What It Was Really Like to Live at the ‘Home Alone’ House That’s Now a Major Tourist Attraction
Home Alone is a holiday classic that is on just about everyone’s must-watch list each year at Christmastime. Something that has become so iconic thanks to the film is the house in which two burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) tried to rob before they were stopped by an 8-year-old (Macaulay Culkin) who defended his family’s home.
As we all remember in the beginning of the movie, the house was buzzing with activity when the McCallisters were there. But what was it like to actually live in the home while the cast was filming and after they wrapped?
Former owner talks about living in the house during filming
When Home Alone was shot more than 35 years ago, John Abendshien was the owner of the property and continued to live in the residence with his family the entire time the movie was being filmed.
He spoke to The Independent about his living situation back then and explained that his family moved into an extra bedroom whenever the cast and crew needed free rein of the rest of the house.
“I called it our ‘movie cave’,” Abendshien said. “We had a very large master bedroom, a sitting room with a fireplace, [and] a study … That space was larger than the apartment my then-wife had lived in in New York. The only restriction was if they were doing exterior filming, we couldn’t go by the windows.
“It took me back to my Army days when I was crawling like a GI under the window. I get a little emotional thinking about the cast and crew, because they became our movie family. Dan Stern, who played Marv the prankster Wet Bandit, is a prankster in real life. He loved to hang out with the kids and have fun with them. Joe Pesci was more serious, but a very nice, gracious guy. Catherine O’Hara, oh my gosh, she’s the quintessential mom. She took my six-year-old daughter under her wing, and those two became very close.”
The house is a Chicago-area tourist attraction
Today, many tourists headed to Chicago opt to see more than Millennium Park, the Skydeck at Willis Tower, and the shops along Magnificent Mile. They also travel outside the city to the suburb of Winnetka to see the famed house on 671 Lincoln Avenue.
Abendshien remembered that right after the film came out, he had to contend with fans walking up to the house and pressing their faces up against the windows to try and see inside.
The Abendshiens sold the home in 2012 for $1.585 million. The new owners rented the property out as an Airbnb, which included a night where guests were greeted by actor Devin Ratray, who played Kevin McCallister’s older brother, Buzz, in the movie. The experience offered fans 90s-themed fun with booby traps, mac & cheese, and a meet-and-greet with his tarantula, all for $25 plus fees.
The house was sold again in January 2025 for $5.5 million.
Hundreds of visitors still flock to the residence each day, causing serious traffic jams around the holidays that often lead to road closures near the property. Carloads of people from as far away as Europe shared with NBC Chicago why they wanted to visit the house in person.
“It’s like a childhood dream,” Maciej and Grzegorz of Poland told the station.
