Photos show what the ‘Home Alone’ house looks like in real life

• The “Home Alone” house exists in real life and is located in Winnetka, Illinois.
• It went on the market in 2011 and was sold the following year for $1.5 million. 
• Marissa Hopkins, who was the broker at the time, shared a video of the home taken at the time of the sale with Insider. 
• The house’s exterior, foyer, and living room were featured in the beloved movie, Amy Wilkinson wrote for Vanity Fair. 
• Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

If you’re a “Home Alone” fan who’s always wondered what the house from the movie looks like in real life, you’re in luck – photos of the home were made public when it went on the market back in 2012.

“Home Alone” may have turned 30 years old in 2020, but the fanfare around it isn’t dying down anytime soon. The beloved 1990 movie revolves around an 8-year-old boy, Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, whose family accidentally leaves him behind when they’re going on vacation. As he’s the only one around, he ends up having to protect his home from two rather inept burglars.

The red-brick Georgian-Colonial home that provided the backdrop for much of the film’s action exists in real life and is located in the suburb of Winnetka, Illinois, which is about 20 miles from Chicago.

Marissa Hopkins, the real-estate agent who worked with the owners when the house went on the market in 2011 for $2.4 million, shared a video with Insider that takes fans on a tour of the home.

“The house is famous, but we’re just a family living here,” Cynthia Abendshien, one of the former owners, says in the 2011 video.

Amy Wilkinson of Vanity Fair reported that the film crew used the house for exterior shots and some interior shots featuring the living room and the staircase. Wilkinson reported that the cast and crew took several months to film at the home and while they filmed on the first floor, the Abendshien family lived in a makeshift apartment on the second floor.

Abendshien and her husband, John, bought the home in 1988 for $800,000, per Inside Edition. According to Zillow, the home sits on half an acre of land and has six bedrooms and six bathrooms.

The Abendshiens sold the home to the current owners in 2012 for $1.5 million, Chicago Tribune reports.

Die-hard fans of the movie will instantly recognize a number of the home's features in the video tour of the property

As soon as Marissa takes viewers through the main door, which doesn't scald her palm (because, as she notes, the owners are expecting her), you can see the staircase Kevin sledded down before shooting out of the main door and into the front yard. The foyer and stairs look almost identical to how they appeared in the movie over 20 years earlier.

"This magnificent staircase greets you as you enter the home, but it's really not suitable for suitable for sledding or tobogganing," Hopkins says in the video she shared with Insider.

"They built a ramp for our staircase so that Mac could take his sled out the front door," Abendshien said, recalling how that iconic scene was filmed.

The kitchen where the family gathers to eat pizza before things start to go haywire for our young protagonist looks very similar to the kitchen in the actual house.

In a 2011 segment on CBS Inside Edition about the house listing, Hopkins says that Kevin sat in the room pictured below as he ate a giant sundae and watched the fake gangster movie "Angels with Filthy Souls."

"They would spend time in the house when they weren't filming their scenes. Macaulay Culkin used my room to study with his tutor, and his brother [Kieran Culkin] wasn't filming as much, so he would just hang out in my room," Laura Abendshien, who was a young girl herself when the movie was filmed, told This Morning in December 2020.

Despite clear similarities, Hopkins notes that the real house's interior doesn't quite look identical to the movie

"It looks different than the fans might expect (i.e. no plaid wallpaper)… but that's Hollywood!" Hopkins told Insider. But for the most part, the house looked about the same between 1990 until 2012, when the Abendshien family sold it.

"The images depicted at the time I sold the house, were how the house looked when it was filmed," Hopkins continued, noting that the current owners may have made alterations that would make the home today look different than it did in the movie.

She adds that the "new owners are very private" and hopes that "Home Alone" fans will respect that.

Watch the full video of the home tour below, courtesy of Hopkins:

• Read more:

• 'Home Alone' at 30: Director Chris Columbus talks Trump 'bullying his way' into a cameo and more never-before-told stories

• John Candy was reportedly paid only $414 for his cameo in 'Home Alone,' and the film's director said he always felt bitter about it

• People think the black-and-white movie in 'Home Alone' is real because of an old-school movie trick, director says