“Hey, if you ever sell this thing, I’d love to buy it,” Zakeri said he told the owner, Sandi Preston, who bought the property in 2001.
“Yeah, you and a million other Goonies,” Zakeri recalled Preston saying.
When the house went on the market in November, Zakeri’s friends showed him the posting within minutes. Zakeri said he messaged Preston: “Remember me? I’m going to make a run at this thing.”
Zakeri called real estate agent Jordan Miller that day and explained his passion for “The Goonies.” Zakeri called Miller almost every day over the next week for updates. On Nov. 23, six days after their initial call, Zakeri’s phone rang.
“Check your inbox,” he recalled Miller saying. “You’re officially under contract for the ‘Goonies’ house.”
With family at his Overland Park house for Thanksgiving, Zakeri said, he threw his phone across the living room, screamed and jumped on his furniture.
“I’m 8 years old again,” Zakeri said.
“I couldn’t really imagine much better of a buyer,” Miller said. “There’s been concerns about, ‘Oh, is some big company going to come in and buy it, change a bunch of stuff or try to make money off the house?’ That’s not his vision whatsoever.”
This is a pretty nice story in that he’s absolutely a fan, and has good intentions.
I also don’t know that the City of Astoria is basically going to maybe let him do what he wants to do with it? That town has kind of a weird relationship with that house and that movie – it’s been the site of a lot of reunions and there’ve been large parties/conventions/whatnot centered on it. You go into the town and there are thrift stores and consignment shops that have unique Goonies gear for sale. But it’s also apparently a giant pain in the ass every summer when the tourists roll through and clog up basically everything to constantly roll by that house and gawk. Plus the last owner also had good intentions and made the place open to visitors and eventually that turned into shutting it down, posting no trespassing signs…
The whole thing seems oddly fraught and contentious, honestly. He can’t really make it a museum due to city ordinances. He CAN rent it out, but he can’t cross some of the Vacation Home laws the city has. All this hassle becomes even more remarkable when you consider that The Goonies is kind of an obnoxious mess of a film, LOL.