Mark Zuckerberg buys 440-acre Strancally castle estate in Ireland
Meta chief executive paid roughly €20m for gothic-style mansion built in 1830 and its surroundings
It stretches the definition of pied-à-terre but Mark Zuckerberg now has a pad in Ireland: Strancally castle.
The Meta chief executive and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have bought the gothic-style mansion and its 178-hectare (440-acre) estate in county Waterford to use as a base during visits to Ireland.
“Mark and his family are excited to continue caring for this historic home and look forward to spending time in Ireland, where Meta maintains its international headquarters,” a spokesperson said on Thursday.
The price paid in the off-market deal is not known but the Irish Times, which first reported the sale, estimated a value between €20m (£17m) and €30m: approximately 10% of the cost of his 387ft superyacht.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/20/mark-zuckerberg-buys-440-acre-strancally-castle-estate-in-irelandOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
76 replies
Fuck that guy
Mark Zuckerberg is a life support system for cringe.
He's a monument of vaginal dryness
Has an unusually punchable face sort of demeanor.
I’m sure this is what the IRA fought for. Independence.
Fun fact: Cromwell died from a mosquito bite during one of his campaigns in Ireland.
Dear Mosquitos, you know what to do.
Someone has proposed building a monumental statue to honor the skeeter.
I remember reading that not too long ago; which is why I know it's definitely not a problem to celebrate the mossie that killed that terrible monster.
Mosquitos don't suck android fluid though.
It's ironic, because that robomofo sucks
And he earned that by.... Making everyone life worse. That was his contribution to society. He fucked us all and got a castle in reward.
Oh he's got a megayacht too.
Reminder that $30m is $0.0bn, to the nearest tenth of a billion dollars. Billionaires should not exist.
I really wish Ireland would stop hosting Zuckerberg's scammy ad company and all the other useless parasite corporations that hole up there.
Then Ireland fucking dies.
People really do not understand without Irrland being a tax heaven, there is no money in that country.
There's handful of decent jobs in Ireland because of it, other than that, people have no future and are forever riding on benefits. I know enough people who basically haven't held a job in 25 years. While the state shouldn't let people starve, they did get complicit and simply gave up.
I'm sure I'll get downvoted into oblivion for saying it here, lemmy loves to think everyone gets to just do nothing and get money for existing... but reality is, Ireland is fucked. Has been fucked for 20 years. They spiralled into one of the most expensive places to live with no prospects, people can't afford to start new businesses so there's less jobs going around. All the talent fucks off to UK (guess where I am?) Because we as a couple + an extra person couldn't find a place to rent after 3 months of searching. People drop year's worth of rent day 1 to secure a place (it doesn't sound like this has changed much) so we moved.
I miss home, but I'd seriously have to downgrade our lives to move back. I couldn't even dream to be able to do single income and maintain family of 3 in Ireland, even in my high paying field.
That is an exaggeration. While I can't comment on housing the economy is built on being a tax haven but isn't just that. There is a lot of employment in IT and Biotech and there are a lot of facilities actually based in Ireland, not just some office jobs for handling the tax evasion (that too of course).
The problem to me doesn't seem that long term unemployed aren't left to starve and die but a wrong housing policy and not even a joke of urban planning. It is what is happening when exploding real estate value is considerey a boon rather than a huge issue.
Those IT jobs are being culled now. There were news of Rapid7 closing down their Dublin office few weeks ago.
Intel has still decent presence, but without investment into infrastructure, where does that leave us? Not everyone can (nor should) work in IT or biotech.
How do you compete with mainland Europe when you got to ship things likely through UK and then to mainland while having one of the highest tax rates and wages in EU? Ireland hasn't got any benefits in manufacturing. There's only so much Irish beef and salmon you can sell to fuel the economy.
As far as I know logistic lines have adapted post Brexit and are avoiding the UK nowaday, stuff doesn't have to leave the Single Market on the way to other parts of it. Ireland may be on the edge of the continent bit I wouldn't call it remote. It is as close to the "Blue Banana" as Central Europe for example.
Correct me if I am wrong but the IT cuts are not limited to Ireland but happening globally in the sector, partially due to over expansion during covid and thecurrent AI bubble.
Why is ireland expensive to live when at the same time there are no prospects and young people have to leave for job opportunities?
I don't actually know but I've seen this happen in enough cities to suspect lack of affordable housing and rich people fuckery
Yeah, I absolutely understand that there are real reasons to why Ireland has become a tax haven, and thanks for adding some background here. Of course what I'm saying is that I wish Ireland would find a way to prosper without them, not that it should just kick them out and then roll over and die.
I touched on this more in my other comment, Ireland has too many disadvantages to prosper. Mainland Europe has cheaper labour, doesn't got to cross the Irish sea then the English channel to get goods in and with tax rates this high? Not much left on the table.
I do feel like there's no "out" in this.
This echoes what some Irish coming to Australia to work have said to me in the past. Particularly civil construction. There’s lots of civil and mining here, not a lot there and they’re quite good at it.
Why is housing expensive while job opportunities are low? Is it only true for cities like Dublin or generally true?
It became the whole, you can still commute to Dublin, so prices krept outwards.
The number of houses was very low, 2008 killed a lot of these housing plans and they never really restarted. Houses kept going up and up due to lack of supply. 3 generations living under the same roof is common.
But even places like Cork or Limerick have seen a big raise in price. Remote work or even hybrid allowed people to go further and prices obviously followed...
i presume this is for tax dodging?
Don't give them so much credit, might turn out to be a very stupid idea like maybe he imagines they can survive in a castle out in the wilderness during an apocalypse.
They have fabs on ireland
... dodging taxes.
Well it's not the same as like keeping your residence in Monaco by being there just over 180 days a year to pay 0% income tax or something, Ireland still has tax. They just have lower tax because that gets them more tax income as it's beneficial to have your EU or even international HQ in Ireland.
Tax optimization is a better term, because tax avoidance or dodging usually implies doing something illegal whereas Meta quite literally does have a physical HQ in Ireland.
Also in Ireland they have to pay every year they make profit as far as I know, whereas in Estonia for example they'd only have to pay tax on dividends and salaries, not profits. Meta pays a really tiny dividend so they'd essentially go untaxed on corporate income. Catch is, if they eventually DO want to pay a large dividend, they'd be paying the 22/78 income tax here (it's called 22%, but since it's 22% of the gross, but calculated on the net, it's actually 28% or something, I don't wanna math right now).
Point being, they're actually still paying a lot more tax than they could legally be paying, while still staying in the EU.
Technofeudalism needs castles for the tech-barons.
Time to get our tech torches and tech storm the gates
Well, to be fair they make pillaging and plundering them much more apropros. I’d feel like a dweeb plundering in the suburbs.
Honestly I'm a little bit impressed, when I imagined the castles of our technofeudalist overlords, I was thinking of some high-tech penthouses high in the skies or enormous yachts in international waters. I never imagined they might actually pick up exactly where the last feudal system left off.
I sincerely wish Mark the best of luck for his new home. I hope he spends ten, nay, hundred times as much as he paid for it, on renovating the place and making it fit for him. I hope he truly spends every dime to make this place fit for a modern king.
And then I hope he doesn’t get to live in it for a single day.
I hope he escapes to it when the revolution kicks off, only to find the revolution is in Ireland too, and be gets hung at the doorstep.
Ahh, who am I kidding. Ireland might do it, but he'd never escape there because Americans will never revolt, they'll just elect a bunch of people who claim to be progressive and end up with the same exact party as before while patting themselves on the back.
Plus he already has a bunker in his island in Hawaii, this Ireland castle is really only for holidays
Ah yes, the story of Saint Michael's Castle.
This is such a stupid life.
Fuck you Mark Zuckerberg. Just because I haven't said it yet, today.
I thought that the Irish were traditionally not too keen on foreign assholes coming over and taking their stuff?
Apparently they okay with billionaires. All the while Ireland got a housing crisis.
the classical you should accept unlimited imigrant on welfare cause one rich person bought a home in your country. fuck them all
You know they were talking about invaders, not immigrants. . ? I mean, you only have to know the tiniest bit of Irish history to see that.
invaders or immigrants ? didnt they burn an asylum center recently ? for wich reasons ?
That was the unionists in Northern Ireland. Think racist white Mississippians, but more inbred and with even worse accents.
Is it racist to not want ppl that need to be said to rape is bad as neighborh ?
i just think it's funny a castle costs 10% of a superyacht.
shows you how much these people matter on a historical scale. he's flexing on us but pretty fucking lame compared to billionaires in 2346 who'd have megaships travelling through the cosmos.
take a moment to laugh at this loser. have fun in your castle while you check your smartphone on the toilet, asshole. i can do that in pissant suburbia.
need 500 rooms just to do nothing lol.
Build a datacenter right next to it. /s
Epstein Castle, opening soon.
One notes the absence of a goddamned data center on the property. Good enough for American backyards, not good enough for him.
May it be a curse to him.
I hope it's full of fairies, banshees, and evil Alabama leprechauns.
May his days there be torture.
might not work on android, as they arnt human.
They will not be "caring for" the property, nor anything else. Let's be honest
Time for a siege!
finally
30M? Chump change for him. Ireland, get a wealth tax ready just in case
They will absolutely not do that. Ireland has been enjoying being a corporate tax haven for many years now.
Fetchez la vache!
yo people who own cropdusters...
Not in Ireland
Fucking Eejit
*Feckin'
Why is this world news. Who cares.
Walks around saying
"King of the castle"
"King of the castle"
I wonder how constrained he will be by planning laws.
Rosie O'Donnell just can't get away from this american largesse.
He's going to build some evil rocket based machine under one of those towers. Once it reaches orbit, it would steal everyone's, except his, personal information at once, to accomplish his super vilain dream of the complete destruction of privacy.
Our only hope is a nerd/pirate/trans/furry/tankie elite commando from the Fediverse to arrive at the last minute and make his evil scheme fail, with some fireworks at the end.
Candidatures are open, please bring attack plans suggestions.
go get him, rosie, go get him good.
It’s gonna be guarded by 100 of those new Chinese Kung-Fu robots. A few of them will mow the lawns and maybe milk a cow.
The Man in the High Castle
So? It's not like it was a tourist destination that he bought and turned into a home, it's a home.
BUILD A NEW CASTLE YOU CHEAP LAZY FUCK.