Published January 13, 2015
The house where author Anne Rice's family of witches once resided is back on the market.
The Garden District mansion that was the setting for "The Witching Hour," is on the market for $4.5 million .
In the book the house was the ancestral home for the Mayfair family of New Orleans, generations of male and female witches.
The 1850s Greek Revival style house, features period touches such as murals in the dining room, ornate millwork and beveled mirrors. It also has a large, heated salt-water pool, fishpond, guest house, staff house, "lush grounds with maintained gardens." There are five bedrooms, six full baths and two half-baths.
According to the mortgage calculator on a real estate web site, if you put $500,000 down on the house and got a 30-year mortgage at 6.63 percent, your monthly payment — principle and interest only — would be $25,940.21.
"It's a very livable, manageable house," said Karen Prieur, the listing agent. "It's almost 9,000 square feet on three floors."
Whenever she goes to the house, she finds a crowd outside it, Prieur said.
"I don't know if they're tourists interested in Rice or interested in the house," she said. "That's a really lovely block of the Garden District."
Rice, 65, is the best selling author of 27 books including "Interview With the Vampire" and, most recently, "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt."
A resident of New Orleans for years, Rice decided to move west in 2004 after attending a book-signing in La Jolla. Her son, Christopher, lives in Los Angeles and her husband had died in 2002.
The house is being sold by the person who bought it from Rice, Prieur said.
"He's really done some nice things with it, put in a whole new kitchen, a lot of nice touches," she said.
Prieur sold two houses in the same block recently, but far less expensive. One went for $750,000 she said. One just over $1 million, which she said "needs a total redo."
She has only shown it a few times since it was listed in July, she said.
"At that price range your prospective buyer pool is small," she said. "But, hey, Angelina and Brad bought something. It only takes one."
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie bought a house in the French Quarter this year. Records for the property, which is near the French Market, show the home was purchased for $3.5 million in cash on Jan. 2.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/author-anne-rices-new-orleans-home-up-for-sale