How Much 10 Emmy-Nominated Homes Would Cost in Real Life

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HotPads®, an apartment and home search platform for renters in urban areas across the United States, today estimated the approximate real-life rental value of ten fictional homes and apartments featured in this year's Emmy-nominated television series.

To estimate the rent costs for these fictional properties, HotPads used home characteristics like location, number of bedrooms, and layout as well as any unique features revealed in the show's script to compare the home to similar properties recently listed for rent on HotPads.[i]

Erlich Bachman's incubator in HBO's Silicon Valley, a large single-family home in Palo Alto, California shared by the show's main leads, had the highest estimated rent cost in the study at $6,250 per month. The median listing rent in Palo Alto is $5,998 per month.[ii]

Two of this season's most talked about shows, NBC's This is Us and Netflix's Stranger Things, are set in suburban or rural areas in the 1980s and not surprisingly fetch the lowest estimated monthly rents of homes in this study. Jack and Rebecca's single-family, 3-bedroom home in This is Us would have rented for about $390 a month in 1980 when the show's leading triplets were born, which is equivalent to a monthly payment of $1,100 this year. Meanwhile, a home comparable to the Byers' single-story 3-bedroom house in Stranger Things would have rented for about $350 a month in 1983, or roughly $850 a month this year.[iii]

"On many of our favorite shows, the homes are almost like additional characters – ones that people love to discuss," said Douglas Pope, cofounder and general manager of HotPads. "Thinking about how much a home on TV would cost to rent in real life gives viewers another way to relate to the show and the characters they love."

Of the ten homes analyzed, four exceeded the HotPads' median listed rent price for their area by over $1,000 a month. However, not all homes in the analysis were on the high end of the market – four homes were within $300 per month of the median listed rent for their area, while half were within $500 of the area's median listing rent.

For more information on homes from Emmy-nominated shows featured in this analysis, visit the HotPads blog.

HotPads

HotPads is the most efficient rental search platform for urban areas across the United States, with features designed for competitive markets such as map-based search, real-time notifications and detailed information on landlords and property managers, that help renters spend less time searching and more time feeling excited about their next home.

Launched in 2005, HotPads is based in San Francisco and is owned and operated by Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:Z and ZG).

HotPads is a registered trademark of Zillow, Inc.

[i] HotPads analyzed ten homes featured on shows nominated for Emmy awards and used each home's location, approximate size and notable additional features to identify comparable homes recently listed for rent in each show's local rental market. HotPads then calculated the median rental list price from available comparable rental listings to determine the cost to rent each home featured on an Emmy-nominated show.
[ii] Median rental list price includes the median asking rent for single-family, condo, and co-opt homes listed for rent on HotPads in July 2017.
[iii] Historic rent prices calculated by adjusting inflation to December 1980 (for This is Us) and December 1983 (for Stranger Things) using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). For This is Us HotPads used Shelter CPI for the Pittsburgh, PA metro, and for Stranger Things HotPads used the rent CPI for small Midwest towns (Size Class D).
[iv] Home details and representations loosely based on the TV series' interior set designs as well as script and plot details.
[v] HotPads used each home's location, approximate size and additional features to identify comparable homes recently listed for rent on HotPads. HotPads then calculated the median rental list price from available comparable rental listings in recent months to determine the estimated cost to rent the home.
[vi] The median rental list price includes single-family, condo, and co-opt homes listed for rent on HotPads in the city or region indicated in July 2017.
[vii] Since Hawkins, Indiana is fictional, HotPads estimated the town's population at around 4,050 using the town's school system and its real-life filming location of Jackson, GA. At 4,050 residents, Hawkins would be in the 75th percentile of real Indiana towns in population according to the 2010 Census. HotPads used comparable rental listings in other Indiana towns in the 75th percentile to approximate the estimated monthly cost to rent the Byers' home in Stranger Things.
[viii] Median rental list price of all Indiana single-family, condo, and co-opt homes listed for rent on HotPads in July 2017.
[ix] Median rental list price of all single-family, condo, and co-opt homes in Kings County, New York, listed for rent on HotPads in July 2017.

SOURCE HotPads, Inc.