Win HGTV's Dream Home (WOW!)

[SeattleOUstudent]

Damn. Enter to win a $2million house + the luxury furniture + luxury appliances + 2006 GMC Yukon Denali + $250,000....I watched the 1 hour program tonight on HGTV, and this house is awesome.

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dream_home/

This brings up an interesting conundrum. Since I am only 26, my fiance is still in Pharm school, Im pretty sure that I would have to sell this house, most of its contents, and the Denali. Id probably buy a nice $300-500k house in Nichols Hills and live off some pretty nice interest/investments. If you won it all, how many of you could just uproot to North Carolina and live in this house?

http://images.scrippsweb.com/HGTV/2005/11/29/DH06_Tour_greatRoom_sofas_j.jpg

[GDC]

I think all the previous winners had to sell it because they couldn't affors the taxes.

[StoopTroup]

That baby's mine!

http://web.hgtv.com/webhgtv/images/homepage/images/dh06_big_highlight3_flat.jpg

My entry is in. :D

positive waves

My dog will love this...

http://ai.hgtv.com/dh2005/dhs06/dhg06_doggie2.jpg

Much better than the last one IMO.

http://images.scrippsweb.com/HGTV/2005/01/31/DSCN1134_e.jpg

[SeattleOUstudent]

oh, also:

http://ai.hgtv.com/dh2005/dhs06/dhg06_watch2.gif

[SeattleOUstudent]

and anyone from Soonerfans.com that wins must pay a 5% finders fee to SeattleOUstudent. :)

[StoopTroup]

and anyone from Soonerfans.com that wins must pay a 5% finders fee to SeattleOUstudent. :)
How about a powerball ticket? ;)

[GDC]

Is it a $43,000 Yukon?

[SeattleOUstudent]

Is it a $43,000 Yukon?

Yeah, not to mention the $4300 gas it consumes anually :)

[Sooner24]

I think all the previous winners had to sell it because they couldn't affors the taxes.


I read a story in The DMN once and all but one of the winners had to sell the house for taxes. The story was about a home they gave away in Texas and the guy couldn't sell it for some reason and he was in big tax trouble.

[Sooner24]

I found this in the DMN archives but I am not going to pay to get the full article.

1.) Out of house and hope?
Man wins Tyler mansion, tax bills that go along with it
Couple running out of options 'its not for sale'

Publish Date: June 23, 2005
Word Count: 974
Document ID: 10AFBD708DA9A23A

Don Cruz moved to East Texas thinking he'd be living in a dream - a lakefront sanctuary he won in a Home and Garden Television "Dream Home" sweepstakes.

But the massive tax bill delivered with his winnings has blemished his utopia.

Mr. Cruz, 40, moved his family into the 5,000-square-foot Lake Tyler residence last month with the hope that he could raise the money by renting out parts of the property, opening a bed and breakfast, and charging for public
» Purchase this article

[OklahomaTuba]

Nice place, but the kitchen kinda sucks for a house that nice. Mines almost as big!

[sooneron]

How is the 2007 Denali out already???

[Mjcpr]

Nice place, but the kitchen kinda sucks for a house that nice. Mines almost as big!
I bet you can't park your Yukon in it.

[SeattleOUstudent]

upon further review: :)

LAKE LURE, N.C. -- Go ahead and dream. That's what Home and Garden Television's annual Dream Home contest is all about.

Just don't get attached to the idea that you'll ever actually live in the 2006 grand prize, a 5,700-square-foot traditional-style mountain home perched atop a ridge in the Blue Ridge foothills near Lake Lure.

Even if you're lucky enough to have the winning entry out of the more than 40 million expected to pour in between Sunday's start of the contest and the Feb. 17 deadline, actually taking up residence may well prove unthinkable.

The contest's 2005 winner, Don Cruz, moved from suburban Chicago to Tyler, Texas, to take possession of his dream home, a lakefront property valued at $1.5 million, plus furnishings. But taxes on his winnings are expected to total more than $650,000, and local officials slammed the door on Cruz's plan to pay his bills by renting the boathouse and a master bedroom.

In a recent telephone interview, Cruz said he's still living in Tyler and has no plans to leave, even as April 15 looms.

"We plan to stay," he said. "God will provide. We'll say a prayer, turn it over to him and he provides. It'll all work out."

The daunting fiscal math of the Dream Home -- even if you survive the initial tax crunch, there's the annual expense of local property taxes, plus maintenance and upkeep -- has kept all but two of the nine winners from ever living in their homes.

This year, the prize package includes $250,000 from Charlotte-based Lending Tree to help the winner with the tax bill. But HGTV spokeswoman Emily Yarborough emphasizes that the network still doesn't expect winners to actually live in the Dream Home.

"He (Cruz) is not losing money," she said during an interview on the patio of the Lake Lure home. "It's just his idea of the dream is wrapped up in that house. Whereas our vision of the dream is that it enables you to do what you want to do."

That's a notion seconded by Kathi Nakao, the 2004 winner, who spent several extended vacations at the home she won in St. Mary's, Ga., before selling it in July.

"Ordinary people cannot keep a home like that," she said from Sacramento, Calif., where she lives. "I think it's meant to change your life, more than that they (HGTV) expect you to keep it."

The twist to the Dream Home competition is that unlike a cash lottery, what attracts millions of entries is not a vague dream of wealth, but the tangible reality of the home itself.

Starting Jan. 1, the Lake Lure house's assets will be shown off during several hours of HGTV programming, climaxing with a live broadcast on April 22 in which one of three finalists will be given the key to the home.

Hopeful entrants can take 360-degree Internet tours of its rooms; the truly eager can even travel to Lake Lure and walk through the house.

The combined effect is a depiction of a lifestyle as detailed as the picture on the plasma television that hangs in the home's game room: A life that includes a wine cellar, an exercise room and your own sauna.

"You start imagining, salivating, fixating on that home," said Anthony Pratkanis, a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "It's a 'phantom fixation' -- an unavailable alternative that looks real. ... The contest plays along with it."

The same principle -- a fantasy seemingly made real by its details -- is central to much advertising, pornography and many a con scheme, Pratkanis said.

Fantasy or not, the contest has been a real-world smash for HGTV since the first Dream Home, in Jackson Hole, Wyo., was given away in 1997. It generates hours of wintertime programming and is popular with sponsors who like the buzz and product placement it offers.

Atlanta-based Land Resource Companies is the developer of Grey Rock at Lake Lure, the 4,000-acre community that is to be built around this year's Dream Home. For the company, it's a return engagement -- the Georgia house won by Nakao two years ago was also in one of its developments.

Spokesman Cameron McLemore said Grey Rock received 6,000 inquiries the day it was announced as a Dream Home site; meanwhile, St. Mary's, Ga., is still getting HGTV-driven inquiries two years after its Dream Home was given away.

Nakao's own story offers an illustration of how the contest hits the sweet spot for the network, its audience and its sponsors. In 2003, she happened to turn on HGTV and "catch a program that was showing some furniture."

"I said, 'I'd like to get that kind of furniture,'" Nakao said. "And they explained they had given it away in the Dream Home."

The following Jan. 1, she watched as the 2004 Dream Home was unveiled. Later, she took an Internet tour. And 11 of that year's approximately 36 million entries were hers -- including the winning one (contestants can submit one Internet entry per day and as many mail entries as they want).

Nakao spent 29 years working for the finance department of the California state government; with an accounting background, she knew as soon as she won the home that she would not be able to keep it.

"I never let myself get where I thought I was going to stay there forever," she said.

With the money from its sale, she said, she paid the taxes on her prize and financed a renovation of her Sacramento home. She and her husband gave money to a local charity and helped their children. Nakao also bought herself a coveted 1956 Chevrolet hot rod.

"That's my prize," she said.

"I truly believe that HGTV is doing something great and they're doing it to change your life for the better," she said. "It's a rollercoaster ride, but I was at the top of it for a long time -- and I still am."

She has followed media accounts of Don Cruz's effort to live in his Dream Home with sympathy.

"When they were moving there, I felt so sorry for them, because I thought, 'Oh, you just don't know. You just don't know what it entails to keep a property like that,'" she said. "Hopefully they'll be able to sell it and have their own, smaller version of a dream home."

[Sooner24]

I found this also...

http://articles.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20051230131109990009&cid=403

[OklahomaTuba]

So I guess one couldn't borrow against the value of the house the pay for the taxes huh?

[StoopTroup]

I'll sell that thing like a whorn would sell his soul for a mnc.

[SeattleOUstudent]

might keep the car

[BajaOklahoma]

There were a lot of articles down here about the Lake Tyler winner.
He was unable to work due to a back injury, they were about to lose their house in Chicago (or somewhere up there). His son (only child, about 10)was so excited about winning the house - the elevator would let the dad go all through the house. They packed up and moved down to Tyler immediately.
The house was available for tours until the drawing - and lots of people toured it. Very pretty. Gated community, monthly dues of a couple thousand.

I don't know what the guy is thinking in trying to hang onto the house after they denied his ability to rent parts of it out. Not that he was going to raise enough to pay the taxes.

Interesting. Sad. But the guy is making his own problems.

[GDC]

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/pac_ctnt_988/text/0,,HGTV_22056_43048,00.html

The drawing is this weekend, better get those entries in.

[KC//CRIMSON]

Looks like an Okie (Blackwell, Oklahoma) is already in the final three.

[Mjcpr]

It's too late to register isn't it?

[sooner n houston]

It's too late to register isn't it?

No, you f'n hillbilly, go here!!!

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/pac_ctnt_leader/text/0,,DIY_19796_42086,00.html

[Czar Soonerov]

http://www.wftv.com/money/9818933/detail.html

[BlondeSoonerGirl]

That looks like 'WTF TV'...

Heh.