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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31897
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm not sure a fictional character needs a real house. Even if the address is specified, interior and even exterior details can be different. You might find particularly fanatic readers asking awkward questions (for example turning up at 221B Baker Street and saying "Show me John's room"), but even if they find differences they're likely to see that as evidence of their superior knowledge rather than a problem.

A fictional character can live in a fictional house. This can be based on a real place, or you could create a wholly fictional address and refer to real places to locate it in a specific part of town.

You could refer to a real address, but when the book becomes a bestseller the people who live there might be annoyed by visitors. I suppose a way round this is to buy the house yourself, but there are not going to be many writers who could afford that.

The idea of using a fictional address for a fictional character is well established. Coming back to the earlier example, Wikipedia tells me "At the time the Holmes stories were published, addresses in Baker Street did not go as high as 221.".

Original score: 7