Elon Musk plans to move to Texas

[Neil Narayan]

CNBC, working off anonymous sources, reported Dec. 4 that the billionaire who also runs SpaceX and The Boring Company has put his California houses on the market this year and he has told close friends and associates that he intends to move to Texas.

Noting that Musk is the world’s second-wealthiest person behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, CNBC reports that Musk “spends most of his time between Austin, where Tesla and his tunnel start-up Boring Company have operations, and a coastal village called Boca Chica, home to a SpaceX facility."

SpaceX has been operating in Texas since 2003. Earlier this year, Tesla opted to build a massive car factory just east of Austin. Tesla has said it plans to create at least 5,000 jobs in Austin, although experts suggest the final figure could be significantly higher. And late this year, The Boring Company started posting jobs in Austin.

https://www.bizjournals.com/au...

[Travis C.]

@Jeffery Callis Tesla is building the Cyber Truck in Austin so they are outting money where mouths are actually.

[Jeffery Callis]

@Travis C.

🤔 I’m not sure why that has to do with anything that I stated fam.

Are you stating that people in Austin want low paying jobs? 👀

Palo Alto average wage is - $110k salary

Tesla is in Palo Alto- average employee wage is $36-38k salary.

That’s nearly a THIRD of the average wage in the area.

By moving to Texas.

They will pay even less 9-12$/hr

[Guido Nunez]

@Neil Narayan I was in Texas last month. They bought land in Austin and outside Austin. Actually, it’s 45 minutes from San Antonio. Definitely buying something in Austin.

[Jim K.]

@Neil Narayan

So I'm not sure what you're wondering here.

If I was young and Texas-based right now, I would be completely focused on buying absolutely ALL THE LAND THERE IS in Brownsville, and probably everything across the immediate border in Matamoros, Mexico. And I'd do it now, before people really get a better idea of what Musk's Starship project is all about.

Musk is building the world's first commercial spaceport down there. The goal is to have literally hundreds of launches per year, on rockets that are significantly larger than the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. The community and infrastructure that is going to have to support those launches and move the materials the rockets transport, what is called in maritime economics the "hinterland" of this port, is going to have to be built.

Is Musk moving near Boca Chica? Without a doubt. Will Musk bring the rest of Musk, Inc. with him? Tesla and his other ventures? No. I wouldn't expect huge Musk-related stuff to be happening in Austin. Boca Chica State Park and the surrounding area is where the money and the jobs are going to be.

There are three ways the spaceport is going to generate income. First of all, direct investment in the beginning. SpaceX's reserves and Musk's personal fortune are both going to fund the initial port development. With Falcon 9, SpaceX currently launches 60% of the world market of satellites into space. That share will only grow now. That money is all going into Boca Chica.

SpaceX sees its main source of future revenue as getting the Starlink constellation of satellites in place. Currently, Musk launches these from Florida, 60 at at a time on Falcon 9 rockets, with major turnaround and refurbishment times. He wants to get 42,000 of them into orbit. He has about 600 in place. Once Starship is operational, Musk will be launching 400 at a time, at a much faster operational cadence and at a much lower cost per satellite. The network will grow into a behemoth that takes over all broadband communication worldwide -- he's going to completely corner the Internet market, everywhere, and with it, the entire world cellular communications market, the entire world telephone market, the entire cable TV market. And once he corners the market, he's going to keep it cornered. Rivers of cash from Starlink will flow into Boca Chica.

The plan right now is to use that money to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars. That's major mining operations up there, periodic resupply for decades, the needs of thousands of people taken care of regularly. How's that going to become self-sustaining? Mostly not through the Earth. But when it does become self-sustaining, the rockets will still go up from Boca Chica, because the Earth produces a lot of things, wonderfully exportable things, that people without will do almost anything to have.

Boca Chica is going to become a profitable place to invest in real estate, if not THE most profitable place in the world, of that you should have no doubt. 

[Zachary Ray]

I can't really blame him, California is a lot to handle right now.

[Ryan Jones]

@Neil Narayan I know I’m helping him with his mortgage..

www.homeloanjones.com

[Travis C.]

@Jeffery Callis I replied with what I said because you said you "would not count on....to do anything to help the economy of Texas."

On the contrary, Tesla jobs (and SpaceX in South TX) have both been and will continue to be a huge boon to the Texas economy no matter if the middle skill jobs pay lackluster wages for those particular workers at the Cyber Truck plant. These are still middle wage jobs in a state that does nit have a high cost of living generally speaking.

[Travis C.]

And San Antonio is a finalist for the Space Force Command which will be announced in January 2021.

[Samson Hollmérus]

@Jim K.

I'd love to see the rources to support these thoughts shared here Jim.

You've definitively peaked my interest.

[Jim K.]

Originally posted by @Samson Hollmérus:

@Jim K.

I'd love to see the rources to support these thoughts shared here Jim.

You've definitively peaked my interest.

I'm a space nut from way back. This is all public information. Read the Wikipedia pages on SpaceX, Falcon 9, Starship, Starlink. Watch some Everyday Astronaut videos on SpaceX and Musk on YouTube. It's all out there.

[Travis C.]

@Jim K. Interesting thoughts and agree on Brownsville and also McAllen and South Padre for that matter. You couldn't pay me enough to buy in Matamoros due to the violence there.

[Justin Thorpe]

A wealthy individual moving to a large state may not move the needle. More than likely he already owns a bunch of properties in the state. The key is if Elon’s move signals a new wave of tech investment in the area and establishment of new startups or new companies that drive high paying jobs. If that’s not happening such moves are meaningless for common people. The rich scooping up properties often does not do much incrementally. For example high end RE in NYC, SF, London gets bought and sold at the billionaire level everyday. Just last week a Chinese business man scooped up a $26 million dollar property in SF. How does that impact life for the common man? Fact is the guy is likely not even going to live in that home for more the a few weeks every year.

[Joe Splitrock]

He is sick of California telling him how to run his business. They went head to head during the pandemic to try to shut him down. Tesla rescued that GM/Toyota plant after the great recession and brought "green" high paying manufacturing jobs to the area. One more failure of governor Newsom. 

Even Apple and other tech companies continue to increase their footprint in Texas. The state is business friendly, low taxes, cheap land and decent climate. Everything California is not accept the climate, haha.

[Jim K.]

Originally posted by @Travis C.:

@Jim K. Interesting thoughts and agree on Brownsville and also McAllen and South Padre for that matter. You couldn't pay me enough to buy in Matamoros due to the violence there.

Hey, you know much more about that than I do. But my reasoning is this: if I'm right, Brownsville is about to get a population increase and a large influx of mid to high-paying jobs. SpaceX has always tended to hire young people. Matamoros right across the border is going to be their sin city of easiest access, their cheap three-day weekend. There's $$$ in that. 

[Shiva Bhaskar]

Originally posted by @Jim K.:

Originally posted by @Travis C.:

@Jim K. Interesting thoughts and agree on Brownsville and also McAllen and South Padre for that matter. You couldn't pay me enough to buy in Matamoros due to the violence there.

Hey, you know much more about that than I do. But my reasoning is this: if I'm right, Brownsville is about to get a population increase and a large influx of mid to high-paying jobs. SpaceX has always tended to hire young people. Matamoros right across the border is going to be their sin city of easiest access, their cheap three-day weekend. There's $$$ in that. 

Jim, not from Texas but agree on McAllen and Brownsville. Have been hearing this elsewhere too. Going over to the Tamaulipas state might be tricky given how rough it is, but it's got great location, and if we ever get a more common sense drug policy, and things calm down there, it'll be worth much more. 

[Aaron Gordy]

The border towns are very risky, imo. The drug cartels are violent and are always fighting for the inroads into Texas and the U.S. They are flooding the U.S with drugs and what they can't move across quickly they dump at low prices causing even more of a scary moment for folks on the border. https://www.borderreport.com/r... No Thanks. And within that same news article there is fiscal year reports of drug seizures for the last 5 years. There is a 300% increase in meth drug seizures. I don't want meth users as tenants...nope. You couldn't pay me enough to be down in that madness. 

[Travis C.]

@Aaron Gordy I think your thesis as applied to the Mexican side of the border is proper with caveats, as you but can't forget we live in a state where we have a border city, El Paso, who has one of the lowest crime and murder rates in the world sitting across the border from the complete inverse, Juarez, Mexico, boasting higher murder rates than Iraq during the Gulf War! Neither Matamoros nor Cuidad Acuña are places I'd park my money in real estate either, as such, but South Padre, yes! Also remember there are foreign ownership rules if not held in a trust if you want to buy inside of 50 kilometers of a coast in Mexico. This is risky enough IMO as it relates to that area we are talking about.

[Cheryll Ramirez]

Thank you @Jim K. for all the info.