.
“I sell almost all physical possessions,” tweeted Musk at that time. “My girlfriend @Grimezsz is mad at me.”
Rumors about Musk’s residence continue
About a year after this posting, Musk sold his last remaining home, a €28 million mansion in San Francisco.
Over the years, there have been repeated reports about the billionaire’s living situation. In 2021 reported The Wall Street Journal said Musk lives with his colleague Ken Howery. Like Musk, this tech founder is considered a member of the network jokingly known as the PayPal Mafia. Their home near the Colorado River in Austin measures 743 square feet. At the time, Musk denied the report in an emailed statement to BI.
“I don’t live there and have no plans to buy a house anywhere,” he said in the email. Eight weeks later, the LLC that purchased the Austin home was formed.
Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk would build a company town in Bastrop, Texas, with private property for Musk and a Montessori school. In his biography of Musk, Walter Isaacson wrote that the entrepreneur bought a horse farm near the Tesla gigafactory in Austin and considered building a glass house on the property.
Read the original post Business Insider.