New Owner Has Big Plans for Goonies House

After seeing The Goonies at the theater in 1985, 8-year-old Behman Zakeri visited neighbors asking whether he could search their basements for tunnels that might lead to hidden treasure. His obsession with the Steven Spielberg film hasn't faltered in the decades since—after all, Goonies never say die—which makes him the ideal candidate to take ownership of the home that the film's characters saved from foreclosure with their own treasure hunt. The 46-year-old entrepreneur from Kansas and his wife, Liz, have officially purchased the 1896 home in Astoria, Oregon, for $1.65 million, the Washington Post reports.

Zakeri recalls touring the home for the film's 30th anniversary in 2015 and telling then-owner Sandi Preston that he would love to buy it if she ever wanted to sell. "Yeah, you and a million other Goonies," Zakeri recalls her saying. But Zakeri was serious about this childhood dream—so serious that when the house went up for sale in November, he called real estate agent Jordan Miller almost daily for a week to plead his case. "I couldn't really imagine much better of a buyer," Miller tells the Post. "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."

Indeed, Zakeri, who will live part-time in Astoria, envisions the home as "a gathering spot for fans," per the Post. He plans to decorate it to look just as it did in the film, complete with dark red exterior trim and the elaborate contraption used to open the property's gate, though he still needs to figure out how to get a live chicken to drop an egg at the right moment. He says he'll also encourage guests to do the dance made famous by Goonies character Chunk upon entering. "You just can't let people in unless they stand on the tree stump and do the truffle shuffle," he tells KING5. There are also plans to open up the home to renters, per Oregon Live. (More Goonies stories.)