David Lynch La House
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mixed
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Key topics
David Lynch's LA house, a unique architectural compound, is for sale, sparking discussion about its design, value, and potential fate.
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Very active discussionFirst comment
1h
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85
Day 1
Avg / period
29.3
Based on 88 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 18, 2025 at 8:30 PM EDT
2 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 18, 2025 at 9:52 PM EDT
1h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
85 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 22, 2025 at 2:38 AM EDT
2 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
And just maybe it symbolized something for him. Low maybe.
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.
Personally I prefer the Millard House which is similar and probably an inspiration. The Millard House is the archetype Minecraft House.
It belays a level of stupidity that is difficult to ignore. The reality is its an Incan Pyramid inspired home.
Personally I have always liked his style and Falling Water was my favourite house when I was young.
Hopefully whoever buys this gem doesn't tear it down to build some modern boxy McMansion.
If there is not inflation and value compressions kicks in, then there are some people who will be ... burdened.
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.
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”.
> 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.
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.
I dunno, I just find that a little bit cool and interesting.
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.)
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".
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
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...
> 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.
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.
The sense in which they are a “middle class is quite distinct from the usual American sense of “middle class” which is usually an income-defined band centered around median income which is overwhelming part of the working class in the scheme in which the petit bourgeoisie are the “middle class”.
[0] But I think most people who use the scheme now would recognize more diversity, including the form probably most common to modern white-collar professionals, where rather than applying their own labor to their own capital, a lot of the petit bourgeiosie both rents labor out to other capitalists in the manner typical of the proletariat and has capital to which rented labor is applied in the manner of the haut bourgeoisie, with both being significant to their interaction with the economy (distinguishing them from workers with incidental capital holdings or capitalists who incidentally have a “paid job” which they could take or leave without meaningfully impacting their lifestyle or overall engagement in the economy.)
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.
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.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1nhb6q9/comment...
In my personal opinion, this house ugly AF
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.
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.
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