We Roll Into the Least Expensive Home Outfitted With a Private Bowling Alley
We Roll Into the Least Expensive Home Outfitted With a Private Bowling Alley
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You’d never know it from the exterior, but this lake home in Central Michigan has a secret tucked away in its basement: a private two-lane bowling alley.
The gentle wood tones and ’50s- and ’60s-era posters in the basement evoke a simpler time when bowling leagues rolled throughout the country. The owner found room to spare (pun intended) inside the knotty pine walls of the house for this setup.
And at just $399,000, this Roscommon, MI, home is the nation’s least expensive home for sale outfitted with a private alley.
As a rule, homes with bowling alleys don’t come cheap. Residential alleys are luxuries usually reserved for buyers with deep pockets.
For example, this opulent home in Beverly Hills, CA, comes with red velvet and a gilded staircase to guide bowlers downstairs to a lavish pair of lanes—for $34.9 million. In Water Mill, NY, this $12.75 million home hits a sweet spot with its candy-themed posters and oversize lollipops. And in Beaver Creek, CO, this house features not only an alley but also a home theater and glass elevator—all for $13.9 million.
That’s what makes this Michigan home such a steal. Residential bowling alleys aren’t common in middle-class homes because of their cost, size, and extensive installation and maintenance requirements.
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“There’s not a lot of demand and there’s not a lot of supply” when it comes to personal bowling alleys, said Ryan Claxton, president of Fusion Bowling in Jacksonville, FL. Despite the rarity of the amenity, Claxton’s company focuses on building high-end private alleys for homes.
Claxton said estimates for an alley start at nearly $125,000. Four lanes will set you back over $300,000. Even a single lane costs a whopping $90,000. The price includes electrical work, labor, placement of professionally certified bowling lane equipment, and simply getting all the equipment into a residence in the first place.
What puts the dreams of most homeowners in the gutter? “[They] don’t know they need such a long room,” Claxton said.
A room needs to be at least 100 feet long to install two bowling lanes, he added. Few middle-class residential homes have that kind of square footage ready to roll.
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“There’s a lot of mechanical machinery,” Claxton said. “Two lanes will pretty much fill up an 18-wheeler full of equipment. It’s a big amenity for a home.”
That might be true everywhere else, but at least in Roscommon, you can roll strikes in the comfort of your own home for around the price of installation for a four-lane alley. That’s a split any avid bowler would take.
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