THEY may be real, fantastical or even just a celluloid fakes conjured by green screen and special effects.
But it seems every building has its price, and even the financial worth of fictional homes of big-screen heroes and heroines can be run through a mortgage calculator.
A new study of “Britain’s most iconic on-screen homes” has found that a Scottish location, James Bond’s fictional family pile in Glencoe, Skyfall Lodge, would be among the most expensive, at more than £2m.
That price, however, is dependent on the house, which was booby trapped and blown up in the movie of the same name by Daniel Craig’s 007, existing.
Read more: Richard Madden favourite to become next James Bond
In real life, Skyfall Lodge was only a set, which was not shot in Scotland but custom built for the film on Ministry of Defence land at Hankley Common, near Elstead in Surrey.
If it was real, it would be worth around £2.2m, the study founds, and require an annual salary of £440,000 to have a mortgage on it.
The study by a property finance firm, One77 Mortgages, found by contrast that The Shelby Parlour from the popular period television drama Peaky Blinders - a three-bed terraced home in the B10 area of Birmingham in the Midlands, would cost around £157,000 in today’s money: it said an annual income of around £31,4000 plus a deposit would be enough to secure the home.
The least affordable, perhaps aptly, residence in the study would be the grand house at the centre of the popular upstairs-and-downstairs ITV soap opera Downton Abbey, which ran from 2010 to 2015.
Downton Abbey is in real life Highclere Castle, the Berkshire seat of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.
That house has an estimated value of £137.7m, and prospective purchasers, should they be welcome, would need to earn over £27m a year and have nearly £14m for a deposit alone.
Alastair McKee, managing director of One77 Mortgages, said: “Even in the current slower market conditions, some of our best-loved on-screen homes would require some quite notable levels of income and a large deposit if you were to try and buy them today.
“That said, with interest rates staying put for the time being at least, now is probably the best opportunity in years to get that TV home where the cost of borrowing is concerned.”
He added: “Of course, you can use combined incomes in order to meet eligibility thresholds so if these costs are out of reach, going all in with another super fan might help you meet the financial requirements when securing a mortgage.”
The company figured the cost of other screen locations, although monstrous or fantastical abodes such as the dark lord Sauron’s Barad-Dur, in the less than financially attractive fume-laden wastes of Mordor, or Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry - believed to be in Scotland - were not considered.
The most famous residential creation of Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 221b Baker Street in London, where Sherlock Holmes lived and based his one-man detective agency, was also considered for the study.
With a central London location, it was perhaps elementary to note it had a high price: it was estimated at being worth around £2.7m, with an income required of more than half a million pounds a year to get a mortgage.
Read more: Outsiders interfering in Highland life? Or saving Skyfall glen from ugly development
The imaginary flat in Holland Park, also a desirable location in London, featured in the famous TV comedy Absolutely Fabulous starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, was estimated at being worth £2.25m, with another half-million pound income required to own it.
One of JK Rowling’s creations was part of the study: 4 Privet Drive, in the fictional town of Little Whingeing in Surrey, where the young Harry is forced to live under the stairs in a less-than-desirable cupboard.
This house was estimated at being worth £347,786, with an income of around £69,000 needed to afford it, although Vernon Dursley, Potter’s uncle, was a director of a drill making company, according to the author.
The flat in Nelson Mandela House in Peckham, the main location for the popular TV sitcom Only Fools and Horses, would now be worth nearly £400,000, the study found.
Bridget Jones’ flat in Borough Market would be worth more than £1.4m.
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