- Elon Musk reportedly discussed buying a tiny home from a Tesla board director, per Reuters.
- The Tesla CEO vowed to "own no house" in 2020, but BI found he bought an Austin house in 2022.
- Musk reportedly expressed interest in a factory-made house from Samara.
Elon Musk, who famously vowed to "own no house" in 2020 and claimed in 2022 that he was effectively homeless and couch surfing at his friend's properties, reportedly discussed buying a tiny house from one of Tesla's board directors, per Reuters.
Joe Gebbia, who cofounded Airbnb and prefabricated housing startup Samara, told Reuters that he stepped down from a special committee set up by Tesla's board to examine the company's possible move out of Delaware because of a "potential business transaction" involving Musk and Samara.
Samara sells prefabricated homes that cost from $269,000 to over $414,000.
Gebbia said the transaction was "currently on hold" but had decided to step down from the committee even after company lawyers concluded there was no conflict of interest out of an "abundance of caution."
"I did not want Elon's status as a potential customer of Samara to be used against the committee, so I disclosed that I had put that potential business transaction on hold," Gebbia said in a statement shared with Reuters.
Business Insider was unable to reach Gebbia for comment.
Musk has spoken often about his semi-nomadic lifestyle since 2020, when he tweeted that he was "selling almost all physical possessions" and would "own no house."
The Tesla CEO listed five of his luxurious properties on Zillow weeks later. In an April 2022 interview, he said he didn't own a home and was couch-surfing at friends' houses.
However, Business Insider reviewed court documents from December of the billionaire's custody dispute with his former girlfriend, Grimes, and found that Musk had purchased a house in Austin in February 2022 and still lived there.
Musk has also lived in a prefabricated property in the past. In 2021, he tweeted that he lived in a $50,000 house that he rented from SpaceX. He later said he used another prefab house, made by startup Boxabl, as a guest house.
Samara, which started out as a design studio at Airbnb before becoming an independent company in 2022, offers a range of different models, from a $269,000 studio option to a $414,000 two-bedroom, two-bathroom "Backyard XL" option.
After a foundation is laid and permits secured, the houses are driven to the property by a truck and then craned into place, which takes just a few hours.
Samara recently acquired a 150,000-square-foot factory in Mexico, which the company said would enable it to produce 1,000 properties yearly.
Elon Musk, Tesla, and Samara did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside normal working hours.