Expecto Valueo: The Burrow from Harry Potter for Sale | Movoto 

Expecto Valueo: The Burrow from Harry Potter for Sale

If country living is your thing, we have the perfect piece of Harry Potter real estate for you to check out--Ron Weasley\'s home.

I have read each Harry Potter book at least four times. I own an autographed copy of the “Half Blood Prince”. My best friend and I are getting tattoos of the Hallows. If I get married, the Weird Sisters will play at my wedding. Albus Dumbledore is my hero.

I’m not just telling you these things so that you’ll know how much cooler I am than you; I’m telling you so that we can all agree on something: I am kind of a fan.

So when one of the Movoto Real Estate crew recently took a poll on Facebook, “Which would you rather see the value of: The Weasley house or the Order of the Phoenix house?” I (politely) informed them it is called The Burrow, thank you, and equally kindly told him that I’d be taking it from here.

As I said, I am a big fan of Harry Potter—which, of course, means the books; not the movies. After a whole lot of researching, and a near fifth re-read of the second book (because, why not?) I discovered The Burrow is worth approximately $660,150 (or 420,531 pounds or 89,816 Galleons*)

So grab your wand, and read on to find out how I got the value.

It Doesn’t Take a Whiz to Figure Out This Value

Nor does it take a wizard. In fact, finding the value of The Burrow was pretty easy. I just needed three ingredients:

The location and size were pretty simple to Summon; but when it came to finding comparable properties in the Muggle world, well, let’s just say it was no walk through the garden—even one as filled with gnomes like The Burrow’s.

In the books, The Burrow is located in Devon, England—specifically in the rolling hills on the outskirts of a small village called Ottery St. Catchpole.

Now as you undoubtedly know, Ottery St. Catchpole is primarily a Muggle town in the book, but unfortunately, it is not exactly a Muggle town in real life—there is no Ottery St. Catchpole. However, finding its real-world location was a “snitch”—no Four-Point spell required. In the book, The Burrow is described as being on the south coast of England (Devon), and is most certainly along the Otter River, because of its name. With that in mind, I set out to find something that might fit, and lo and behold, stumbled upon the village Ottery St. Mary, located in East Devon near Exeter. And—get ready to Wildfire Whiz-Bang here—there actually is a small farm/bed and breakfast nearby, called The Burrow.

So, now we know the location of The Burrow—in the Muggle town of Ottery St. Mary in Devon, England—but just how big is it?

And so begins our introduction to The Burrow in The Chamber of Secrets. But just how big is “wonderful?” Of course the easy/perhaps less masochistic way to find out would have just been to use the images in the movies; but I decided to do the next best thing: re-read all of the descriptions of The Burrow and come up with my own, hand-drawn floor plan. Seriously.

Honestly, I started my measurements based around two things: the kitchen table and the fireplace mantle. In the books, the Weasley kitchen is described as a “small and rather cramped room,” with a scrubbed wooden table for eight and a fireplace with a mantelpiece “three deep with cookbooks,” among other things. From there, I was able to find the average dimensions of an eight-person dining room table—about 3.5 by 6 feet– then the size of the kitchen, and ultimately, with the help of other descriptions from the books, the square feet for all 10 rooms. This included walkways and stairways, but excluded the attic–because, apparently, unfinished attics housing raucous ghouls do not count toward a home’s square feet.

All told, The Burrow added up to be 1,467 square feet.

So now we have the location and the size of The Burrow, but in order to find its price, I needed to find some comparable properties. This turned out to be the Boomslang skin to my Polyjuice Potion. (It was rather difficult.)

I started my search by looking for homes in the Ottery St. Mary area with six bedrooms—as the Weasley home has six bedrooms. As you might expect, though, these homes were well above the 1,470 square feet of the Weasley’s cramped coop, and were in a completely different league of home altogether.

So I refined my criteria a bit and after much searching, I came up with the perfect match: An old, late 18th century leather-mill-turned 4-bedroom cottage, just outside of Ottery St. Mary. The home has multiple fireplaces and chimneys, a detached garage area, a garden, plenty of surrounding land, a very cute and cozy kitchen, and even sits near West Hill (Stoatshead Hill, anyone?)

At 2,594 square feet, this property costs 750,000 pounds—that’s $1,163,475.00— or roughly $450 per square foot.

With this price per square foot in mind, The Burrow, at just 1,467 square feet, would cost you a mere $660,150 ((420,531 pounds). Since the real-world Muggle house in Ottery St. Mary that I used to come up with the price per square foot actually does come with surrounding property very similar to The Burrow’s (the gardens, the land, even the detached garage), this price for The Burrow would get you the house and the surrounding property—though, I can’t guarantee any gnomes, chickens, or a ghoul in the attic. You’ll probably have to pay a bit more for those.

*According to Rowling, 1 Galleon is worth about $7.35!

posted on: August 21, 2013 5,689 views, 3 comments

Expecto Valueo: How Much Does Hogwarts Castle Cost?

The main problem with the property is that a house that looks like that is obviously structurally reinforced by magical means. No Muggles need apply.

Really? Overpriced, IMO. Not worth the trouble, AND there is lots of trouble.

You can’t value a property like that based on comparables on a square footage basis. Two main reasons; first, the building itself is unsafe. It will not meet building code and should be condemned. In the very least, you need to subtract the cost of bringing the building up to code, and base the size on what you end up with after it is to code. Very likely, bringing it up to code would involve stripping the upper floors off of it. The second reason is LAND!!! A property WITHOUT a building, has a value, which in most cases, is greater than the value of the building on it. So make sure that you are comparing to a property with similar features, accounting for differences in features and size.

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