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The Los Angeles house that provided the exterior establishing shots for the 1970s sitcom The Brady Bunch has sold for a cool $3.2 million to a fan of the show.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, 53-year-old Tina Trahan purchased the circa-1959 house from the television network HGTV for about 9 percent less than the network originally paid for it in 2018.
Trahan, a historic home enthusiast and wife of former HBO CEO Chris Albrecht, said she was a fan of the sitcom and planned to use the home for fundraising and charitable events.
“It’s almost like a life-size dollhouse,” she told the Journal.
HGTV bought the home for $3.5 million in 2018 and listed it for $5.5 million in May after renovating its interiors to match the show’s setpieces, documenting that process for their series, A Very Brady Renovation.
Trahan told the newspaper she believes HGTV overpaid for the house in 2018 due to a bidding war with former NYSYNC star, Lance Bass. The typical home on the block sells for around $1 million to $3 million according to the report.
Listing agent Danny Brown of Compass told the Journal the home was difficult to price due to its unusual setup.
“There’s no normal average family that could move in there and live in it, so it was almost like you were selling a fixer,” Brown told the newspaper. “What am I going to compare it to, the Freddy Krueger house on Elm Street or the ‘Home Alone’ house?”
Ultimately the network “priced it solely based on what they paid and the amount of money they put into it,” he said.
While the network lost money on the sale it made “a good amount of money on TV shows and events and other ancillary revenue streams” from the house, Brown said.
Trahan is a collector of unusual homes. Her collection includes a grand Italian Renaissance mansion known as Stone Manor in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She has spent millions buying up units in the mansion, which had been subdivided, according to the report.
With awareness of The Brady Bunch fading, Trahan said the purchase feels like “the worst investment ever.”
“I can’t even say the word investment — I’m going to say liability,” she said. “I asked my 27-year-old tennis instructor, ‘Have you heard of ‘The Brady Bunch?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, Wayne Brady?’” I’m like, ‘Noooo.’”
