- The famous Walter White house is up on the market at $4 million and could prove to be a moneymaker as an experiential rental for the next owner.
Breaking Bad lovers can now snatch up Walter White’s house—and for one lucky fan, it could prove to be a lucrative side hustle.
The famous brown-roofed ranch house in Albuquerque recently went up for sale at $4 million. The listing’s website describes this as a “unique chance to own a piece of TV history.”
While many TV enthusiasts associate the property with Breaking Bad icon Walter White, its true owner, Joanna Quintana, decided to sell the home after it had been in her family for over five decades. Over the years, she had enough with fans constantly showing up to her home and being disruptive. Now she wants the buyer to make it into a short-term rental for Breaking Bad lovers to cash in on the experience.
“I hope they make it what the fans want. They want a B&B, they want a museum, they want access to it. Go for it,” Quintana told KOB4 in an interview.
The next owner of the Albuquerque house has the chance to not only own one of the most cherished TV-famous properties, but to also make back the $4 million—and then some.
Experiential rentals are a way to make money passively on the side, and the buyer could rake in millions in profit over time.
A lucrative side hustle
With the sky-high cost of living right now, many are looking for side hustles that they can juggle alongside their full-time jobs. Renting out experiential homes could be a highly lucrative move.
That’s according to Isaac French, who has created and rented multiple short-term-stay properties. He shares what he has learned about the experiential hospitality movement on Instagram and X, for good reason: His properties have been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and he even sold one for $7 million at three times the cost. French’s properties range from 100-year-old train cars booked out years in advance to a seven-cabin micro-resort that pulled $530,000 in net operating income during its first year in operation.
Unlike many other rental houses, those like French’s and the Breaking Bad home have a special appeal to consumers.
“We are in what has been coined the ‘experience economy,’ which could be anything from an Airbnb to a resort. Guests are craving one-of-a-kind experiences in the places they visit,” French tells Fortune. “Stories play a huge part in creating these experiences, as does design and genuine hospitality.”
French anticipates the Albuquerque home will be a big hit. He says that the audience for the show is an “irreplaceable asset,” and that it’s hard to overestimate the draw of the show on renters. After all, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness World Records in 2014 as the most critically acclaimed show of all time.
“I’ve seen other structures, like a 100-year-old train car that my family and I restored and which was covered on a television show called Restoration Road, book out literally years [in advance] based off one episode of attention,” French says.
Just like with the Breaking Bad house, French says this is a prime example of a unique experiential stay with media attention that could “command rates north of $1,000/night,” and be occupied for over 80% of the year, “if executed and marketed correctly.” At that estimation, the new owner would make $292,000 per year and recoup the $4 million in about 13.7 years.
The ‘Breaking Bad’ Airbnb would join the ranks of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Twilight’
Experiential stays based on famous TV shows, movies, and novels have been popping up for years.
In 2023, Airbnb partnered with the Barbie movie and gave out a pair of one-night stays at a life-size Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse. However, as the property is privately owned and operated, it’s not clear how lucrative the collaboration was. Similarly, Airbnb listed a human-size Polly Pocket property for three days in September 2024 to celebrate the plastic icon’s 35th anniversary. The stay was set at $89 per person—in homage to Polly Pocket’s launch in 1989.
Another popular short-term rental is the Twilight house located right outside Portland, Ore. The home where Bella Swan and her dad lived is now owned by couple Amber and Dean.
They saw it go up on the market in 2018 for $349,900, and after buying it at $363,000, they officially opened the property for bookings in March 2019. While the price to rent the whole house changes depending on demand, Twilight fans can expect to pay $450 per night to relive their vampire fantasies.
