Would you buy a former nuclear missile bunker in Arizona? Someone has

Sure, the five-odd hectares of land on the surface could have been of interest – but it’s what underneath that really piqued the interest of potential buyers around the world.

In what is definitely not your everyday property, an underground missile bunker built in the early 1960s to house an intercontinental ballistic missile in Arizona has reportedly sold within two weeks.

It was home to a Titan II Missile Complex, with that particular brand of projectile capable of carrying a single W-53 thermonuclear warhead. 

The bunker was priced at $395,000 USD ($584,000 AUD) and while it’s been snapped up quickly this time around, the vendor Rob Ellis had actually been trying to find a buyer for about two years, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

He had planned to set up an underground data centre, but since the global financial crisis and associated recession, the silo has sat unused.

The Titan II program ended in the 1980s, after which the silos were caved in and the entry sealed with concrete.

Mr Ellis bought the space in 2002, paying $US200,000. The previous owners bought the site directly from the US government.

He estimated excavating the bunker and getting the zoning changed cost him $US80,000 and $US20,000 respectively.

At present, the only way in or out is via a ladder, but it does come with a concrete shell more than a metre-thick, three blast doors weighing more than three tonnes, and protection from electromagnetic pulses.

Everything is below the surface, and the space was open for inspection only for serious buyers who can prove their financing, and have signed a liability waiver.

Grant Hampton of Realty Executives, who had the listing for two weeks, was reportedly getting 30 to 40 calls a week about the property, with real estate portal Zillow categorising the listing as “contingent”.

The US is home to 54 of these silos, 18 of which are near Tusconand have been decommissioned. Most of these are in private hands.

For interested parties targeting similar kinds of properties, sadly it doesn’t seem as though there are many currently on the market – although an Atlas F missile silo was reported listed in New York State in 2017.