Elon Musk’s former Bel-Air house was originally owned by the late Gene Wilder. The initially priced $12.95m estate will hit the auction block next month.
Elon Musk’s former abode in Los Angeles is deemed a “piece of Hollywood history,” considering its glittery ownership history tied to the late legendary Willy Wonka actor Gene Wilder. Built in 1951 by LA architect Robert Byrd, the estate overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club has suffered a price chop. Although the white-shingle house first hit the market in August for $12.95 million, its price tag has dropped to $9.5 million.
According to Mansion Global, this major $3.5 million price cut comes a month before the estate enters its auction chapter. The drop has reportedly been attributed to the sellers, who relied on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s loan to buy the place from him and failed to complete their payments. The search for a potential buyer rages on. However, even if the ideal match isn’t found by next month, the estate is headed for the auction block anyway, per recently filed documents.
Elon Musk’s history with the LA house + his 1 condition to potential buyers
Musk snapped up the 2,756-square-foot house for $6.75 million in 2013. Years down the line, he publicly announced on social media that he would be “selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.” In a follow-up tweet, he declared his “one stipulation” on the house’s sale: Gene Wilder’s old house “cannot be torn down or lose any its soul.”
We already knew him in various roles—the guy who bought Twitter and fired more than half its staff, the inventor who brought the space program back to life, the carmaker whose new trucks make kids stop and stare on the sidewalk. All of a sudden, Elon Musk had moved into the realm of politics, headlining rallies, steering government appointments, shaping the agenda for the next President of the United States.
For more than three years he’s been one of the world’s richest and most powerful men. Markets soar and tumble on his tweets. Astronauts fly in his spaceships. Armies advance with the signals from his satellites. Conspiracy theories go mainstream through his embrace. But it was only in the spotlight of these elections that the full extent of his influence came into view.
Not since the age of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who greased FDR’s ascent nearly a century ago, has a private citizen loomed so large over so many facets of American life at once, pulling the nation’s culture, its media, its economy, and now its politics into the force field of his will. Standing beside him, even Trump can seem almost in awe, less of a boss than a companion to the man for whom this planet and its challenges are not big enough.
