With the Oscars on tap, we wondered how to marry real estate with movies. Many of this year’s very serious nominees for best picture didn’t exactly lend themselves to a discussion of the homes within the film.
All of our brainstorming felt forced until we decided to focus our energy on one well-deserved nominee. We sat down, fired up the screen, and held a mini Wes Anderson film festival in our sad gray cube.
Anderson’s immaculate eye for design extends to the homes featured in his movies. And we can safely say none of this year’s other nominees inspired a whimsical Legos model.
Join us as we stroll through the Anderson oeuvre and dissect the real estate within…
‘Bottle Rocket’ (1996)
Anderson’s first film was a humorous heist caper that set the stage for his Oscar-worthy career. His eye for visually stunning property is apparent, but the movie doesn’t quite have that signature Anderson-ian look (yet!).
Filmed in North Texas, the movie features a drool-worthy Dallas home designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright as the base of operations for the main characters’ bungled burglaries. Known as the Gillin House, it was Wright’s only residential project in Big D.
The characters plan and celebrate their heists in the massive 11,000-square-foot Usonion-style home. In this scene, you can see the home’s expansive backyard as the Wilson brothers kick back and enjoy lunch:
In this scene featuring the home’s dining area, the cool ’60s vibe is readily apparent:
Records from PropertyShark show the home’s current assessed value at right around $8 million, exactly $1 million more than the 1996 film’s estimated budget.
‘Rushmore’ (1998)
Anderson’s breakout hit begins to highlight his ultrasharp aesthetic:
The story of an overachieving young student who falls for a much older woman was also filmed in Texas—Houston, specifically.
The film’s look is stodgy East Coast prep school, but the heart of the film was Texan. We never find out anything about the city where the film takes place, lending it the fairy-tale element common throughout Anderson’s work.
To begin with, we weren’t able to pin down the address of the home where Bill Murray‘s character takes his infamous boozy pool plunge:
But IMDb does have an address for the home of the film’s main character, Max Fischer. The home on the wrong side of the tracks is located on Emerald Court in Houston. From the looks of Google Street View, it’s had a fresh paint job in the years since it served as the Fischer residence:
The modest home, built in 1924, doesn’t have a film location premium built in to its value. PropertyShark shows an assessed value of around $78,000 for the 1,225-square-foot home.
The home of Fischer’s object of affection, the comely teacher Miss Cross, is somewhere on North Street in Houston. Assessed values for homes on that street range from $75,000 to $235,000. But please, don’t try wooing any sellers on this street with stories of fake accidents:
‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (2001)
New York City plays a crucial role in this tale of family dysfunction and dissolution. The Tenenbaum brownstone on fictional Archer Avenue is packed with intricate interiors and a roof made for smoking the day away.
The Onion’s A.V. Club visited the home’s location and went deep on the story behind how Anderson found the place and how it inspired his storytelling:
The home itself sits uptown in Harlem. Estimated to have been built in 1899, the majestic four-story, almost 5,000-square-foot home still stands proudly on the corner of Convent Avenue and 144th Street. PropertyShark took land and structure into account and estimated the home’s value to be right around $2.18 million.
(For more on the film’s filming locations in NYC, we found a great resource at Untapped Cities.)
‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou’ (2004)
As evidenced by its title, this tale of father and son takes place on the water. It’s impossible to assess the value of Zissou’s beloved Belafonte, but as this clip of the boat’s inner workings demonstrates, Anderson’s eye for detailed interior design is unparalleled:
‘The Darjeeling Limited’ (2007)
Like “Zissou,” there isn’t a family home in this tale of three brothers on a spiritual train journey through India.
However, we found ourselves drawn to the movie’s filming location in the Indian state of Rajasthan.
In Jodhpur, we located a cool 10-room flat with a garden going for 58.5 million rupees. Don’t panic—that’s about $940,000. Yes, it’s still expensive. But you’re worth it.
If you’re on a budget, we found another Jodhpur home available for about half the price—$445,000. With six rooms and some interesting interior photos, this flat begs you to take a second look.
‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ (2009)
Anderson’s adventure into stop-motion animation doesn’t feature a house per se, but the family of the titular Mr. Fox has a well-kept underground dwelling. In other words, a nicely appointed foxhole:
We aren’t able to put a price tag on Mr. Fox’s elaborate underground abode. However, we did find a couple of homes that boasted underground life that even a canis could love.
This home for sale in Walhalla, SC, boasts an underground feature: “Preppers Paradise” with an “underground bunker!”
Although we didn’t see any photographic evidence of the bunker, we’re sure it exists somewhere on this seven-acre property currently listed for $99,000.
If the South Carolina home doesn’t appeal to your sensibilities, we found a home in Idaho that boasts a “1,000 square foot underground bunker.” Again, we weren’t able to identify a picture of this lair, but we’re sure Fox and family would feel right at home in the Potato State.
‘Moonrise Kingdom’ (2012)
This tale of young love set on a fictional island along the New England coast marks a return to real estate for Anderson. The homes featured in this film are visually striking inside and out.
Roadtrippers provides an essential resource for movie buffs who’d like to visit the locations of New Penzance.
A few of the exterior shots were filmed in a land far, far away from New England—Genesee, WI, to be exact. The home known as Ten Chimneys Cottage served as the exterior front of the Bishop family residence.
The quaint home less than an hour from Milwaukee is on the National Register of Historic Places and is quite a tourist attraction in its own right. The home sits on 60 acres and really has 10 chimneys between the three main structures on the property. Given that Genesee’s most expensive listing currently for sale is listed for $1,195,000, we figured Ten Chimneys would be worth at least 10 times as much. Call it an even $10 million.
It’s also difficult to pin a price on the home that served as the rear exterior of young Suzy Bishop’s house. The iconic red home at Conanicut Island Light in Jamestown, RI, is also on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently a private residence.
‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (2014)
Anderson’s most recent film was nominated for a whopping nine Academy Awards, including best picture. His take on life between the World Wars in a fictional Central European country brought all of his eye for detail to bear. It’s been labeled a jewel box of a world by quite a few movie aficionados.
While the hotel we see on screen was just a miniature model clad in pink, it’s rooted in a few real-world structures throughout Europe. Anderson combed through photos in the Photochrom Prints collection on the website of the Library of Congress to find the exact inspiration he wanted.
Here’s how the hotel was assembled from the outside-in:
Here’s how Anderson and his team gathered ideas for the hotel, found the interior, and constructed the sets:
In its prime, the Grand Budapest would have fetched hundreds of millions. By the time we fast-forward to 1968, it looks forlorn, so gauging a true price is difficult.
The most expensive hotel we found for sale in Europe was an 18-room palace in Cote d’Or listed for $17.1 million. It doesn’t have the scale of the movie’s palace, so we figure the Grand Budapest would fetch around 10 times that amount, but we’ll discount due to wear and tear. Even with our artificial price cut of a fictional hotel, it’s probably worth close to $100 million.
After eight directorial efforts from Anderson, we’ll see if he walks away a winner at this weekend’s Academy Awards. One thing is certain: He’s already ambled off with our Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Interesting Use of Real Estate.
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