Elon Musk sells $29 million Bel Air mansion to tech billionaire

Elon Musk has made good on his Twitter declaration to sell almost all of his physical possessions, offloading the first of his six homes in Los Angeles for $29 million.

“Will own no house,” the Tesla and SpaceX chief tweeted on May 1 to his 33.1 million Twitter followers, listing two of his Bel Air properties for sale soon after.

Despite having a net worth of $US41.5 billion ($60.39 billion), it was a cut-price real estate job, with Musk listing the properties “for sale by owner” on US property website Zillow, using mostly non-professional photos, Dirt.com reported.

The bigger of the two houses, Musk’s main residence, was the first to sell with the Wall Street Journal reporting that it changed hands in an all-cash deal.

That cash buyer was revealed to be “William” Ding Lei, a Chinese national and tech entrepreneur once ranked as the richest man in mainland China and reportedly worth more than $25 billion.

The sale price of $29 million is $12 million more than Musk paid for the property less than eight years ago.

For $29 million, Musk’s palatial pad came with about 1490 square metres of living space, including seven bedrooms and 11 bathrooms.

The grounds are sprawling, manicured and feature a pool, tennis court and several outdoor living spaces, all protected by walls, gates and a state-of-the-art security system.

Not surprisingly, there’s room in the garage for at least four Teslas.

The transaction is all part of Musk’s highly-publicised plan to “own no house,” Dirt.com says, though he still holds title to five other Bel Air estates, plus a 19-hectare compound in northern California’s expensive Hillsborough community.

Musk now needs to sell his much smaller home across the street, which he has listed for a paltry $9.5 million. It was reportedly previously used as a private schoolhouse for his children.