Hopefully something like the Getty can scrounge up $15m from the couch cushions. Would be a nice museum of some sort.
irjustin 14 hours ago [-]
Thanks it was a nice read.
keyle 10 hours ago [-]
Great read, thank you!
qmr 13 hours ago [-]
> compound
> not a wealthy man
Doesn’t exactly track.
JeremyNT 8 hours ago [-]
She does explicitly go on to say "by Hollywood standards"
I honestly saw it was $15million and figured that's a bargain for the estate of one of the most esteemed directors of his generation. Relative to his level of fame and respect, his monetary assets do seem low.
But then this certainly matches the public perception of Lynch. He made the things that he wanted to make, not the things that were guaranteed to sell. I'm sure commercial success was important to him, but there were lots of paths he could have taken that would have lead to a lot more.
e40 8 hours ago [-]
What people normally mean by wealth is easy access to cash. Someone that owns a $15M house and has very little other liquid assets is not poor, but they definitely don't qualify as wealthy.
Many, many people in CA that live in expensive homes are in this situation. It's what Prop 13 wrought. Variously, in my neighborhood, old people are paying a small fraction of the property tax that I do, and their house is worth a lot of money, but they have almost nothing, living on their social security check, month to month.
I'm not saying Lynch was living on SSI, but given his movies and what we know of how much they made, the story told by his daughter is very plausible.
supportengineer 4 hours ago [-]
Wealthy people don't spend their own cash.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
Wealthy people do not hoard cash, unlike what many people imagine. Their money is all invested. They also borrow money to invest.
Anyone who gets a mortgage on a house is also investing other peoples' money. Using a credit card is spending other peoples' money. Buying a car on time is spending other peoples' money.
cjrp 6 hours ago [-]
> Someone that owns a $15M house and has very little other liquid assets is not poor, but they definitely don't qualify as wealthy.
Assuming they own the house outright, that absolutely does qualify as wealthy.
e40 4 hours ago [-]
I didn't say it wouldn't. I said it didn't qualify as ready cash.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
You can borrow against the house, and spend the cash.
JadeNB 4 hours ago [-]
> > Assuming they own the house outright, that absolutely does qualify as wealthy.
> I didn't say it wouldn't. I said it didn't qualify as ready cash.
> What people normally mean by wealth is easy access to cash. Someone that owns a $15M house and has very little other liquid assets is not poor, but they definitely don't qualify as wealthy.
Anyway, whatever it is, I think litigating Lynch's level of wealth on HN is probably not the most useful direction for this comment thread.
By that definition, most people are poor. $15 million is much more than most people have. Even split among the four children, it's fine.
j-krieger 13 hours ago [-]
He apparently was cash poor and asset rich. Now the opposite is true for his children.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
Assets can be easily converted into cash by borrowing against them.
tikhonj 9 hours ago [-]
Sure, but there's a gap between being poor and being wealthy. $15 million is a lot more than most people have and it's certainly enough to be comfortable and not have to worry about money, but it's still categorically different from having the sort of money that gives you institutional power.
saberience 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah but having a 15M house and say 200k income makes you poor, as a 15M house needs a ton of money to maintain it.
giobox 5 hours ago [-]
If you are paying property tax in LA based on a 15m valuation, that 200k income will struggle to cover the annual property tax bill let alone any maintenance or anything else.
clpm4j 3 hours ago [-]
The property tax is calculated based on the last transaction price of the home, so despite it being estimated at $15m today, the owner would be paying tax on a much lower value (assuming they purchased it many years ago).
supportengineer 4 hours ago [-]
The rule of thumb for upkeep of houses, airplanes, and cars is about 1% annually.
vkou 5 hours ago [-]
Ill trade 5M cash and 200k income for that any day of the week.
The first thing I'd do is sell.
comfysocks 2 hours ago [-]
>>The first thing I'd do is sell
Me too. And it looks like that’s what the heirs are doing too.
But for David Lynch, I can see why he might want to live amongst the people involved in financing, making, and distributing movies. Similar to how founders move to the expensive Bay area to be near VCs, talent, etc.
bombcar 10 hours ago [-]
It’s not terribly hard to get into that position, if you spend 40 years of your time and treasure on something with resale value instead of on food and experiences.
You can do something similar if you buy a house and keep buying any neighboring house that comes up for sale (and renting them out, perhaps).
vel0city 5 hours ago [-]
Median household income is like $83k. If you were in a median US household and you saved half of all your income every month into something that had a stable 4% return, in 40 years you'd have ~$4M. Not even halfway there.
You'd need a little over 9% of stable returns over that 40 year timeframe to hit that $15M target.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
The S&P 500 returns average 7% in real dollars (not inflated dollars).
My calculation makes that about $9m over 40 years.
softwreoutthere 9 hours ago [-]
> It’s not terribly hard
Uhm, it must be, or more people would do it
bombcar 56 minutes ago [-]
Losing weight isn’t terribly hard but still lots have trouble doing it.
echelon_musk 9 hours ago [-]
There doesn't seem to be much compound interest.
comfysocks 2 hours ago [-]
I guess compounds can be a hard sell. I read that Michael Jordan had a hard time selling his.
layer8 8 hours ago [-]
Reluctant upvote.
dfxm12 8 hours ago [-]
If you read the whole comment, you'll understand the context better.
ode 13 hours ago [-]
> not a wealthy man by Hollywood standards
rectang 11 hours ago [-]
It’s funny, but as someone who’s worked in music production, when you say that what comes to my mind is that the vast majority of people in the entertainment industry are nowhere near as wealthy as David Lynch. “Hollywood standards” to me is several struggling actors sharing a flat.
steveBK123 10 hours ago [-]
It's like the Bill Murray quote though - I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it.
The entertainment industry is filled with a lot of more-famous-than-rich people. By these numbers David Lynch (at 78) was probably as wealthy as 1000s of random (and anonymous) successful Mag7 SWEs are at retirement.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
Lots of people who are paid well are not at all wealthy, because they spend nearly all their income, and sometimes forget to pay taxes.
See Will Smith.
supportengineer 4 hours ago [-]
Somewhere there is a mere single-digit billionaire who feels poor next to the double-digit and triple-digit billionaires.
DetroitThrow 13 hours ago [-]
Yes, I don't think she was saying he was destitute, just that he was effectively house poor for someone who supposedly had a net worth of millions.
Love this compound and all the hiking paths up around in the surrounding hills. Truly an peaceful property to immerse yourself in work and entertaining! Property taxes are gonna spike for the new buyer though due to prop 13 so make sure to factor that into your offer vs the $15k a year in the listing...
Hopefully whoever buys this gem doesn't tear it down to build some modern boxy McMansion.
gyomu 13 hours ago [-]
> Truly a peaceful property
What you don’t realize if you’ve never spent time around those ridiculous properties is the amount of upkeep everything takes if you don’t want the indoors to become gross and dusty and the outdoors a wild jungle.
When you have that kind of surface area, you’re not taking care of all the cleaning and maintenance yourself in a few hours once a week. There are countless gardeners/cleaners/repair workers/etc on the property. Nothing peaceful about it.
And you have to also be okay with the labor dynamics of employing such an army of personnel which in LA is… interesting.
TheOtherHobbes 11 hours ago [-]
Does it not come with an army of weirdly mundane hopeful monsters who will reveal themselves to you one by one if you buy it?
dfxm12 8 hours ago [-]
The lady in the radiator is anything but mundane. :)
nabla9 9 hours ago [-]
That's why you have multiple properties and household manager.
Most of the maintenance is done when the owners is not in residence”.
eastbound 12 hours ago [-]
I have 2000sqm of land and I feel like 1. the CEO of garden operations, 2. a sitting duck in terms of money and invoicing.
shoubidouwah 8 hours ago [-]
> Too much land to manually manicure a lawn on top of
> too little land for john deere to be of any practical help
I feel you.
tills13 15 hours ago [-]
If you're dropping $15m you aren't worried about property taxes regardless of how much they do or do not increase.
rconti 7 hours ago [-]
It's probably just a general comment for folks who don't understand CA property taxes. I've lived here my whole home-buying life, so it never crosses my mind to look at the Zillow property tax figure when doing my mental maths on whether I can afford something, but if you lived in an area where the figure in Zillow actually means something to the buyer, you might be in for a surprise in CA.
Here, it's just an easy 1%, so the math isn't hard. I'm not sure if other states have highly variable rates on a county-by-county basis, or if other states also tend to have consistent rates within their borders.
HankStallone 7 hours ago [-]
In Illinois, how property is valued and taxed seems pretty obscure, and may involve witchcraft.
The rate on my tax bill is 6.03%. But that's on a "net taxable value" that's about 40% of what I paid for the place 15 years ago, and maybe 25% of what I could get for the place now. So the rate is effectively 2.5% of what I paid, or 1.4% of what I could get. The total tax has also gone up 26% since 2020, increasing by more each year, but I don't know whether they've raised the rate each year or the valuation.
It's probably possible to find out how it works, but there's not much point. It is what it is, so you pay it or leave. No one lives in Illinois for the tax rates.
adastra22 11 hours ago [-]
Property tax would be roughly $200k/yr, forever. That’s a nontrivial expense for anyone below billionaire levels.
tossandthrow 10 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, the ZIRP induces decompression of assets prices - hopefully for people buying into the extreme ongoing expenses, we will see serious inflation over the next years.
If there is not inflation and value compressions kicks in, then there are some people who will be ... burdened.
CamperBob2 18 hours ago [-]
Looking at the full set of photos in the Zillow link that esalman posted, sorry, but that kitchen has gotta go.
nadnad 17 hours ago [-]
Incredible kitchen! With the narrow tall doors, brass knobs, and nice touch with the all-pistachio countertops.
17 hours ago [-]
dilyevsky 17 hours ago [-]
Unless you’re also a chain smoker everything inside that house probably needs to go
rob74 15 hours ago [-]
Maybe a David Lynch mega-fan who has $ 15 million to spare will buy it and convert at least part of it into a (nicotine-heavy) museum? But the neighbors would probably object, as they always do when tourists dare to stray into hallowed Hollywood Hills...
maz1b 18 hours ago [-]
Interestingly, this article made me learn that Frank Lloyd Wright had a son who also was an architect, and that son also had a son that became an architect.
I dunno, I just find that a little bit cool and interesting.
yardie 7 hours ago [-]
I was lucky enough to stay in a beach house designed by either the son or grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright. So many amazing architectural details including natural cooling towers. I was young then and didn't really get to appreciate it the house since I was spending my time on the water. But I did take photos and see something interesting every time it rotates through my iPhoto library.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
The WSJ recently ran an article about Johnny Carson's house that was for sale for $110m:
Scrolling down reveals a picture of it when Carson lived in it. Kind of a dump.
a-r-t 16 hours ago [-]
Nice to see a Festool miter saw in his shop, Lynch knew what he was doing.
inasio 16 hours ago [-]
There was an auction of a lot of his memorabilia a few months ago, it included a lot of Festool stuff. He was an avid woodworker (the sale also included furniture he made). I like how the work table where you can see the miter saw is made of the most utilitarian plywood, it feels like he was working until his last days
16 hours ago [-]
Waterluvian 19 hours ago [-]
Anyone know anything about those fluted V-shaped panels everywhere? They look like very heavy cast iron.
Terr_ 19 hours ago [-]
My thought was: "Wow, he must've gotten a great deal on those, or else ordered far too many and was stuck finding places for them..."
I don't but wanted to say that I love the continuity of them used in different spaces. The whole place really looks like a single vision put together and not a bunch of disparate rooms.
rdtsc 18 hours ago [-]
They remind me of the floor of the black lodge in Twin Peaks.
analog8374 19 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing he liked it, visually.
And just maybe it symbolized something for him. Low maybe.
Infernal 19 hours ago [-]
TFA says “The facade’s cement chevrons catch the sun” but I’m not sure about the ones inside.
ape4 8 hours ago [-]
Maybe they would catch rainwater too - mosquito breading area
Waterluvian 19 hours ago [-]
Yeah the outdoor ones definitely look like cement. The indoor ones are probably too. Though they have a patina that makes them look like worn iron.
Fricken 18 hours ago [-]
Lynch made those himself out of grey plaster. They didn't show much of Lynch's studio, but that's where he spent most of his time hanging out, making sculptures and paintings and building things. He was hands on guy who kept himself busy, compulsively so.
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
My accountant told me of a newly minted Microsoft millionaire who decided to spend it all on a house. His advice was he would not be able to pay the taxes or upkeep on the house.
His client didn't listen, and in two years was forced to liquidate the house.
What you pay for a house is only the beginning of what you're going to pay.
18 minutes ago [-]
benrmatthews 7 hours ago [-]
Would love to see a video walkthrough of the property (not that I have a spare $15m...)
crossroadsguy 6 hours ago [-]
So what about that non-spare $15m..? I mean it's Lynch's house. You never know there might a red room and all that somewhere hidden. Just saying.
vid 6 hours ago [-]
Between preserving a 'compound' (presumably by a wealth private person) and converting it back to three properties and homes, I'd want to see the latter.
ks2048 18 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the price would be significantly different if it wasn't David Lynch's house.
dsr_ 17 hours ago [-]
Looking at other houses in the neighborhood, it's probably about 10-15% because it's the Lynch residence, and the rest of it is the extent of the land, the number of houses, and, of course, the place where it is.
By way of contrast, this is listed for 2.5x the money on the other side of the canyon:
Maybe that's also because it has a view, while the Lynch compound doesn't really have a view of the city. It has some views, all right.. beautiful trees and nature, and some valley. It's tucked away. Some people like that.
smetj 16 hours ago [-]
Beyond stunning, worth its asking price imo.
arethuza 11 hours ago [-]
Just goes to show - I think that looks ghastly.
lionkor 9 hours ago [-]
Looks great for people who don't want to pick and design their own home, pick furniture, design their living spaces.
CamperBob2 17 hours ago [-]
I'll bet the seller makes a hell of a Caucasian!
(Although I guess it isn't really Jackie Treehorn's place, given that the listing says it was built in 2023.)
twalla 7 hours ago [-]
Jackie Treehorn’s place is the Sheats-Goldstein residence. Both the residence and the owner are worth going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Goldstein appears to be quite an interesting "dude." He's exactly what people mean when they point out that Lynch, while well-off compared to most, was not particularly wealthy by Hollywood standards.
i lived about a half mile from this house in the same neighborhood -- it could be a lot more expensive if it had the view some properties around there have.
Do you have generational wealth? Seems like a paradise out there..
labcomputer 5 hours ago [-]
One of the oddities of California is that you frequently see shabby, cheaply constructed houses of no significance selling for millions of dollars.
That is because some mid-century developer built it as middle-class housing. A middle-class family moved in and had kids. They continued to live there while property values soared. So the kids grew up in neighborhood where all the houses cost millions of dollars.
I used to know an elderly coupled who lived in one of the nicer parts of Malibu. Both were school teachers. They bought the house when Malibu was cheap because of the "horrible" commute along scenic Highway 1 and the lack of sewers in Malibu. Before the fires, their house was probably worth over $10 million (thanks, prop 13!).
When they passed, the kids couldn't afford to keep the house (even with the feudal property tax system in California, which allows inheritance of low property tax assessments like some kind of medieval title of nobility) because the kids were also just normal middle class people.
So, to answer your question: In some sense, yes, almost by definition, the family of person you're responding to does have generational wealth (in the form of the house). But in a different sense, no, because it's quite likely that they have nowhere near the amount liquid assets implied by the phrase "generational wealth".
inasio 16 hours ago [-]
It's also (partly) a Frank Lloyd Wright house, that alone would justify a very high price
dwd 19 hours ago [-]
Actually didn't know Frank had an architect son.
Personally I prefer the Millard House which is similar and probably an inspiration. The Millard House is the archetype Minecraft House.
tsunamifury 18 hours ago [-]
What a dreary sad anachronistic description.
0_____0 17 hours ago [-]
I mean looking at the structures it's kind of warranted.
His houses lend themselves to being recreated in Minecraft.
Personally I have always liked his style and Falling Water was my favourite house when I was young.
tsunamifury 5 hours ago [-]
its more that it just shows a vast ignorance of history and society to call it a 'Minecraft house.' It's like calling the Pyramids of Giza 'the Minecraft pyramids."
It belays a level of stupidity that is difficult to ignore. The reality is its an Incan Pyramid inspired home.
wonderwonder 18 hours ago [-]
I guess I really don't understand LA house pricing.
I see shacks listed for a million, or is that only SF?
This is 2.3 acres with 3 homes on it and its 15 million.
Although looks like it needs some work.
vlovich123 17 hours ago [-]
LA is huge and just like SF has neighborhoods so does LA except sprawled over way more acreage. LA is slightly cheaper than SF because it’s so large geographically - in SF you can drive across the city in 30 minutes. LA is several hours across.
jppope 17 hours ago [-]
Its pretty easy to understand actually, and all of metropolitan California is the same way- A normal, dual income, middle class working family has an income of ~$250K-$500K (Doctor + teacher, Lawyer and a Doctor, Business exec and Accountant, etc) and they're going to spend upwards of ~40% of their income on their house. thats going to have them spending $6K-$11K. Now they can handle a $1M home no problem. 3 bed 2 bath shitbox from the 70s sure thing... Anything to live in California. Same house in Kansas City is $300K but whatever. However, for them to go after a $2.5M+ property you need real money, a $5M house even more... you aren't working a normal person job to spend the estimated lifetime earnings of most Americans on a house... it just aint happening. So anything after ~$5M is a VASTLY better deal then the rat race housing.
All of these dynamics can be figured out pretty easy thanks to prop 13, Californias insane income taxes, and the job market... if you can figure out a way to buy a house, hold on to it for dear life, never move, and work your entire life to pay for it. The only thing more consistent than people in the northeast wanting to move to California are death and taxes, which coincidentally prop 13 covers. lol
skrebbel 15 hours ago [-]
Nitpick, but
> A normal, dual income, middle class working family
> (Doctor + teacher, Lawyer and a Doctor, Business exec and Accountant, etc)
That’s not the middle class.
nabla9 9 hours ago [-]
That's the traditional middle class. "American Middle Class" is a clever political trick. It was created to remove "working class" from the vocabulary so that people could no longer identify as such.
If we use only lifestyle indicators, such as making enough money to save and retire comfortably, having enough money to go on vacations and to restaurants frequently, and being able to buy a house, the middle class is shrinking.
labcomputer 5 hours ago [-]
Lol. Doctors and lawyers are the very definition of middle class!
Middle class is people who trade labor for money, but who sometimes have a (full or partial) ownership stake in the business they work for. They are what marxists might call the "petit bourgeoisie".
dragonwriter 5 hours ago [-]
> Doctors and lawyers are the very definition of middle class!
Doctors and lawyers are often middle class (petit bourgeois) but also can be part of the better paid, highly educated segment of the working class (proletarian intelligentsia). Economic class isn’t about job title or even really strictly income, though it correlates to both.
labcomputer 2 hours ago [-]
I think we agree.
The main point I was making is that doctors and lawyers (and tech workers!) are not members of some "upper" or "capitalist" (depending on which terms you prefer) class, irrespective of their income, because the value they collect is primarily a result of their labor.
tills13 15 hours ago [-]
Am I crazy or reading the wrong info or are you being hyperbolic when you say California has "insane" income taxes?
As an example, the effective rate when making $200k is 25% including federal taxes. That's great. You get to live in a productive and supportive society. The only issue I see is that housing is expensive and $150k, as much as it can support a comfortable lifestyle, would be insufficient to ALSO buy a home. But what we're talking about here is a separate issue from housing.
(your state taxes when making $100k would only be $2k, to preempt that retort)
hylaride 5 hours ago [-]
The tone around "high taxes" are set by the uber-rich. Hilariously, most of them borrow against their shares to fund their lifestyles (where the interest is tax-deductible!) if they're even still resident in CA.
That being said, California is an ungovernable mess where state-constitutional amendments dictate a huge percentage of taxation and spending. It'd otherwise be a great place to live if real estate prices were somehow brought into line, but alas...
wonderwonder 3 hours ago [-]
I feel like the Canadian style "just let it happen" approach to crime is a bit of a negative as well
3 hours ago [-]
nicholasbraker 14 hours ago [-]
Damn, only 25%? Luxury!
benbojangles 16 hours ago [-]
It looks like he was smoking four cigarettes at once in there
Nursie 19 hours ago [-]
It certainly looks interesting. You would definitely be living in his style. Compelling as his films were, I'm not 100% convinced I'd want to live in his house that clearly has some very personal motifs.
Also you are never going to get the stale smoke out of there!
analog8374 19 hours ago [-]
I worked on a house occupied by heavy smokers for a couple decades (then they died).
Nicotine yellow everything.
We pumped it full of ozone. That did a good job destinking. Then we painted everything with killz.
We also sterilized the basement with uv deathlights.
morkalork 18 hours ago [-]
I like the contrast between the kitchen and the home theatre, I guess he was not much of a chef haha
helloplanets 16 hours ago [-]
Definitely not much of a chef!
> When I get up, I have a cappuccino - that's breakfast. I don't have any food till lunch. I get into phases where I'll have the same thing every day. Lately I've been having feta cheese, olive oil and vinegar, tomatoes, and some tuna fish mixed together. Before that I was having tuna fish on lettuce and cottage cheese, but I got tired of that in about three months. I once had the same thing for lunch every day for seven years - a Bob's Big Boy chocolate shake and coffee at 2:30 every afternoon.
Even though I know nothing about him, this makes complete sense and isn't surprising at all. Also, this is the diet of someone who has no problems with gaining too much weight. Basically intermittent fasting through breakfast and low carb at lunch.
Also, I think a lot of us can relate to this:
>If left alone, my natural waking hours would probably be I 0 A.M. till 3 A.M
superultra 13 hours ago [-]
You may be right but it’s worth noting that many mid century kitchens - including my own - were less focused on hospitality in the kitchen and more on efficiency. In some cases this was because homes had hired help.
My MCM kitchen is large enough to host but the cooking area is like this galley. I love to cook. Having lived in a home with with a huge open kitchen, I vastly prefer this galley style. It really does save time. When you’re doing a few things at once, a large kitchen with a lot of space between stations is a liability.
gyanchawdhary 15 hours ago [-]
Take away ‘David Lynch’ and you’re left with a 1970s real estate listing nobody would click on …
superultra 13 hours ago [-]
To each their own I guess but I think this is a beautiful home. My home was built at the same time (1965) and seems to share a lot of characteristics to David’s home, although my house is much smaller.
You’d be surprised how hard it is find houses like this. Many of them have been gutted and rehabbed into “open” floor plans, with a lot of white paint and white barn doors.
This is unfortunate because house builders back then really knew how to create distinctive spaces.
This home has a lot of beautiful light, feels very airy and open, and yet feels very distinctive and characteristic.
Probably the biggest drawback and challenge will be, as other commenters have pointed out, that Lynch smoked packs a day and getting that out will be tough.
Otherwise there absolutely buyers who would love this home.
sachahjkl 15 hours ago [-]
it's raining....
temptemptemp111 9 hours ago [-]
[dead]
black_13 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
11 hours ago [-]
jdjjkriiekj 19 hours ago [-]
It looks nothing like the ending of Blue Velvet.
delabay 11 hours ago [-]
They will have a difficult time finding a buyer for this extremely unique property. One really needs rare eclectic taste.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1nhb6q9/comment...
> not a wealthy man
Doesn’t exactly track.
I honestly saw it was $15million and figured that's a bargain for the estate of one of the most esteemed directors of his generation. Relative to his level of fame and respect, his monetary assets do seem low.
But then this certainly matches the public perception of Lynch. He made the things that he wanted to make, not the things that were guaranteed to sell. I'm sure commercial success was important to him, but there were lots of paths he could have taken that would have lead to a lot more.
Many, many people in CA that live in expensive homes are in this situation. It's what Prop 13 wrought. Variously, in my neighborhood, old people are paying a small fraction of the property tax that I do, and their house is worth a lot of money, but they have almost nothing, living on their social security check, month to month.
I'm not saying Lynch was living on SSI, but given his movies and what we know of how much they made, the story told by his daughter is very plausible.
Anyone who gets a mortgage on a house is also investing other peoples' money. Using a credit card is spending other peoples' money. Buying a car on time is spending other peoples' money.
Assuming they own the house outright, that absolutely does qualify as wealthy.
> I didn't say it wouldn't. I said it didn't qualify as ready cash.
I think you did say it didn't qualify as wealthy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45301176):
> What people normally mean by wealth is easy access to cash. Someone that owns a $15M house and has very little other liquid assets is not poor, but they definitely don't qualify as wealthy.
Anyway, whatever it is, I think litigating Lynch's level of wealth on HN is probably not the most useful direction for this comment thread.
The first thing I'd do is sell.
Me too. And it looks like that’s what the heirs are doing too.
But for David Lynch, I can see why he might want to live amongst the people involved in financing, making, and distributing movies. Similar to how founders move to the expensive Bay area to be near VCs, talent, etc.
You can do something similar if you buy a house and keep buying any neighboring house that comes up for sale (and renting them out, perhaps).
You'd need a little over 9% of stable returns over that 40 year timeframe to hit that $15M target.
My calculation makes that about $9m over 40 years.
Uhm, it must be, or more people would do it
The entertainment industry is filled with a lot of more-famous-than-rich people. By these numbers David Lynch (at 78) was probably as wealthy as 1000s of random (and anonymous) successful Mag7 SWEs are at retirement.
See Will Smith.
Hopefully whoever buys this gem doesn't tear it down to build some modern boxy McMansion.
What you don’t realize if you’ve never spent time around those ridiculous properties is the amount of upkeep everything takes if you don’t want the indoors to become gross and dusty and the outdoors a wild jungle.
When you have that kind of surface area, you’re not taking care of all the cleaning and maintenance yourself in a few hours once a week. There are countless gardeners/cleaners/repair workers/etc on the property. Nothing peaceful about it.
And you have to also be okay with the labor dynamics of employing such an army of personnel which in LA is… interesting.
Most of the maintenance is done when the owners is not in residence”.
Here, it's just an easy 1%, so the math isn't hard. I'm not sure if other states have highly variable rates on a county-by-county basis, or if other states also tend to have consistent rates within their borders.
The rate on my tax bill is 6.03%. But that's on a "net taxable value" that's about 40% of what I paid for the place 15 years ago, and maybe 25% of what I could get for the place now. So the rate is effectively 2.5% of what I paid, or 1.4% of what I could get. The total tax has also gone up 26% since 2020, increasing by more each year, but I don't know whether they've raised the rate each year or the valuation.
It's probably possible to find out how it works, but there's not much point. It is what it is, so you pay it or leave. No one lives in Illinois for the tax rates.
If there is not inflation and value compressions kicks in, then there are some people who will be ... burdened.
I dunno, I just find that a little bit cool and interesting.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/johnny-carsons-...
The house and grounds are beautiful.
Scrolling down reveals a picture of it when Carson lived in it. Kind of a dump.
And just maybe it symbolized something for him. Low maybe.
His client didn't listen, and in two years was forced to liquidate the house.
What you pay for a house is only the beginning of what you're going to pay.
By way of contrast, this is listed for 2.5x the money on the other side of the canyon:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1851-N-Stanley-Ave-Los-An...
(Although I guess it isn't really Jackie Treehorn's place, given that the listing says it was built in 2023.)
https://jamesfgoldstein.com/the-goldstein-residence/
note that mulholland dr is just up the street from the house. this overlook is worth a visit: https://maps.app.goo.gl/muMirzaSJsEt9YnR7
That is because some mid-century developer built it as middle-class housing. A middle-class family moved in and had kids. They continued to live there while property values soared. So the kids grew up in neighborhood where all the houses cost millions of dollars.
I used to know an elderly coupled who lived in one of the nicer parts of Malibu. Both were school teachers. They bought the house when Malibu was cheap because of the "horrible" commute along scenic Highway 1 and the lack of sewers in Malibu. Before the fires, their house was probably worth over $10 million (thanks, prop 13!).
When they passed, the kids couldn't afford to keep the house (even with the feudal property tax system in California, which allows inheritance of low property tax assessments like some kind of medieval title of nobility) because the kids were also just normal middle class people.
So, to answer your question: In some sense, yes, almost by definition, the family of person you're responding to does have generational wealth (in the form of the house). But in a different sense, no, because it's quite likely that they have nowhere near the amount liquid assets implied by the phrase "generational wealth".
Personally I prefer the Millard House which is similar and probably an inspiration. The Millard House is the archetype Minecraft House.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_block_house
Personally I have always liked his style and Falling Water was my favourite house when I was young.
It belays a level of stupidity that is difficult to ignore. The reality is its an Incan Pyramid inspired home.
This is 2.3 acres with 3 homes on it and its 15 million.
Although looks like it needs some work.
All of these dynamics can be figured out pretty easy thanks to prop 13, Californias insane income taxes, and the job market... if you can figure out a way to buy a house, hold on to it for dear life, never move, and work your entire life to pay for it. The only thing more consistent than people in the northeast wanting to move to California are death and taxes, which coincidentally prop 13 covers. lol
> A normal, dual income, middle class working family
> (Doctor + teacher, Lawyer and a Doctor, Business exec and Accountant, etc)
That’s not the middle class.
If we use only lifestyle indicators, such as making enough money to save and retire comfortably, having enough money to go on vacations and to restaurants frequently, and being able to buy a house, the middle class is shrinking.
Middle class is people who trade labor for money, but who sometimes have a (full or partial) ownership stake in the business they work for. They are what marxists might call the "petit bourgeoisie".
Doctors and lawyers are often middle class (petit bourgeois) but also can be part of the better paid, highly educated segment of the working class (proletarian intelligentsia). Economic class isn’t about job title or even really strictly income, though it correlates to both.
The main point I was making is that doctors and lawyers (and tech workers!) are not members of some "upper" or "capitalist" (depending on which terms you prefer) class, irrespective of their income, because the value they collect is primarily a result of their labor.
As an example, the effective rate when making $200k is 25% including federal taxes. That's great. You get to live in a productive and supportive society. The only issue I see is that housing is expensive and $150k, as much as it can support a comfortable lifestyle, would be insufficient to ALSO buy a home. But what we're talking about here is a separate issue from housing.
(your state taxes when making $100k would only be $2k, to preempt that retort)
That being said, California is an ungovernable mess where state-constitutional amendments dictate a huge percentage of taxation and spending. It'd otherwise be a great place to live if real estate prices were somehow brought into line, but alas...
Also you are never going to get the stale smoke out of there!
Nicotine yellow everything.
We pumped it full of ozone. That did a good job destinking. Then we painted everything with killz.
We also sterilized the basement with uv deathlights.
> When I get up, I have a cappuccino - that's breakfast. I don't have any food till lunch. I get into phases where I'll have the same thing every day. Lately I've been having feta cheese, olive oil and vinegar, tomatoes, and some tuna fish mixed together. Before that I was having tuna fish on lettuce and cottage cheese, but I got tired of that in about three months. I once had the same thing for lunch every day for seven years - a Bob's Big Boy chocolate shake and coffee at 2:30 every afternoon.
[0]: https://www.lynchnet.com/mcdl.html
Also, I think a lot of us can relate to this:
>If left alone, my natural waking hours would probably be I 0 A.M. till 3 A.M
My MCM kitchen is large enough to host but the cooking area is like this galley. I love to cook. Having lived in a home with with a huge open kitchen, I vastly prefer this galley style. It really does save time. When you’re doing a few things at once, a large kitchen with a lot of space between stations is a liability.
You’d be surprised how hard it is find houses like this. Many of them have been gutted and rehabbed into “open” floor plans, with a lot of white paint and white barn doors.
This is unfortunate because house builders back then really knew how to create distinctive spaces.
This home has a lot of beautiful light, feels very airy and open, and yet feels very distinctive and characteristic.
Probably the biggest drawback and challenge will be, as other commenters have pointed out, that Lynch smoked packs a day and getting that out will be tough.
Otherwise there absolutely buyers who would love this home.
In my personal opinion, this house ugly AF