In early 2020, Elon Musk made a resolution to “sell almost all physical possessions” so he could focus on making electric cars, building rockets and managing his other ventures. Since then, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has sold all of his mansions and moved into a $50,000 rental home in Boca Chica, Texas, where SpaceX’s development and testing site is located.
Yesterday (August 6), Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson offered a sneak peak into the world’s richest man’s humble abode in a tweet.
“Musk decided to sell his five grand houses and to have as his primary residence this spartan two-bedroom house in Boca Chica, TX, where we would meet and he would sit at this wood table and make phone calls,” Isaacson wrote in a photo caption on X, formerly Twitter.
The photo Isaacson posted showed a simple open kitchen and portion of Musk’s living room. It’s not the type of staged interior shot one might expect to see in a billionaire’s biography. In the kitchen, a bulky men’s jacket hangs over one of the dining chairs, and several objects sit on a wooden coffee table in the living room, including a black and silver rocket sculpture and what looks to be either a katana or Tachi.
Isaacson teased he will explain why Musk chose to downsize in his upcoming book, Elon Musk, which hits the shelves on September 12.
In 2020, Musk decided to sell his five grand houses and to have as his primary residence this spartan two-bedroom house in Boca Chica, TX, where we would meet and he would sit at this wood table and make phone calls. In my forthcoming bio, https://t.co/7JGHd10TEa, I explain why. pic.twitter.com/mLsAgdOdY1
— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) August 6, 2023
Musk first revealed his Boca Chica home in June of 2021. His tiny house was reportedly built by Boxabl, a startup that manufactures modular instant homes.
Boxabl makes 20 feet x 20 feet foldable houses, called “Boxable Casita,” set up like studio apartments. In November of 2021, the company said in a YouTube video that it had just built a Casita house for a “high-profile” and “top-secret” customer in Boca Chica. The house shown in the video had a poster of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the door.
Musk’s kitchen as shown in Isaacson’s photo looks very similar to the standard kitchen in Boxabl’s 2021 YouTube video. But according to the author, Musk lives in a two-bedroom house rather than a studio.
“It’s kinda awesome,” Musk said of his new home in a tweet in June of 2021.
My primary home is literally a ~$50k house in Boca Chica / Starbase that I rent from SpaceX. It’s kinda awesome though.
Only house I own is the events house in the Bay Area. If I sold it, the house would see less use, unless bought by a big family, which might happen some day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2021
