SpaceX offered $150,000 for a waterfront home next to its launch facilities, which its owner says is one-third of the price of similar properties: report

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

SpaceX offered $150,000 for a Boca Chica resident's home next to its launch facilities, per NBC News.
The offer was one-third the price of similar waterfront houses in the village, she told NBC News.
The resident said an estate agent representing SpaceX said her property could be seized by the state.

A resident of a South Texas village said SpaceX wanted to buy her house for $150,000 but the company's offer was one-third of the price of similar properties nearby, NBC News reported.

SpaceX is building its Starbase city at its launch site in Boca Chica, a village in South Texas, where the company has launched its Falcon 9 rockets and Starship prototypes from.

Residents have previously said that SpaceX has tried to buy their houses for offers that they considered unfair. By this point, SpaceX had already bought at least 112 parcels of land in the area, The Wall Street Journal reported in May.

Celia Johnson, is a retiree who owns a three-bedroom bay-facing ranch in Boca Chica. She told NBC News that she held out on SpaceX's offer because it was valued too low, based on the prices of a lower-quality property in the area without a sea view.

Zillow, an online real estate marketplace, says on its website that the typical value for a house in Boca Chica is around $120,679, and that property prices have increased by 22.3% over the past year. In South Padre Island, which is across the bay from Boca Chica, the typical house price is $349,208, per Zillow.

Johnson, however, told NBC that a similar waterfront house situated near her three-bedroom property would be three times as much as SpaceX's $150,000 offer.

Other residents told NBC News that SpaceX's offer was too low to purchase a house that was similar to their own away from the area.

Brownsville is the nearest town to Boca Chica and online property websites, including Zillow and Trulia, list house prices going up to $750,000 and beyond.

Johnson told NBC News that a real-estate agent representing Elon Musk's company told her that her property could be seized by the state under eminent domain.

Maria Pointer, another Boca Chica resident, also told NBC News that the same thing happened to her.

SpaceX didn't immediately reply to Insider's request for comment, which was made outside of US operating hours.

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