The guy who owned the mansion was a former entrepreneur who didn't want to live in the Bay Area but owned this giant house, and several other very expensive properties. To pay the property taxes on all of these places, he bought/sold very expensive items, and this stuff would get shipped to his house. But he didn't want to leave it outside for long and needed someone trustworthy to bring it in doors. That person was me.

So I would once a week drag a giant box filled with something expensive into the garage, and some guy would come by later and load it into a truck and carry it off. The guy who owned the house could then live in Tahoe or Hawaii or Florida in his other mansions, with the peace of mind of knowing he could pay his tax bills with 0 effort on his part.

In return, I got to live in a 6 bedroom house with a pool, basketball court, 2 gardens...for the cost of the utilities. In case you're curious, I found this guy on Craigslist when he was trying to rent the mansion at the bottom of the real estate bust and he just liked me, so we set up this special arrangement.

It's a highly inefficient market. Very few people want to rent anything for >$5-10k/mo -- they'd usually (stupidly) prefer to "not throw money away on rent" and either pay $50k/mo for a mortgage on that property, or spend the same amount on a much cheaper house mortgage. (or, in more reasonable cases, pay $2-5k/mo on rent).

If you can keep your neighbors in check, I think $10k/mo mansions make awesome startup offices, too. That's what everyone does in the Middle East/Caribbean/etc., and works well enough in the Bay Area, too, until you hit a lot of employees.

basically you can rent a mortgage from home owners who bought their mansions when they were still reasonably priced. the rent/mortgage ratios are still reasonable - however, the baseline is just a lot higher than your typical 2 bedroom condo.

many times the actual home owner lives in a much cheaper place. maybe in an apartment in the city, maybe in a bigger house in south carolina where they have servants and a fleet of classic cars. who knows.

it's how rent vs. mortgage is supposed to work.