A. A residential house.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. In Miami, Florida.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 10 (of Season 4), "Lost Boys".

Trinity has kidnapped a young boy, Scott Smith, from an arcade, and Dexter is desperately trying to find him before Arthur murders him.

Dexter's investigation takes him to the Smith home, where he speaks with the missing boy's father, volunteers to help, and asks if they have any additional information that might help the investigation.  They don't, and he leaves.

The real purpose of the short scene is to show the grieving family of the missing boy, and to impress upon Dexter (who now has a son of his own to protect) how horrifying it must be to have one's child kidnapped.

Eventually, Dexter finds the back yard bomb shelter where the boy was being held, and realizes that Trinity plans to bury the boy (alive) in cement at the Four Walls build site.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. An actual home build site for Habitat for Humanity.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This home is located just a few houses south of location where they filmed the final build site scene where Trinity tries to bury the boy in cement.

You'll find it at 11224 Borden Avenue, in Pacoima, CA.

Pacoima is located up in the northeast corner of the Valley, just south of San Fernando, and just west of the Hansen Dam.

This home is just north of another 4th season location: Cody's school.
And it's less than a mile east of another location: Julio's Auto Body.



Here is an aerial photo with the house marked. And here is a map link.


Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the house:

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  I honestly didn't think I'd ever find this one. It was mostly an interior scene, and I don't usually bother to search for interiors (since many of them were just shot in the studio). It was clear that this was indeed shot on location, though, since you could glimpse a little of the outside through the open door, when Dexter knocks at the Smith home.

I made a minor effort to find it, both in Pacoima and in Long Beach, but had little luck.

In September of 2010, a fan, Rick, tracked it down, based on the clues seen in that quick glimpse outside.

Look carefully at the screencap below, and you can see a number of items outside: the security bars outside the door, the trimmed ornamental hedge in the front yard, hedges on both sides of the porch, low brick columns near those twin hedges, a larger hedge out by the road, and parts of the houses across the street, a wall of ivy, and blooming bougainvillea.



The home Rick found matches all of these clues, from that ornamental hedge, to the windows and rooflines on the houses across the street. And the fact that it was right across from the build site is the clincher (seeing how the Dexter producers love to "cluster shoot" a number of locations in one given area). [Thanks, Rick!]