The Real Cost of the Home Alone House Revealed
It’s the holiday season, and along with the festivities comes the eternal question of just how rich the McAllister family from the iconic Home Alone film really was. The New York Times has answered this burning question, and it turns out, the McAllisters were likely in the top 1%.
The house used in exterior shots in the film is located on Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, a Chicago suburb known for being one of the nation’s wealthiest communities. According to Realtor.com, this information aligns with the findings of three economists at the Federal Reserve in Chicago.
The economists crunched some numbers including household incomes of the area for 1990 and 2022, property value, mortgage rates at the time, and taxes and insurance. They determined that the home would have been affordable to a household with an income of $305,000 in 1990, which is about $665,000 in 2022. As of mid-2022, a similar house would cost about $2.4 million, based on the Zillow estimate for the Home Alone house, affordable to a household with an income of $730,000, placing them in the top 1 percent of Chicago-area households.
So, it’s official – the McAllisters were indeed filthy rich. With this question finally resolved, it seems we now have another important question to ponder – how did the cast of Friends afford those spacious New York apartments?