Poor Larry.

Larry Ellison's shithole in Woodside, CA.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, recently took a $3M tax break on his Woodside home after declaring it "functionally obsolete," whatever that means. According to the SF Chronicle, the money will come out of San Mateo County funds, $1.4M of which would have gone to schools.

And while it's true that Ellison, Mr. #12 on the Forbes 500 List, already has a net worth of about $25 billion (with a B, kids), he must really need that extra three mil, so get off his back.

Why? How did Larry Ellison's palatial estate decline by more than 60 percent in value in a market where luxury homes are actually appreciating and single-family homes values in the county only decreased 6.3 percent in the last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems?

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Lilienthal declined comment, and Bennett, of San Francisco law firm Bennett & Yee, didn't return a call from The Chronicle. But Ellison's appeal claimed the property suffered from "significant functional obsolescence" because there is a finite market for high-end luxury homes, limited appeal for 16th-century Japanese architecture and the "over improvements" and "excessive" landscaping are costly to maintain.

Sixteenth-century Japanese architecture doesn't just take care of itself, Lar.



(Photo credit: Chronicle photo, 2006, by Christina Koci Hernandez)