A rumor that circulated online in early August 2025 claimed a video showed an expensive house owned by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Users sharing the video, and some commenters, also alleged Newsom received an annual salary of $140,000 — calling into question how his family might be able to purchase such a home.
For example, on Aug. 5, an X user reposted a TikTok video showcasing the view from a vehicle driving past the in-question house, and misspelling Newsom's name as "Newsome." The post (archived), receiving over 1.4 million views, displayed a text caption reading, "Gavin Newsom's house. Not bad for a 140k a year salary." At least one TikTok user then reposted (archived) the video, including with a cutout text caption from the X post. Other users posted the clip on Facebook and X.
While Newsom and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have purchased expensive homes, the in-question video did not show a house they owned, nor did the posts accurately show the governor's annual salary.
Izzy Gardon, director of communications for Newsom's office, told Snopes by email, "The governor does not own a home in Utah."
Utah home and governor's salary
A July 6, 2024, Instagram video (archived) showing the same home from the in-question clip featured a glimpse of a street sign for Deer Crest Lane in Alpine, Utah — far from Newsom's office in California's capital city of Sacramento. The user's video made no mention of Newsom or politics.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets ever reporting any news about Newsom buying a home in Utah. A reverse-address search for the property address on Whitepages.com displayed two owners' names, including a man and a woman — neither of them named Newsom. Zillow.com listed the 4,653-square-foot home's estimated market value at over $2.56 million.
One of the earliest posts — if not the first — from a user attempting to tie Newsom to the Alpine home appeared in a video (archived) on TikTok user @__thesmithfamily__'s account on July 29, 2024. The user then reposted (archived) the clip again on the same date in 2025, reviving the rumor in early August for further shares by users on several platforms. We sent a message to the user to ask questions about their false claim and will add any future responses to this story.
The California Department of Human Resources website (archived) lists Newsom's current annual salary as $242,295, not $140,000.
Newsom's houses and wealth
In November 2024, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (archived) the Newsoms planned to split their time between a newly-purchased $9.1 million home in Marin County and their other house in Fair Oaks. According to The Sacramento Bee (archived), the Newsoms bought their Fair Oaks home, located in Sacramento County, in December 2018, for $3.7 million.
As for the users who questioned how Newsom could purchase such expensive houses on his governor's salary, the Los Angeles Times reported (archived) in October 2018 the details of his past business ventures and investments, including making millions in the wine industry:
For the last two decades, Gavin Newsom has been rising to the highest levels of California politics.
At the same time, he also has become a multimillionaire businessman, with an upscale chain of wine stores, wineries, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels and retail shops stretching from the Bay Area and Napa Valley to Lake Tahoe and Palm Springs. He built some of those businesses with the Gettys, heirs to an oil fortune who have deep connections to the Democratic lieutenant governor's family.
While Newsom has focused his campaign for governor on his progressive politics, he also has touted his success as an entrepreneur and jobs creator, citing the 23 businesses and 800 employees under the umbrella of his PlumpJack Group.
For further reading, we previously investigated the true claim that Newsom dined with lobbyists at the posh French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in November 2020 — during the COVID-19 pandemic.