Real Estate Envy: Ferris Bueller House for Sale

Well, not actually Ferris's house, but the house where his best friend, Cameron, lived in that cinematic opus, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (C'mon -- you know you saw it, like, six times.)

The house -- all cold, sleek glass, steel, and hard edges -- was meant to symbolize poor, chronically depressed Cameron's lonely, loveless family life (as opposed to Ferris's own cluttered, cozy, love-filled traditional abode).

But looking at these photos of the 5,300-square-foot Highland Park, Illinois home -- which just went up for sale -- today, I don't find it cold at all. There's a lot more warm wood than I remember from the movie, and being nestled amidst the trees like that? Dreamy.

Anyway, the house is currently listed with Sotheby's International Realty at the bargain price of just $2.3 million.

So, who's gonna grab it? Bueller? ... Bueller? ... Anyone?

Real Estate Envy: I Want This House

Part of my constant fantasizing about Other Places to Live involves searching the real estate listings in whatever locale I happen to be obsessing over at any given time.

So, since we're headed back up to Portland soon, I found myself on PortlandModern to see what's on the market there now. I immediately zeroed in on this place.

I can't quite believe that I'm drooling over what's essentially a shameless Joseph Eichler ripoff. (I grew up in a city of Eichlers -- and when I was a kid, they were actually somewhat disdained for their cheap construction and midcentury aesthetic.) Plus, I'm a certified old house lover -- and by "old," I mean pre-WWII.

But just as I've done a 180 on modern design in the last few years -- I used to not want anything in my home that was made after the 1930s -- I'm coming around to modern architecture as well. Now I can definitely appreciate the airiness, openness, and simplicity of these post-war family homes.

Plus, by Bay Area standards, the price tag on this house -- $350,000 -- is cheap. If you live anywhere between San Francisco and New York, that price may be eye-popping for different reasons. But here, a similar house would easily go for at least twice as much, even during the current housing slump. (And yes, I do realize that this is why Portlanders hate California buyers, who come in and swoop up their housing stock, driving up prices.)

Anyway, I'd be on the phone with the realtor right now if this house was in Portland, but it's actually in Beaverton. Anyone out there reading who's familiar with Beaverton? Abject Suburbia, or close enough in to be worth a look?

P.S. For more Portland-area house porn, don't miss Melissa's awesome Drive-Bys series on the Inspired Room blog. For more Eichleresque house porn, check out my House Voyeur tour of a revamped Eichler in the Oakland hills. And for more nationwide house porn, see my Coast-to-Coast Modern post.

Real Estate Envy: Coast to Coast Modern

I picked up a copy of Atomic Ranch magazine recently, and thumbing through it I was struck by how many ads there were from boutique real estate brokerages specializing in midcentury modern homes.

Because I am a shameless lookie-loo when it comes to homes for sale (seriously, the realtors around here all know me by name at this point, since I've been showing up at their Sunday open houses for years now), I couldn't resist checking out some of the MCM real estate on offer around the country. I always wonder what it might be like to live somewhere else, and it's fascinating to me to see just how much -- or how little -- my money might buy in other places.

Let's take a quick tour, shall we?

San Diego: 3BR, 2BA, 1,859 square feet for $815,000, courtesy of San Diego Modern Homes

Palm Springs, California: 3BR, 2BA, 1,225 square feet for
$629,000, courtesy of Midcentury Properties

Corona Del Mar, California: 8BR, 10BA for $75,000,000 (you read that right: 75 million dollars), courtesy of SoCal Modern

Long Beach, California: 3BR, 1.5BA, 2,054 square feet for $849,000, courtesy of SoCal Modern

Los Angeles: 4BR, 3BA for $1,730,000, courtesy of Valley Modern

Ross, California: 7BR, 5BA, 5,000 square feet for $10,450,000, courtesy of Marin Modern

Portland, Oregon: 3BR, 2BA for $525,000, courtesy of Portland Modern

Phoenix: 3BR, 2BA, 1,890 square feet for $315,000, courtesy of Niche Find Yours

Denver: 3BR, 2BA, 3,129 square feet for $875,000, courtesy of Mile Hi Modern

Austin, Texas: 3BR, 2BA, 1,636 square feet for $250,000, courtesy of The Marye Company

Houston: 4BR, 3BA for $150,000, courtesy of Glenbrook Valley

Lake Forest, Illinois: 4BR, 4BA for $1,869,000, courtesy of JetSet Modern

Hamilton, Ohio: 4BR, 3BA for $260,000, courtesy of Cincinnati Modern

Sarasota, Florida: 2BR, 2.5BA, 2,302 square feet for $1,475,000, courtesy of Modern Sarasota

Is it just me, or is Texas suddenly looking really appealing?

That’s Random: “Dracula’s Castle” for Sale

Always had a burning desire to live in a true Transylvanian castle, and have an extra $78 million burning a hole in your pocket? Then you’re in luck: Bran Castle, the nearly 800-year-old former residence of Transylvanian bluebloods, has just been put up for sale by a descendant of the deposed Romanian royal family.

According to local legend, Prince Vlad Tepes (otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler, after his favored form of dispatching with his enemies) spent time at the castle during his bloody reign in the 1400s. Though he didn’t actually drink blood from his thousands of victims, the Transylvanian terror did spill plenty of it, and became the inspiration for the title character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Bran Castle itself inspired the setting for parts of Stoker’s 1897 novel, earning the medieval manor the nickname “Dracula’s Castle.”


Built in 1212 and later used as a fortress to hold off invading Turks, the Gothic dwelling is set atop a cliff in the Carpathian Mountains, near the Transylvanian city of Brasov. Features include 11-foot-thick walls, lofty towers, secret underground passages, and subterranean dungeons.

A photographic tour of the property:

What do you think? Is it love at first … bite?