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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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!
> 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.
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.
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.
Jennifer Lynch is very active on Reddit and explained why it’s selling for anyone interested. [0]
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1nhb6q9/comment...
Hopefully something like the Getty can scrounge up $15m from the couch cushions. Would be a nice museum of some sort.
Great read, thank you!
Thanks it was a nice read.
> compound
> not a wealthy man
Doesn’t exactly track.
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.
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.
He was not a poor man, he was not a wealthy man. This project did take 40 years. Which is a great deal of his career and income, there is another nice comment from Jen about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1nhcgej/comment...
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.
He apparently was cash poor and asset rich. Now the opposite is true for his children.
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.
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).
> It’s not terribly hard
Uhm, it must be, or more people would do it
If you read the whole comment, you'll understand the context better.
There doesn't seem to be much compound interest.
Reluctant upvote.
> not a wealthy man by Hollywood standards
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.
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.
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.
Zillow listing: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7017-Senalda-Rd-Los-Angel...
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.
> 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.
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?
The lady in the radiator is anything but mundane. :)
That's why you have multiple properties and household manager.
Most of the maintenance is done when the owners is not in residence”.
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.
> 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.
If you're dropping $15m you aren't worried about property taxes regardless of how much they do or do not increase.
Property tax would be roughly $200k/yr, forever. That’s a nontrivial expense for anyone below billionaire levels.
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.
Looking at the full set of photos in the Zillow link that esalman posted, sorry, but that kitchen has gotta go.
Incredible kitchen! With the narrow tall doors, brass knobs, and nice touch with the all-pistachio countertops.
Unless you’re also a chain smoker everything inside that house probably needs to go
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...
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.
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.
Nice to see a Festool miter saw in his shop, Lynch knew what he was doing.
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
I wonder if the price would be significantly different if it wasn't David Lynch's house.
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:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1851-N-Stanley-Ave-Los-An...
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.
Beyond stunning, worth its asking price imo.
Just goes to show - I think that looks ghastly.
Looks great for people who don't want to pick and design their own home, pick furniture, design their living spaces.
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.)
Jackie Treehorn’s place is the Sheats-Goldstein residence. Both the residence and the owner are worth going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole.
https://jamesfgoldstein.com/the-goldstein-residence/
https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zChgboCiqWuUD317?g_st=ipc
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.
note that mulholland dr is just up the street from the house. this overlook is worth a visit: https://maps.app.goo.gl/muMirzaSJsEt9YnR7
Do you have generational wealth? Seems like a paradise out there..
It's also (partly) a Frank Lloyd Wright house, that alone would justify a very high price
Anyone know anything about those fluted V-shaped panels everywhere? They look like very heavy cast iron.
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.
They remind me of the floor of the black lodge in Twin Peaks.
The house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son. Maybe he was influenced by the concrete blocks from the Millard House. https://www.architecturelab.net/millard-house-frank-lloyd-wr...
I'm guessing he liked it, visually.
And just maybe it symbolized something for him. Low maybe.
TFA says “The facade’s cement chevrons catch the sun” but I’m not sure about the ones inside.
Maybe they would catch rainwater too - mosquito breading area
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.
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.
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.
What a dreary sad anachronistic description.
I mean looking at the structures it's kind of warranted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_block_house
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.
It looks like he was smoking four cigarettes at once in there
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
Damn, only 25%? Luxury!
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!
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.
I like the contrast between the kitchen and the home theatre, I guess he was not much of a chef haha
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.
[0]: https://www.lynchnet.com/mcdl.html
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.
Take away ‘David Lynch’ and you’re left with a 1970s real estate listing nobody would click on …
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.
it's raining....
It looks nothing like the ending of Blue Velvet.
They will have a difficult time finding a buyer for this extremely unique property. One really needs rare eclectic taste.
In my personal opinion, this house ugly AF