The Pink Trap House may soon be just another white house in Atlanta.
The Atlanta-based hip hop star 2 Chainz’s lease on the house at 1530 Howell Mill Road, which is drenched in hot pink paint to match his latest album cover, is up Friday, July 7, according to George Rohrig, founder of the property management firm that owns the house.
Rohrig said the firm intends to seek new tenants -- and 2 Chainz and his team have arranged to repaint Pink Trap House white.
Now famous via social media, the pink Craftsman-style bungalow in the city's Berkeley Park neighborhood is attracting crowds who come to pose in front of its columned, railed front porch, or in the front yard with the similarly painted hot pink stove. (The 1970s-era sedan, painted to match the house and the oven, was also a favorite prop for photos until it was damaged. It has since been towed away.)
Cartel Properties was not aware of 2 Chainz’s plans for the property beyond using it to promote the album, said Rohrig. A woman who works at Cartel, but asked not to be named except as “the landlord,” said in a phone interview earlier this week she had no idea the 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house would become an art gallery, nail salon, and site of church services, among other ventures run out of the one-story house.
The Howell Mill house is not the one painted pink that appears on the cover of 2 Chainz's new album, titled "Pretty Girls Like Trap Music." But the star, or someone connected to him, leased the house to promote his new music, repainted the structure similar to the album cover and added the word "TRAP" in huge black letters under the gable.
2 Chainz used the house, and the crowd of people gathered there, to shoot scenes for a music video Wednesday night. Videos on his Snapchat and Instagram accounts showed him rapping along to his song “Door Swangin'” in front of the porch, which was filled with people dancing.
Some neighbors have complained about the crowds and traffic to the house. The landlord told the AJC she leased it with good intentions, but might not have leased the property if she had known it would become such a frequented site.
“You have to give them credit,” Rohrig told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by phone Thursday. “They did a pretty good job handling complaints and adding security when needed.”
2 Chainz’s team made arrangements to build a parking lot behind to house to help manage traffic.
The house has become such an attraction, the Fulton County Health Department had parked its mobile HIV testing truck in the front yard of the house next door on July 4, hoping to capitalize on the crowds and get people tested as they showed up for selfies. (Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Atlanta is the No. 5 city in the nation for new cases of HIV.)
Rohrig said 2 Chainz at one point had plans pick the house up and move it to another neighborhood. He said those plans fell through.
Built in 1940, the 5-room house has 899 square feet of residential space, along with a full basement and covered porch, according to county property records online this week. It is zoned as part of a commercial service district.
As the tenant, the landlord said, 2 Chainz and his management company, Street Execs, are responsible for any damage to the property and must clean and repaint the inside walls, which are painted with the album’s tracklist.
Photos available this week on Google's Street View feature and its previous owner's Facebook page show the house in its less famous days, painted white with crimson accents on the porch columns and rails.
The Fulton County Assessor’s Office valued the 0.17-acre lot the house sits on this year at $237,600 and the house itself at $160,500, for a total valuation of $398,100. For property tax purposes, it is assessed at $159,240.
Cartel would not disclose how much 2 Chainz or Street Execs pay in rent. The landlord said she does not expect the property’s recent fame to increase its value.
County records available online this week listed the owner of the house since 2008 as Schantz Home Improvement Co., a company with an address at 1530 Howell Mill Road -- now the Pink Trap House. The firm was listed as buying the house for $392,000.
However, the firm posted on its Facebook page on July 2 that it had sold the house and that the building, with its new pink color scheme, had become a sensation in a week's time.
"The idea starts off with the artist himself, and it's our job to see it through," Coach Tek, 2 Chainz's manager, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview published last month. "I knew it was a dope idea, but I honestly did not expect for it to turn into what it is now."
