How much would well-known sitcom homes cost in real life?
MINNEAPOLIS — Watching sitcoms on television, who hasn’t thought, “I want to live there”?
If you want to buy a house like the one in “Full House” in San Francisco’s Lower Pacific Heights neighborhood, one comparable to it — a five-bedroom, four-bath, three-story Victorian — would cost you $3.5 million, according to San Diegobased La Jolla Realtors.
For “Twilight” enthusiasts, a home like the one where Bella lived in Forks, Washington, would cost $305,000. A lookalike from the “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” a five-bedroom Los Angeles mansion, would run you a cool $9 million. Meanwhile, Carrie Bradshaw’s one-bedroom Manhattan apartment in “Sex and the City” would ring in at $700,000.
The California real estate company’s recent compilation of famous television abodes — based on average home prices of similar homes in the same area — got us thinking: How would the Mary Tyler Moore house in Minnesota, fare?
Realtor Kathy Ekberg of Lakes Area Realty estimates that the house in the charming Kenwood neighborhood of Minneapolis would cost at least $2 million. Ekberg sold a home last year that was designed by Edward Stebbins, the same architect behind the house that is depicted as Mary’s home in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
The 1900 Queen Anne Victorian made famous by the show has sold three times in the past two decades. In 2005, it went for about $1.1 million, according to Ekberg. A couple of years and some major renovations later (adding two bedrooms and three bathrooms), it sold for about $2.8 million.
In 2012, the five-bedroom, six-bathroom house sold for about $1.7 million.
“It might have been a more realistic price point at the time,” Ekberg said of the house’s decline in value. “I think it would take a little bit of time, but I think they could easily get $2 million now.”
Of course, anyone who bought the home would have to deal with its enduring stardom.
“Around that time when they were trying to sell it (in 2007), one of the complaints was all the people who would stop by to take pictures and knock on the door,” said Ekberg. “But I would think that would be kind of fun.”