Everyone has had their imagination swept away by a fantastic piece of fiction at some point. Some sharp-witted experts have gone the extra step to determine what the real cost would be to live in many of popular culture’s most iconic fictional homes.
From Harry Potter’s burrow to Arrested Development’s Seawind model home, here is a quick breakdown of what it would cost to actually live inside your fiction-inspired daydreams. Some will take a pretty penny.
Harry Potter’s Burrow
According to Rocket Mortgage, Mr. Weasley must have earned a sizeable paycheck working as a department head for the Ministry of Magic. The Weasley family’s famous Burrow from the Harry Potter series is approximately 1,500 square feet and likely set the family back a whopping $300,000 during its 1991 setting.
Bilbo Baggins’ Bag End from “The Hobbit”
Determining the value of Bilbo Baggins’s Bad End home from “The Hobbit” proved to be a bit more of a challenge for Rocket Mortgage.
“The books’ events take place thousands of years ago and our historical data doesn’t quite reach that far,” the company said. “Instead, we estimated the value of Bilbo’s approximately 4,500-square-foot home at the time the book was written in 1937.”
In 1937, the company estimated the hobbit hole costing Baggins approximately $80,000.
SpongeBob SquarePants’ pineapple
While it is not under the sea, fans of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” cartoon can now live in a real-life pineapple hotel. As reported by Bored Panda, the pineapple villa is located in the Dominican Republic. For $3,800 per night, fans can experience the 1,500 square foot hotel in all its Nickelodeon-inspired glory.
A butler will even bring you Krabby Patties!
Shrek’s swamp
While information on Shrek’s swamp is hard to come by, as reported by the Mirror, owners of a 14-acre “private getaway” for sale in Alaska are catching flak for having a property oddly similar to Shrek’s swamp. Built in 1998, the home features exposed insulation on the ceiling and a gravel floor. The only bathroom is outside, with one social media commenter describing it as the “saddest toilet in the world.”
Commenters on Facebook’s “depressing sales” group began sharing the property listing and comparing it to Shrek’s iconic home of swampy solitude. The asking price for the property was listed at $72,204.
“Arrested Development’s” Seawind model home
In a show all about selling houses, it’s hard to not compare the iconic Seawind model home from “Arrested Development” to modern life. Mike Meisenbach, who has three decades of commercial real estate advisory and capital markets experience, decided to do the math.
Estimating the home at a whopping $880,000, Meisenbach said that the home’s value is “based on its proximity to Newport Beach, the 3/3 layout (plus the secret room, but not including the alcohol needed to stock the bar), the presumed size of the “undeveloped land” (yard), and a generous discount for shoddy construction.”
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