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Home warranty experts Cinch Home Services have analyzed the value of America’s most famous movie and TV houses to determine how much their value has increased today versus when they first hit screens.
The analysis team shortlisted 31 well-known properties from films and TV shows to see how their prices changed since viewers first spotted them. Houses from horror flicks and 80s classics topped the list for biggest value jumps.
The top 10 fictional homes with the highest percentage price increases:
One of New York’s most famous houses, located at 108 Ocean Avenue, “The Amityville Horror” house saw the biggest price increase of all homes in the study. Its value rose 1,050% from $97,250 when the film terrified audiences in 1979 to a massive $1,118,600 today, making previous owners who held onto it very happy indeed. The actual house was not used in filming due to local objections, instead they built a near-identical facade on a house in Toms River, NJ.
The “Nightmare on Elm Street” house, located in Los Angeles, California, took second place with a 689% value surge over the past four decades. The home on North Genesee Avenue was worth around $397,524 when Freddy Krueger first stalked teens’ dreams in 1984 and is now worth $3,137,700.
Two California properties tied for the third biggest price jump, both with 619% increases. The Oceanside house from “Top Gun” flew from $138,501 to $995,700 since the Tom Cruise blockbuster hit theaters in 1986. The “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” residence, located in Long Beach, similarly skyrocketed from $362,728 to $2,607,700 over the same period.
San Francisco’s “Full House” home placed fourth with a 534% price surge. The instantly recognizable Broderick Street home was valued at $1,040,532 when the sitcom debuted in 1987 and now holds a value of $6,593,100, reflecting the city’s mature property market.
The home from “The Money Pit” rounded out the fifth position. Found at 1 Laurens Street, Locust Valley, New York, the home, which was originally worth $829,957 in 1983, is now valued at $4,604,200. This is an increase of 455%.
For those curious about how these home investments compare to an index fund such as the S&P 500, we can compare the oldest listing in the leaderboard. The Amityville Horror house from July 1979, saw an increase of 1,050%, and in that same time, when adjusted for inflation, the S&P 500 rose 1,091.54%. The original home price, if invested in the index, would be worth around $3,638,369 today, instead of the home’s value of $1,118,600.
A spokesperson from Cinch Home Services said, “It’s easy to look back on these home prices and think that the price increases are flukes caused by the popularity of the homes from a time before social media and reality TV exposed us to million-dollar homes. But it’s not the case, and an investment today will likely be looked upon with the same eager eyes in 2071, another 45 years’ time.”
“Houses from 1970s and 1980s productions show much bigger percentage increases than properties from newer shows, simply because they have had more time to appreciate in value. The data shows that location matters enormously, with California and New York homes seeing the biggest price jumps by far.”
Methodology:
This study explored current house valuations for popular fictional homes and compared them to estimates of how much each would have cost when the film or TV show was released. The FHFA House Price Index data set was used to estimate historical home prices based on their current valuation, using per-state data with quarterly resolution. The oldest HPI data available started from 1975, so estimates could not be made for media released prior to this date.
Sources:
HomeBeautiful.com – https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/g26859396/movie-homes-you-can-visit/ Zillow.com – https://www.zillow.com
FHFA.gov – https://www.fhfa.gov/data/hpi/datasets
OfDollarsandData – https://ofdollarsanddata.com/
