What to Know
- "Home Alone" has become a beloved holiday classic filled with the captivating game of cat and mouse between the Wet Bandits, a pair of burglars targeting a wealthy neighborhood, and 8-year-old Kevin McCallister who was inadvertently left home alone in a sprawling house while his family went on a trip to Paris.
- Aside from the quirkiness of this 90s film staple, another aspect of the movie that continues to captivate audiences is the question: just how rich were the McCallisters?
- The New York Times set out to find out by speaking with economists and professionals at the Federal Reserve.
"Home Alone" has become a beloved holiday classic filled with the captivating game of cat and mouse between the Wet Bandits, a pair of burglars targeting a wealthy neighborhood, and 8-year-old Kevin McCallister who was inadvertently left behind in a sprawling house while his family went on a trip to Paris.
Aside from the quirkiness of this 90s film staple, another aspect of the movie that continues to captivate audiences is the question: just how rich were the McCallisters? The New York Times set out to find out by speaking with economists and professionals at the Federal Reserve. It turns out, according to the report, they were indeed rich — to the tune of being in the top 1%.
The article goes on to say that the McCallisters' stunning home is proof of just how much money they have. The real house used for its exterior shots in the film is actually located on Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, a Chicago suburb that happens to be one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, the NY Times reports, citing Realtor.com.
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At the time that the film came out in 1990, this massive Georgian-Colonial style home was affordable to only the 1%. It turns out, 32 years later, the house is still only within reach of the 1%, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the NY Times reports. Three economists poured over data, including household incomes of the area for 1990 and 2022, the property value, mortgage rates at the time, taxes and insurance to come to this conclusion.
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"Working with the assumption that the McCallisters did not spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, the economists also determined the home would have been affordable to a household with an income of $305,000 in 1990 (about $665,000 in 2022)," the NY Times reports.
"In the middle of 2022, a similar house would cost about $2.4 million, based on the Zillow estimate for the 'Home Alone' house. A home of that value would be affordable to a household with an income of $730,000, which would be in the top 1 percent of Chicago-area households," the economists said.
Now that we know just how rich the McCallisters were, what exactly did they do for a living? The NY Times goes on to explain the possibility that the mom was a fashion designer because of all the mannequins inside the house (and which play a central part in a particular scene in the movie). The dad was possibly just a regular businessman.
But the McCallisters were not the only ones who had a pretty hefty bank account. The NY Times article also sheds light on Uncle Rob who paid for the first class flights -- of 15 relatives -- to Paris!
