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Elon Musk's $50K TX house is a humble prefab home that can be towed by a Model X
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has mentioned that he now lives in a ~$50K house at Starbase, Texas, where his private space company, SpaceX, is manufacturing its Starships. Based on images of the home, it appears that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is indeed living modestly in a prefabricated housing unit that's only about 400 square feet.
Teslarati recently received a tip noting that Elon Musk's housing unit in Starbase, Texas is a Boxabl Casita, a foldable, prefabricated home designed for quick installations and maximum affordability. A 20×20 unit such as the one that Elon Musk reportedly owns is priced at only $50,000, less than the cost of a Model Y Long Range Dual Motor AWD. The Boxabl Casita is durable, too, being made of concrete panels and steel. It could be installed very quickly and transported easily, as well, with the home being light enough to be pulled by a vehicle like a Model X.
[...] The Boxabl Casita is designed to be customizable with different finishes and configurations. Yet a look at Elon Musk's apparent housing unit in Starbase shows that the CEO only opted for a base unit. Musk did mention that he has installed improvements to the home that would probably make it worth about $69,000 today, but even such an amount is less than the cost of a base Tesla Model S. The Casita is classic Elon Musk in the way that it's different and practical, though the idea that the 20×20 unit may be home to the world's third-richest person is very compelling. People with a net worth of $172 billion, after all, typically live in lavish properties.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:27PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Chica_(Texas)#Starbase [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, that's pretty much middle of nowhere Texas. Probably has pretty cheap taxes and utility. Housing market is screwed in the DFW area at least. Sure, you're likely able to buy a piece of land pretty cheap still, but anything with a house on it is selling for more than it's worth. Building your own is also super expensive with price of lumber going up, etc.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:03PM
You're not kidding. I went to Home Depot a couple weeks ago to price out lumber for building self-watering garden boxes and walked right back out from sticker shock.
If a person wanted to build a home right now, building without lumber would be a good idea.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:41PM (1 child)
Hiring contractors to build your own is super expensive, as much because of the demand for housing construction labor as for the cost of lumber... I saw the other day that lumber is back down below $1000 per whatever unit it is that they benchmark it in... 40% off the peak high. Oil is still far below $100 per barrel. If you're buying the materials and doing the labor yourself, it's not nearly a big a change as the inflation in the existing housing market.
I feel like the recent economic spasm is far too large to be explained by the pandemic - to me it seems like the world was sort of holding its breath starting in 2017, cautiously spinning up "safe" economic activity to profit from the business friendly environment, but like the end of the Reagan era also holding back on commitments like long term hiring, new facility building, etc. The pandemic certainly magnified the collective conservative stance dramatically, and now that it is all over at one time this rush of hiring, relocation, etc. seems far beyond anything that could be explained by the stimulus packages.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @11:57PM
The Trump effect - the best.