It’s natural for superfans to want a piece of movie and TV history—from the Walter White Breaking Bad house to Aragorn’s sword in Lord of the Rings. But two Twilight lovers scored the ultimate prize when they purchased Bella Swan’s house from the massively popular vampire franchise.
“I had come up and visited all the filming locations,” Amber Neufeld, owner of the house with her husband Dean, tells Fortune. “When the house popped up on the market, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I know that house.’”
Courtesy of Amber and Dean Neufeld
The couple bought the house in St. Helen’s, Ore., back in 2018 for $360,000. It sold for $10,000 over the asking value at the end of a bidding shuffle with two other potential buyers. After fixing up some worse-for-wear areas of the house and soft launching at the start of 2019, it was ready for rent, with nightly rates around $400. It took a year for things to take off; but now the property has continuously crashed the Airbnb site, with bookings for a year in advance selling out within minutes on Neufelds’ personal website.
The iconic Swan house from the $3 billion Twilight franchise, which began as a series of novels, now brings in up to $140,000 yearly—and Amber manages the property as a full-time job. The prospect of renting out a movie-famous home could entice some to upcharge and make a pretty penny, but the Neufelds say they’re not interested in making a big profit. The most fulfilling part of owning the house is letting Twilight superfans step into Bella’s world, even if only for a night. Plus, she couldn’t bear the thought of someone else buying the house, and it being stripped of its character.
“What if somebody changes it, and we lose that filming history?” Amber says. “I just wanted to save it.”
Courtesy of Amber and Dean Neufeld
Snagging the Swan house off the market for $360,000
When the Neufelds, who are both 43 years old, first caught wind of the five-bedroom Swan house being on the market, they jumped at the opportunity—even if that only meant getting a chance to look inside the house. Amber admits she fangirled during the tour.
“I’m trying to keep it in check so my realtor doesn’t think I’m just a crazy person,” she recalls.
The couple made an offer immediately, having enough money tied to company stock to afford a downpayment at any time. There were two other offers on the table. But they finally locked down the house for $360,000 by going $10,000 over asking price, being Twilight fans themselves, offering the biggest down payment, and submitting a positive letter from their realtor.
Next came renovations, and making the Twilight house as movie-accurate as possible. Luckily, all of the original flooring, fixtures, and exterior were untouched from the filming days. But the Swan home still needed some TLC, so Dean balanced his full-time job with refurbishing the house: hammering floorboard nails, patching leaky faucets, and fixing leaky water heaters. Meanwhile, Amber scoured the internet for the original movie furnishings or replicas of the set, like a model ship in Bella’s house, and the dining room table and chairs. The repairs and items cost about $20,000 in total.
Courtesy of Amber and Dean Neufeld
“I would go work my nine-to-five, and then I’d go to the house and be there from five until bedtime just fixing stuff,” Dean says. “We actually ran ourselves financially tight. We’re paying two mortgages, paying two water bills, power bills, all that fun stuff.”
Crashing Airbnb and making up to $140,000 yearly
While the Neufelds were eating a ton of costs at the onset of getting the Swan house up and running, it’s been years since they’ve had to worry about financing it.
The entrepreneurial couple first did a soft-launch of the Twilight house in January 2019, opening the listing to the public one month later. They had to fight to gain a following on Facebook, with bookings trickling in irregularly. But everything took off around a year later thanks to TikTok virality. A creator made a video of her stay in the house, humorously recreating a scene at Bella’s bedroom window. The 1.5 million viewers suddenly knew they could rent the house, too.
“Life was never the same,” Dean explains. “Our bookings were filled the moment they were open, and it’s never slowed down ever since.”
The Neufelds began by renting out the house on Airbnb—but the website couldn’t handle the intense online traffic. They’ve since switched to handling bookings through their own website, which go up quarterly and sell out within three to 10 minutes for reservations up to a year in advance.
The couple says the massive success came during the perfect storm of a Twilight resurgence; the series finally hit streaming services, and the book Midnight Sun was added to the series. That meant the teen kids of parents who went to Twilight midnight premieres 17 years ago were now hooked on the series and booking out the house.
“All the Twilight readers were now old enough to have big boy money,” Amber says. “What actually happened, surprisingly often, was it was the teenagers—the second generation—getting into Twilight too.”
Courtesy of Amber and Dean Neufeld
The Neufelds now make $140,000 in revenue from the Swan house during good years, with a majority rolling into overhead and improvements. They’ve refused to raise prices in tandem with the high demand, and a perk of keeping the prices lower is that they can mitigate their own tax burden. Plus, they say it makes enough—drawing profits upwards of $60,000 annually—to cover the mortgages and fees, with money left over for themselves and new improvements.
“We don’t really want to charge more,” Amber says. “It’s not just, ‘How can we make the most money?’ It’s really always been, ‘How much can we charge and still put money back into the house and pay the mortgage?’”
