Oh my Glob, you guys. Have you seen “Adventure Time”? It’s only one of my favorite TV shows of all time, and it’s absolutely everywhere. Yeah, it’s a cartoon, but it’s got one of the most wildly imaginative set of characters and universes ever to hit the small screen—or any number of toys, collectibles, clothes, household items, cleaning products… you get the idea.
This tale of the last human (a boy named Finn) and his best friend, a talking dog with “stretchy powers” named Jake, is packed with the weirdest people and places you may ever have seen, from a guy made of lemons to an entire kingdom made of candy. Finn and Jake protect the Land of Ooo from dangers big (like the evil Lich) and small (like a tiny ninja cat) and, at the end of the day, they conk out inside their house: a fort built on and inside a gigantic weeping willow tree.
There are plenty of locations in Ooo I could’ve chosen to give the Movoto Real Estate Blog’s fictional property evaluation treatment, but I decided that Finn and Jake’s place should get the honor. After all, it’s pretty much the biggest—and coolest—tree house of all time, and the home to the show’s two main characters. That, and ever since I was a wee boy Finn’s age, I’m dreamt of living in a tree house. So, even though I knew owning his was technically out of the question, I still wanted to know how much it would cost.
After going on my own little adventure, I determined that, if one could buy property in the Land of Ooo, their tree fort would be worth $749,550 (not including all the cool stuff that’s inside).
Just how did I figure it out? Well, it wasn’t exactly easy—but it was totally fun.
Come On, Tell Your Friends (How I Did It)
You’ve probably gone on one of these adventures with me before, but if not, here’s how I evaluate a fictional piece of property. Basically, I need to know three things in order to do it:
- How big the property is
- Where it’s located
- What similar properties in the area sell for
This outing posed its own unique challenges, not the least of which was pinpointing where in the world the tree house would be located when, from all appearances, that world is very different than our own. But first, let’s start with the tree fort’s size, which thankfully unlike Jake doesn’t change all willy-nilly from scene to scene.
The Home of Jake the Dog and Finn the Human
Like I mentioned up top, Finn and Jake’s home is a tree house–specifically a tree fort. It’s built mostly inside of a giant willow tree, with rooms under the canopy, in the trunk, and partially outside. Of course, being an “Adventure Time” location, it’s not exactly practical or realistic. But really, that’s part of its charm. It’s basically the kind of crazy, huge, elaborate tree house every kid—and a lot of adults—dream about having.
How Big Is It?
In order to figure out how many square feet it is, I turned to stills from the show, including images from all angles of the outside and every room. Speaking of which, the main parts are the tree fort are the:
- Entrance (basically a house at ground level)
- Tree interior (holds all sorts of treasure Finn and Jake have collected)
- Kitchen (for making bacon pancakes)
- Den
- Weapon room
- Attic
- Lower living room
- Upper living room
- Bedroom
- Roof (for parties)
- Boat (for lookout duty)
Based on the pictures I used and the size of a standard front door, I was able to measure each room and area of the tree fort and arrive at a total square footage of 4,997. Now, this doesn’t include things like the dungeon Finn and Jake’s dad built underneath the fort, the yard, or anything apart from the actual tree structure. It does include the roof, though, since the guys and their friends spend a lot of time up there partying in various episodes.
With the square footage figured out, I moved onto my favorite part of this evaluation: figuring out where in the (real) world the Land of Ooo is supposed to be.
We’ll Go to Very Distant Lands
Contrary to what you might think based on the fact that “Adventure Time” has locations called Candy Kingdom and the Sea of Something, the show actually takes place on Earth. It’s just that this version of our world has gone through an apocalypse called the Mushroom Wars, aka World War III (mushrooms being the clouds left behind by nuclear weapons). So, the weird settings and weirder inhabitants are basically mutants—kind of like the characters in SpongeBob SquarePants.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that there’s nowhere in the current real world that’s exactly like Ooo. That didn’t stop me from trying to find a real life analog, of course. To get started, I looked at various internet theories, which placed it anywhere from Japan to the U.K. to the U.S. of A. I picked the latter for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the lack of discernable non-American accents for most of the main characters. There are other reasons, though, mostly having to do with the specific location of the tree fort.
I ended up placing the fort in (drumroll please) Fort Collins, CO. Now, bear with me, I promise there’s some reason to this choice. You see, this location is close to the Pawnee National Grassland. Finn and Jake’s house is in the grasslands of Ooo, located near the center of the continent, near a mountain range (the Mountain Kingdom) and north of a desert and badlands. Colorado is fairly central, near the Rocky Mountains, and not too far north of New Mexico (desert) and Texas (badlands). I could also picture the Ice Kingdom, where the Ice King lives, being somewhere north in Canada (maybe Ontario), since the dastardly and somewhat dim witted character did live in a major city before the Mushroom War.
I imagine that the reason Ooo is so small compared to the U.S., and why there’s an ocean to the north and south, is that fallout from the war caused the Earth to warn and the ice caps to melt, sinking Canada, Mexico, and the West and East Coasts under the ocean. But the middle of North America would have been spared. Yes, I realize I’ve given this a lot of thought, but hey, that’s what I do.
That said, the short version is that I picked Fort Collins, CO as my location. Now I needed to find some houses there for comparison purposes.
(Tree) Fort Collins
Using our own site, I looked up a few similarly sized homes in Fort Collins to serve as my comps. Unfortunately, there were no multi-room, multi-story tree dwellings to compare, or you know I would have. After getting a price per square foot for each, I averaged it all out and ended up with a price per square foot for my Land of Ooo grasslands location of $150. With that, I had the final piece of my puzzle. Now to assemble them!
The Fun Will Never End
Getting totally mathematical, I multiplied the square footage (4,997) by the price per square foot ($150) and got a total price for the tree fort of $749,550.
For that price, you get the last outpost of humanity in a world where candy has come to life, talking unicorn dragons fly through the air, and a bipedal heart man voiced by George Takei is always hatching a sinister scheme. You won’t get:
- Literally tons of gold and treasure accumulated by Finn and Jake on their adventures
- The talking video game system BMO
- The Enchiridon
- Monster skin rugs
- Swords, maces, axes, and other assorted weapons
- Ingredients for making bacon pancakes
- Basically a load of cool stuff
Still, it would be a pretty rad pad. Plus, there are always those roof parties. You only have to worry about Marceline trying to take the house back on occasion, or the Ice King always coming around when he gets lonely. Man, that guy’s the worst.