As the owner of the biggest social networking platform Facebook and other technology products, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest people in the world. We all know that the tech guru who dropped out of Harvard is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and can have anything he wants at his disposal.
However, he is often seen wearing the most basic of clothes and driving relatively affordable cars. Unknown to many, behind Mark's simple lifestyle is a love for pricey and super private properties. The centibillionaire has an ultra-expensive real estate portfolio worth millions of dollars, and here is all you need to know about it.
10 Mark Has 10 Lavish Properties
The media and technology mogul loves to splurge on properties and has an enviable real estate portfolio estimated at more than $300 million. Mark is a proud owner of 10 properties scattered across San Francisco, Palo Alto, Lake Tahoe, and the Island of Kauai in Hawaii. The Palo Alto location boasts five houses ― a five-bedroom apartment alongside four other neighboring homes ― while he has two adjacent private estates in Tahoe that sit on more than 9 acres of land. He has only one house in San Francisco and 700-acre beachside property in Kauai.
9 A Custom-Made Artificial Assistant
As the CEO of one of the biggest technology conglomerates and a computer science dropout who has been hailed as a programming prodigy, it comes as no surprise that his 5,000-square-foot home is completely wired to be a smart home. In 2016, Mark created an artificial intelligence app named Jarvis that behaves similarly to Amazon's Alexa. Per reports, Jarvis helps to wake his oldest daughter Maxima with a Mandarin lesson. The app also helps with giving him a clean new shirt and recognizing people's faces at the door.
8 He Buys The Properties Surrounding His Homes
It is common practice for celebrities and influential personalities to buy the homes next to theirs for the sake of privacy, especially when it is on the market. However, Mark takes his love for privacy to the next level, snagging up his neighbors' homes even when it seems they are not on the market. After purchasing his $7.7 million home in Palo Alto, Mark spent an additional $30 million to buy the surrounding homes to ensure he has the utmost privacy.
7 He Leases The Surrounding Homes To The Former Neighbors
Although Mark purchased all the homes surround his Palo Alto home, he has no intention of taking over the properties yet. The centibillionaire reportedly leases the homes back to the former homeowners. The 37-year-old began buying the surrounding homes when he learned of a developer's plan to buy the building next to his and capitalize on his residence next door as a selling point. He wanted to control how the properties around his home are marketed and who it is they are sold to.
6 Plagued By Real-Estate Conflicts
Philanthropy is a huge part of Mark's identity as one of the wealthiest people in the world. However, the Facebook CEO never fails to find himself embroiled in controversies that portray him as oppressive. In 2014, he and his wife Priscilla Chan bought two adjacent properties on Kauai Island for a whopping $100 million. However, the couple's purchase has only brought about trouble after trouble for the native residents. In 2016, Mark constructed a 6-foot-wall around his home that obstructed and angered his neighbors.
The tech mogul also made news after a lawsuit he filed in 2017 showed that he was forcing native Hawaiians who had legal ownership over some parcels within his property to give up their homes. Although he dropped the suit, Mark was accused of neocolonialism. The plots of land were later auctioned off to a bidder who Mark reportedly supported.
5 A Private Shoreline
For his Lake Tahoe properties, Mark spent $60 million to buy two adjacent lakefront mansions that consist of 10 acres and 15 bedrooms in total. One of the homes is the famous Brushwood Estate that belonged to the late renowned novelist Stewart Edward White in the 1920s, while the other, Carousel Estate, is a smaller mansion built in the 1930s. Between the two adjacent estates lies a 600-feet private waterfront on Lake Tahoe's West Shore that solely belongs to Mark.
4 A Secret Deal
For someone whose social media platform has been accused of being indifferent and careless when it comes to handling user's personal information and privacy, Mark is willing to go to any length to protect his own. According to reports, the tech billionaire purchased his Lake Tahoe homes via a super-secret deal. It involved a discreet wealth manager, a limited liability company, and a series of lengthy non-disclosure agreements that instructed that all the home's photo listings be removed from the internet.
3 He Lives Among Tech CEOs And Socialites
For someone of Mark's caliber and financial status, it only makes sense that his homes are located in areas that are exclusive to silicon valley CEOs and other socialites. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Google's Larry Page have properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. The late Steve Jobs and the family of Hewlett-Packard live there.
2 A Panic Room
Although Mark buys the properties around his home for privacy, he has other intentions for the four houses he purchased in Palo Alto. It was revealed that the Harvard dropout plans to bulldoze the former homes and completely rebuild them. However, one of the four homes will serve as a bunker or panic room. Fortune reports that the house will have "white brick walls, dark steel doors and windows, dark grey siding and louvers where they occur above the roofline, and a dark gray standing seam metal roof." Mark is quite big on protection and security for his family, as Facebook reportedly spent $23 million on his security in 2020. Hence, having a bunker seems like the next step of the tech wiz.
1 He Overpays For His Houses
With a net worth of more than $120 billion, having a real estate portfolio of more than 300 million seems like a drop in the ocean. However, Mark's ultra-pricey properties aren't a result of always buying homes in expensive areas. Instead, the tech mogul loves to shell out excess money to buy out the former homeowners. For example, his 5,542-square foot home in San Francisco, which he bought at $10 million, was valued at only $3 million. Also, one of the additional properties in Palo Alto $3.171 million, but Mark purchased it for $14 million.