Elon Musk, who lost $200 billion in personal wealth in his short time as Twitter CEO, is reportedly behind on rent payments at one of Twitter’s downtown San Francisco offices to the tune of $136,260.
In December the social media company was put on notice and given five days to pay or go risk defaulting on the loan.
Five years into a seven-year lease, the building’s landlord, Columbia REIT 650 California LLC, is seeking to recoup attorney’s fees and expenses in addition to the back monies owed.
Though not Twitter’s main headquarters – also in San Francisco – the landlord still fetched a hefty six-figure rent payment for the offices located on the 30th floor.
In 2017 when the lease was originally signed, the monthly rent was over $107,000 a month during the first year.
With incremental increases each year of the contract, had Twitter not defaulted, monthly rent payments would have been capped at $128,397 in the final year, the Guardian wrote.
Prior to taking over as the app’s Chief Executive, the Tesla and SpaceX head announced significant cost-cutting measures that were supposed to put Twitter on the road to financial profitability – but the opposite happened.
Musk gutted key departments responsible for content moderation, compliance, and engineering without regard that’s what made the popular social media site one of the world’s largest with 237 million users.
It was speculated that Twitter’s failure to pay rent, was possibly a ploy by its new owner to renegotiate the terms of the lease.
“What Elon may be doing by not paying the rent is signaling that he is actually interested in renegotiation of the terms of the lease agreement,” San Francisco real estate attorney Dannie Bornstein said, according to CNN.
Bornstein pointed out that although well within its rights to evict, Columbia says it values Twitter as a tenant and is only seeking to be paid what the company’s owed.
The Guardian reported that Twitter is also auctioning off high-dollar items including a pizza oven, a commercial kitchen mixer valued at $18,000, a Twitter bird statue, and high-end furniture that costs thousands.
Bidding for many of the items begins as low as $25.
The former “world’s richest man,” Musk has been on a steep decline – financially and professionally – since moving into Twitter headquarters three months ago.
His social media antics have seen advertisers and users leave the app in droves.
It also cost Tesla billions in market cap.
Once valued at $1.2 trillion, as of today the EV car maker is valued at approximately $350 billion – ouch.
Original reporting by the Associated Press.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
