Zuckerberg buys four houses surrounding his own

If you want to make sure that a developer won’t be building on the land next to yours, you buy the homes on the land and lease them back to the current residents. That’s the Zuckerberg way, at least.

Living the fantasy of every homeowner who’s faced the prospect of a nuisance project next door, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has bought four homes adjacent to his own 5-bedroom crash pad in one of Palo Alto’s toniest neighborhoods.

Zuckerberg paid top dollar — more than $30 million in total — for the four residential properties located next door and behind his own home. But he has no plans to build a Taj Mahal on the land, according to a person with knowledge of the transactions, who said Zuckerberg is leasing the existing homes back to the families that live there.