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Harry Potter house up for sale

The front of the house
The front of the house



At first glance, it's a very ordinary three-bedroom brick house on a modern estate: but for anybody that's visited the Warner Bros studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, it will look awfully familiar.

And it's the house's very ordinariness that is the key: it was the original model for 4 Privet Drive, the home of Harry Potter's Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley Dursley.

Up for sale with Chancellors, the £475,000 house is actually in Bracknell, Berkshire. It was used in the first Harry Potter film, but was later replaced with a specially-built copy at the Warner Bros studios.

In a quiet cul-de-sac, it's been completely renovated since it was last sold in 2010.

On the ground floor, there's a kitchen/breakfast room and a good-sized reception room, as well as a cloakroom; upstairs are three bedrooms, one en-suite, and a family bathroom.

There's a garage to the side and a neat and tidy garden.

The back garden
The back garden



But where the understairs cupboard in the film version of the house has been turned into a miniscule bedroom for Harry, that's not the case in real life, where the perfectly ordinary cupboard leads off the living room.

After the house was used for the first Harry Potter film in 2001, the then owners put it on the market at a higher-than-average price, hoping that fans would be prepared to pay over the odds.

The living room
The living room



This time, though, agents Chancellors make no mention of its past in the listing - perhaps because the house is characterised in the films as being utterly dull.

In fact, there are several houses currently on the market that have been used as locations in films, and in most cases the agents are making as much of the connection as possible.

In Chiswick, West London, for example, a house that appeared in the first episode of Doctor Who and was later used as a set in the Doctor Who TV movie starring Paul McGann is on the market for just under £1.75 million with agents Dexters.

Meanwhile, the Beverly Hills house used in the Godfather - yup, including the bedroom where the horse's head appears - is on the market for $195 million.

However, one famous film location - the three-story Victorian house in Pennsylvania used in the Silence of the Lambs - is failing to profit from its past. It was first listed last year for $300,000, but has failed to sell through a series of price cuts; it's now available for just $168,000.