You’d think that having your home featured in a celebrated film would guarantee a buyer when resale time rolled around -- but it seems even fame can’t fight the housing slump. Over the past few years, some of pop culture’s most recognizable homes have come on the market with surprisingly limited success.
Take the iconic glass house featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Originally put up for sale in May 2009 at an asking price of $2.3 million, almost a year later that price dropped to $1.8 million. Early this year, another dip brought it down to $1.65 million, and still no dice. The house’s starring role didn’t translate into the big award: a sale. In fact, The Fiscal Times found six iconic houses from well-known movies that have been for sale over the past three years, and only two of them have sold.
Still, having a home featured in a classic movie brings a lot of attention when the owner decides to put it on the market. Sometimes, it’s more attention than the owner bargained for. Take the modern home that served as dreamy vampire Edward Cullen’s house in Twilight, New Moon. What 13-year-old girl wouldn’t flock to that open house? In fact, there were no open houses for this one, and viewings were tightly controlled.
Of course, this has been a bad time to be selling any house, even one with star power. And despite the many price chops, living in a movie set doesn’t come cheap. The best bargain, the Ferris Bueller house, came in at $1.65 million before it was temporarily taken off the market earlier this year. The biggest available splurge? The Beverly Hills mansion featured in The Godfather, which took a $70 million price chop last September and is still asking $95 million, a number more akin to a blockbuster film budget than the sale price on a single-family residence.
See the six homes from famous films on the market (slide show).
