We all know that Forbes lists the top 100 people or items in many categories, such as the world’s billionaires, the best small companies, celebrities, etc. every year. Forbes has recently added a list of the most expensive fictional houses to its already exhaustive listings. Forbes has published this list, presumably in honor of their list of fictional heroes.
The evaluation is arbitrary, but Forbes has prepared this list based on a few basic rules. First, all eligible candidates have to be residential locations, excluding castles. Then Forbes seems to have restricted their selection to just one or two of a “kind” so that a variety of selections could be made. The list also contains houses that appear in cartoons, such as Burns Manor ($127 million) that appears in The Simpsons, third on the list; from video games like Vault 101 (125 million bottle caps) in the Fallout series. fourth in the series and Croft Manor ($46.10 million) featured in Tomb Raiders, ranked thirteenth. Included in the list are fictional homes in Board Games & Toys such as House on Broadwalk ($51 million for four), at ninth, and Barbie’s Dream House ($16 million) at 19th respectively. The obscure candidates also appear to have been eliminated.
The resulting shortlist encompasses a fairly panoramic selection starting with Xanadu ($160 million), the home of newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane, featured in Citizen Kane. The property is modeled after the real-life mountaintop estate in San Simeon, California, owned by media mogul William Randolph Hearst. It consists of about 40,000 acres and is admirably suited for the reclusive media mogul. It comes with a stunning view of the Pacific. The farm contains 1,00,000 trees! It’s made of 20,000 marble! It has a private golf course, a Venetian canal system and a bowling alley! The estate grounds are home to the largest private zoo to boot! There is also a small sleigh called the Rosebud for children. The film claims that the property is worth less than the pyramids and the price is something “no one can say”.
The cheapest of the twenty on the Forbes list is House of Usher ($10.60 million) featured in The Fall Of The House Of Usher, one of Edgar Elle Poe’s masterpieces, written in 1839. This is a historic Victorian promenade located in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and is built on nine acres of spooky, glistening swamp. The house has ten bedrooms. The house comes with ghostly shrieks, entombed brothers and clangs.
Between the most expensive and the cheapest and the others already mentioned come the following in order of cost (the quantities delivered are in millions).
1. Rich Manor ($135.00) featured on Richie Rich,
2. Pemberly ($110.00) appears in Pride and Prejudice,
3. Wayne Manor ($105.00) appears in Batman,
4. Toad Hall ($93.90) featured in The Wind in The Willows,
5. Corleone Composite ($66.60) featured in The Godfather,
6. Tony Stark’s house ($50.80) featured in Iron Man,
7. Southfork Ranch ($50.60) featured in Dallas,
8. Drummond Apartment ($47.30) featured on Different Strokes,
9. Jay Gatsby’s Mansion ($42.50) featured in The Great Gatsby,
10. Tony Montana’s mansion (35.00) appears in Scarface,
11. Beverly Hillbillies ($31.20) featured on Beverly Hillbillies,
12. Hell Hall (24.60) appears in 101 Dalmatians,
13. Tara Plantation ($17.20) featured in Gone with the Wind.
Apart from the above mentioned categories, some of these houses can be seen featured in TV series like Southfork Ranch in Dallas and Drummond Apartment in Different Strokes and the like.
All of the fictional houses are modeled on some real-life property or other similar to the more expensive Xanadu and the cheaper The House of Usher in virtually every detail. The list is literally out of the world.