What It’s Like to Live in a Pop Culture Landmark

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Despite sitting on a quiet, residential street in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Joanne Quintana’s home sees around 300 cars a day. Used as a shooting location for the hit drama Breaking Bad starting in 2008, the four-bedroom ranch-style dwelling still attracts rabid fans, some of whom try to re-create an iconic scene where the chemistry teacher turned meth dealer throws a pizza on the roof. "We’ve had pizzas on our roof. We’ve had pizzas on our driveway; pizzas until we’re sick of looking at pizzas," Quintana’s mother told NPR in 2015.

After frequently talking to the press about the terrible experience of living in the home—which necessitated the construction of a six-foot fence and increased police patrols in the area—Quintana officially said "we’re done" early this year. The price tag to take on this harrowing experience? Four million dollars—almost 10 times the area’s median house price. "From the explosive opening to pivotal scenes that captured audiences around the world, this Albuquerque home became more than a house—it became a character in its own right," reads walterwhiteshouse.com.

Unlike owners of, say, an architectural wonder, which might beckon a small cadre of appreciators, owners of pop culture pads deal with hordes of fans who are diverse and unpredictable. To the owners, the residence is home; to fans, it inspires the same intense range of emotions as a beloved actor might. And whether ownership is the explicit objective of a fan, a moneymaking proposition, or somewhat of an accident, the experience of owning a "famous" house is hard to put a price tag on. Here, the owners of three celebrated properties speak to Dwell about what it’s like to live in a tourist attraction.

After Twilight

In 2018, Twilight appreciators Dean and Amber Neufeld were thrilled that the four-bedroom 1930s house in St. Helens, Oregon, used as main character Bella Swan’s home in the 2008 movie, was put on the market for $349,900. The data scientist and retired teacher were living about an hour from the property when they saw a familiar dwelling pop up online. Amber, who had been nurturing a hobby of identifying props in movies, recognized it immediately. The couple, who have an eight-year-old son, requested a tour, with no serious intention of buying it. "This is a really cool house," Amber remembers thinking once they got inside. "What could we do to possibly save this?

"I was involved in some Twilight groups online at the time, and there was lots of chatter about the house being on the market, wondering if it was gonna be a Twilight fan that was gonna buy it," she explains. "We just couldn’t stand the idea of somebody coming in and remodeling it, changing it," Dean adds.

Because the house is in a residential zone, it would have been challenging to turn it into a museum, as the couple were limited to using no more than 25 percent of the property for business and having fewer than six customers a day. Dean says they "didn’t buy it with the business mindset," but the goal was always to give fans a chance to experience it; renting it out as a vacation spot quickly made the most sense. But it was in rough shape: Not a single window opened, the water heater was leaking, and the floorboard nails were sticking out. Luckily, Dean is a handy guy, and Amber, thanks to years of fandom, was qualified to "bring the Twilight back to it." The family moved into the house for three months to renovate it themselves, with Dean doing most of the labor (after spending eight hours at his day job). Amber was tasked with making the furnishings as screen accurate as possible, even securing the bedding used in the film, sent to her by fellow fans she met online.

The couple began the rental process on Airbnb, but they now book primarily through their own website. They had a slow start, but a viral tweet that read "What if we kissed in Bella’s bedroom?" had a domino effect, and an onslaught of media coverage means the place now books out immediately. "It’s kind of like throwing fish out in the fish farm," Dean says, noting that a stay goes for around $450 a night (plus taxes and cleaning fees)—less than what they could get for the "famous" house—in an attempt to keep it accessible.

Though he says the experience of the previous owner was a "mixed bag," the couple is thrilled by how respectful other fans are—and shocked by their desire to contribute in some way. "We had lots of things that were sent, whether it be artwork hanging on the wall or screen-accurate items.… The fandom hadn’t had anything new in a decade. Everybody wanted to just be a part of it," Amber says. To wit: When they were outside refreshing the exterior paint job, a fan stopped by and asked if she could help; getting to paint the Twilight house—and getting a photo doing it—was the highlight of her trip.

Saving the Goondocks

Purchasing the Goonies house—a Victorian overlooking the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon—wasn’t a business move for serial entrepreneur Behman Zakeri. "It was more for the love of the game," he says, noting that it’s been a dream of his to own the property since he first saw the movie in the theaters in 1985. "I wanted to help the Goonies save the Goondocks [neighborhood] as a child."

The adventure comedy’s superfan first visited the house in 2013 from his home base in Kansas City, Missouri. He was disappointed to learn it was a private residence, so all he could do was respectfully sneak around the property and drop 10 bucks in a donation box. Unsatisfied, he returned a couple years later with his family for Goonies Day, a multiday celebration hosted by the Oregon Film Museum, the only time of the year the house was open for a tour. Once inside, Zakeri was frustrated with how the owner had updated it over the years, stripping it of the 1980s Gooniesness: "Where’s the Rube Goldberg contraption in the front yard? Where’s the chicken? Where’s the football? Where’s the bowling ball? Where was the boat?"

On the tour, Zakeri got a chance to meet said owner and planted the seed, letting her know he wanted to buy the house. She chuckled and replied: "Yeah, you and a million other Goonies." She had lived there for more than 20 years and had no intention of selling. But Zakeri and his wife were already taken with the picturesque neighborhood. Whether they bought the Goonies house or not, "the plan was to retire" in that town, Zakeri says.

But in 2022, a listing for the house went viral, and Zakeri was flooded with texts and emails from friends alerting him to the exciting development. He sent over an offer of $1,650,777—$777 over asking—for "good luck and prosperity." (The appraisal would show that it was priced half a million over market value, forcing Zakeri to take out a second loan to cover the difference.) Now an owner, Zakeri says there isn’t "a hundred percent clarity what we can and can’t do with the house," as short-term rentals aren’t allowed in the county, and neither is opening it up full-time as a museum. "We have not been able to make money on it at all, which is okay. It wasn’t bought to make money. It was bought for love of the movie and to share with fans. Sharing this house is invigorating."

"What’s most important, at least to me, is that the people involved in this project of restoration are true, genuine Goonies fans."

—Behman Zakeri

Though the "how" isn’t yet clear, Zakeri is focused on one thing for now: restoring the house to its Goonies glory. "I want to go back and make it look ugly, with shag carpet and old appliances, everything," he says. To help with the tight deadline of Goonies Day in June, he enlisted a set designer who is no stranger to tight deadlines—James Pearse Connelly, of The Voice, The Masked Singer, and Top Chef, to help. Connelly, most importantly, also shares a love of the movie.

Since Connelly, who has his own design studio in Los Angeles, started discussing the project with Zakeri nearly two years ago, his main focus has been research. An associate has helped him build out "a big old book of screen grabs"—informally called "The Bible" by the team—from the movie, in an attempt to locate every single item, surface, color, and texture.

Zakeri has purchased another home nearby to live in and oversee renovations. For furnishings, Connelly and his team use Facebook Marketplace and frequent small thrift stores in the area. The restoration is unique in that the family it centers on wasn’t wealthy. Connelly isn’t tasked with locating lusted-after Memphis Milano design objects; instead, the Walshes had lower-middle-class ’80s, late ’70s decor in a late ’50s house. "They couldn’t afford the fresh stuff from Ethan Allen."

As for whether he and Zakeri will hit their tight deadline, Connelly isn’t concerned. "No interior designer or architect is going to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, two months, no problem.’ Set design…is generally like, ‘Can you finish it in ten days? That’s why we’re calling you.’"

Never Home Alone

When now-retired healthcare executive John Abendshien, 78, and his wife purchased a home in Evanston, Illinois, in 1983, the John Hughes movie Sixteen Candles was being shot a block and a half away. They loved the activity it brought to the neighborhood, giving neighbors an opportunity to connect and socialize. A couple years later, they moved to Winnetka but kept in touch with the film’s location manager, who considered their new house for Uncle Buck and National Lampoon’s Vacation. It wasn’t quite right for either—until the script for Home Alone came along in 1990.

"I thought it was really a dorky script. I read this and I thought, This is just preposterous," Abendshien recalls. "This will probably be a floperoo."

For that reason, opening up his family’s 1920s Georgian Colonial for five and a half months didn’t seem too risky. They’d receive $65,000 for use of the whole house and be put up in an apartment close by for the duration of filming. (The interior of the home was replicated in the gym of an empty high school nearby; Abendshien could go visit his "home" with all three stories laid out side by side.)

But very quickly, the apartment proved to be inconvenient, as the crew required his frequent sign-off on any changes being made to the house. So Abendshien negotiated to let his family move back into a part of it if they agreed to not disturb filming. Abendshien and his wife created what he calls their "movie cave" and lived there with their six-year-old daughter, Lauren. "It’s kind of a home within the home," he recalls. They stayed in the second-floor primary bedroom, which included a sitting area with a fireplace, study, bathroom, and a portable fridge and stove.

While this could have been an arduous process for all involved, Abendshien says the crew was gracious. "After a time, we just kind of blended in. As long as we stayed out of the camera’s eye, we had total, free-range maneuverability. We could get around the house, watch the shoots. We became good personal friends with the cast," he recalls. "We missed them when they wrapped filming.… I felt like an empty nester, like my last kid had gone off to college or something."

The weekend after attending the premiere, the family was in the living room and noticed people looking through their windows. Abendshien went outside to ask why they were there and noticed there were even more people around back. "It made me feel weird," he says. "I was intrigued, like, What are you here for? This is just a house, for Pete’s sake!"

The visitors would ebb and flow, but always pick up again around the holidays, since Home Alone is a Christmas movie, after all. "I went through kind of an emotional roller coaster of feelings, because it was an intrusion of privacy, and there were times that I felt rather resentful about it all, like, Why the heck did we agree to do this? But I then started to engage with some of these visitors. I reached a point where I began to see it not as an intrusion, but it’s almost like this has been a gift. This has been something handed to me that I can share with people from all over the world."

The family lived in the house for 22 years, selling it in 2012, but not because of bad experiences with fans. There were a couple—the house was teepeed, and a cake was thrown at the door once—but the main reason for moving was a desire to downsize. Abendshien says the people they sold it to put up a big fence around the property, which the rest of the community wasn’t too thrilled about.

But the legacy of his prior homeownership lives on. Recently, Abendshien was at a speaking engagement in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the driver taking him back to the airport asked him what he was famous for, as most of the people he transported were celebrities. "I told him, ‘I’m not famous for anything,’ and then I sat there in silence for a while and said, ‘Well, I did own a home.’" Abendshien told the story of Home Alone being shot in his house, and the driver was so excited that he said he couldn’t wait to get home and tell his grandkids. "As we departed at the airport, he just came over and said, ‘Sir, you are famous.’"

Top photo by Kent Factora

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