Which would be more expensive in today’s market: Monica and Rachel’s apartment on Friends (2 Bedroom, 1 Bath, balcony, top floor or near it, full kitchen, approximately 3500 square feet, West Village of Manhattan), or the Tanner home on Full House (3 Story, 4 Bedroom + converted garage and attic, backyard, San Francisco, possibly facing Golden Gate Park)? Is there another pricey sitcom home that shouldn’t be ignored? Thanks!
I doubt that Monica and Rachel’s apartment is 3500 square feet. That’s an awful lot of space and it sure does not look that large on TV. Maybe half that. I vote for the Tanner home being more pricey in the current market.
This is probably more suited for CS than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The “Full House” house, by a considerable amount, I would wager…
Definately the Tanner house especially when you consider they redid the basement into livable quarters and they redid the attic into, basically another apartment.
Try 900-1200 sq ft. 3500 sq feet is a pretty good sized (5 plus bedroom) suburban home
I always wondered about the going pay rate of an “average” call-in radio show psychiatrist, because the Taj Mahal-like condo that Fraiser owned must of cost him a pretty penny. (not to mention his other pricey expendatures-----a live in physical therapist, huge BMW, assorted world travels, art collection).
Yes, I KNOW its a sit-com, but wow, did he live like a king on what had to be a somewhat limited income…
Very curious so I did a little googling.
West Village apartments for sale.
Dunno, looks like the West Village may be much more expensive.
Didn’t Hester Crane come from a wealthy family? Frasier & Niles both went to a posh prep school and on the Ivy League.
The Brady Bunch had an architect dad and only one bathroom for nine people.
I thought she was a psycologist, and dont remember them implying that she had money, as when the series started, Martin was living in a small little bachelors pad apartment; not what you would expect if he was the widower of a wealthy woman…
(You are right about Frasier and Niles educations, so maybe I am way out in left field about this)
Nope. The kids shared the one bathroom between their bedrooms, Mike and Carol had their own, and presumably Alice had access to one on the first floor (or at least they never referenced her coming upstairs to use the other two).
Since the thread’s already kind of steered away from the OP, a couple random observations:
I was listening to some 30 Rock DVD commentary this weekend; even Tina Fey thinks her character’s apartment is too big, but explains that it’s necessary to fit the camera and crew.
I think the closest to real-life NY apartment I’ve seen on TV was Ryan’s pad on The Office when he was a Dunder-Mifflin VP. It looked like about a $2000/month studio, which would be more than affordable at his executive salary.
Oh, and Matthew Broderick’s $1500/month apartment in Election.
The Cosby’s Brooklyn heights Brownstone probably cost them $450,000 in 1982 dollars. See 1982 New York Times article on the neighborhood. Which was a hell of a lot of money even then. Comparable but somewhat smaller homesin that neighborhood sell for ~3.5 million today.
When Paul Krugman was on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday, he mentioned watching The King of Queens on an airline flight and wondering whether a UPS driver such as Doug could afford that house. He said that he looked into it and didn’t find it plausible. (Although the character’s wife was a legal secretary, and I don’t know if Krugman figured that into the estimate.)
It really depends when they bought. Real estate prices were… somewhat depressed in the 1970s in New York. I don’t watch the show that often - have they ever said how long they’ve owned the house?
They actually did an entire flashback episode that shows them buying it as newlyweds in the late 1980’s, going by the fashons they were shown wearing…
Yeah, it probably isnt very realistic that they would be able to afford that house, but it is not as gratuitous as some other disparities on other shows.
In the *Cheers *episode where Frasier’s mother visits Boston, she tries to bribe Sam into breaking up Frasier and Diane, and says at one point “I have a lot of money.”
From that, I’ve decided that mother Crane came from a family with a lot of money, but that Martin insisted they live on his (and hers, I guess) salaries, so the money was put into trust for Frasier and Niles. That’s my own interpretation, though – it was never discussed either on *Cheers *or Frasier.
Sometimes producers realize that no one in a show is actually living within their means. The apartment on Friends was supposedly Monica’s grandmother’s, and still under rent control, etc.
I never watched “Cheers” too much, so I will just plead ignorance, which if you knew me wouldnt be too hard to believe…
Anyways, for shows like Fraiser or King Of Queens, I generally have no problem overlooking stuff like that, and it does not ruin my enjoyment of the show.
Other types of shows I am a bit more critical of, but to me TV is not something I usually take too seriously. (unless the hott new actress from “The Office” is the subject)
The house from “Charmed”, which is fictionally in San Francisco but in LA in reality, would not be cheap either way.