Elon Musk forecloses on Gene Wilder’s Bel Air home

Elon Musk is enforcement on the Bel Air home once owned by actor Gene Wilder, after selling it to the actor’s nephew at a discount and borrowing money to make the purchase.

Musk owned the house but sold it in 2020 to Jordan Walker-Pearlman, Wilder’s nephew, and his wife Elizabeth Hunter, The Wall Street Journal reported.

He originally asked $9.5 million, but when the couple said they couldn’t afford it, he dropped the price to $7 million. Musk also offered them a $6.7 million loan.

But Walker-Pearlman and Hunter fell behind on their payments and could no longer afford the home, according to the Journal. Musk issued the default notice in July.

The couple has since then listed the home for $12.95 million.

Walker-Pearlman, who lived in the home as a child, told the Journal that Musk’s decision to foreclose is not “adversarial or malicious.”

He said the actors’ and writers’ strikes last year made it difficult for him and his wife, a screenwriter, to make payments.

“There is no tragedy here,” he said. “Elon has given us a magical opportunity. I have no complaints.”

“She didn’t want to owe Elon any more,” he said of his wife, adding that the property is in her name. “We already owe him such a spiritual debt.”

The 2,800 square foot home sits above the Bel-Air Country Club. Wilder sold it for $2.725 million in 2007. He died in 2016.

In 2020, when Musk announced that he was “selling almost all physical assets” and “won’t own a house,” he made an exception for the house, saying it should be kept.

Walker-Pearlman insisted she understood why the billionaire moved forward with the foreclosure. “This is probably the end of a very beautiful and unicorn chapter of our lives,” he said of spending time living in the house. “I’m not unhappy at all.”

Musk has not publicly commented on the issue.