Elon Musk, now the world’s first person worth more than $1 trillion, has not chosen a palace, a custom-designed modern home, or a luxury tower. Instead, the SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO has assembled a set of ordinary-looking houses in West Lake Hills, a discreet upscale suburb about 15 minutes from downtown Austin, Texas.
Public records and people familiar with the deals indicate that limited liability companies linked to Musk hold at least three large homes with pools in the area. The houses range from about 560 to 840 square meters, sit on large lots on cul-de-sacs, and all have street-facing security cameras. Because Texas does not require disclosure of home sale prices, exact figures are usually unavailable, but local agents estimate Musk paid about $8 million for one house, about $10 million for another, and more than $15 million for each of two others between 2022 and 2025. One of the homes was later sold to an LLC linked to Scott Cawarra, who says on LinkedIn that he previously worked for Musk’s Boring Company.
A prior Wall Street Journal report said Musk, who has at least 14 children with four women, bought the properties to create a living compound for the mothers of his children and their kids. Ashley St. Clair, who said she had a child with Musk in 2024, told the Journal she visited one of the homes between 2022 and 2023 and was struck by how unremarkable it looked. Grimes, the musician and mother of three of Musk’s children, also lived with him in Austin for a period and was reportedly asked to move into the compound, which she declined.
West Lake Hills has long attracted wealthy residents, including Michael Dell, and offers privacy, large lots, views of Austin and the lake, and strong schools. Musk also appears to split time between Texas and California, where his companies are based, and he has followed a similar pattern elsewhere: from 2012 to 2022, LLCs tied to him spent nearly $100 million on six homes in Los Angeles’s Bel Air neighborhood. In May 2020, Musk tweeted, “I will own no house,” saying he planned to sell nearly all of his physical possessions. He did sell most of his California homes for about $130 million, but he still retained one Bel Air house until it was bought back in January 2025 by a Musk-linked trust for $7.6 million. He also said in 2021 that his main residence was a $50,000 house in Boca Chica, Texas, which he said he rented from SpaceX.
