If there’s ever been a house that’s been nearly as important to a movie as the characters in the movie, it’s the Home Alone house. This house has a nostalgia that’s nearly unmatched by any other movie because it feels like it’s really a character, as though Kevin and the house are working together against the burglars. However, do you know how much you’d have to pay to get it? Here’s what you should know about the worth of the Home Alone house.
The Local Area
If you were starting from scratch in trying to discern the value of the Home Alone house, you would first want to look at the local area. Writer John Hughes grew up on the North Shore of Chicago, which means you would want to look near there. The North Shore in general has a median sales price of $475,000, but some homes near the area have sold for as high as $24.8 million, and the sheer elegance of the home means it would probably be relatively above the median.
The House Itself
The good news is that the home used in Home Alone is actually a real home owned by real people in Winnetka, Illinois. That means you don’t have to estimate – you can look at the home’s actual value. The home is a two-story brick colonial originally built in 1921. It’s also a gigantic 4,243 square feet, with six bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, an attic, and a basement.
Just before it was in the Home Alone movies, this home sold for $875,000 – equivalent to just over $1.8 million in 2020. That number has stayed relatively similar adjusted for inflation; in 2012, it sold for $1.6 million, which also adjusts to just over $1.8 million. Today, the estimated value is $1.9 million. That’s higher than the average for Winnetka, where the median sale price is $1.1 million.
Add-Ons From the Crew
The home as you see it in the Home Alone movies isn’t exactly how the home looks in real life, either. The crew had to add in some additional features to make sure it fit the physical gags that director John Hughes had written for the movie. That included adding wallpaper, building the treehouse, and constructing an outdoor staircase to the basement.
Owner John Abendshien, in a Vanity Fair interview, recalled that the crew had to come in to install the fake outdoor section. “They brought in a backhoe and dug up the property and put in fake steps and a fake door. And then after the shoot, they filled all that back in and resodded. You could never tell that that had happened.” Adding these elements would probably add a decent amount of value.
Conclusion
The Home Alone house, as it stands, most recently sold for $1.6 million. However, if you were to buy a home today with all the trappings you see in the movie, you’d probably have to spend significantly more, even without the nostalgia factor.