HGTV Dream Home Winners Don't Always Live Happily Ever After
Dream Big, but Be Smart If You're Lucky
You can enter every day from January 1st, 2011 until February 18. Although millions of HGTV viewers and sweepers from around the country will be coveting the Dream Home win until they announce the winner later this spring, for one person that did win the HGTV Dream Home, the ultimate win turned into the ultimate disappointment.
In 2005, Don Cruz won the HGTV Dream Home, a 6,000 square foot mansion located in Tyler, Texas. Most HGTV Dream Home winners sell their home, but Cruz decided to try to keep the house. Unfortunately, some dreams are a little bit too big for one's current reality. The Cruz's thought that they could live in the house and use the $250,000 prize money to live off of, but they ended up losing just about everything.
The upkeep on the Cruz's Dream home ran to $2,900 a month. They had to pay $7000 a year for homeowner's insurance. Then they decided to keep their old home in Batavia, Illinois, which ran them another $1000 a month. If you're doing the math at home, that's $4483 a month, or $53,800 a year, just for home related expenses. That doesn't include property taxes, living expenses, or the $672,000 bill from Uncle Sam from the income received from winning the dream home.
The Cruz's were not smart. Somehow they ended up with seven cars (including the car they won and kept from the contest), spent $11,000 to fix up their boat, and wasted money in several other areas. They spent $5000 on Christmas presents, purchased a $6000 dog run and an $1800 go-kart, and spent $2,000 on scuba lessons. Their friends would come and visit to see their new house, and they would spend $1000 nearly every weekend entertaining them.
The house was eventually sold to Rick Mullins of Dallas, Texas, for $1.3 million, last January. Hopefully that paid for some of the Cruz's bills. It should have at least covered what they owed to Uncle Sam.
So if you win the HGTV Dream Home this year (and I hope you do, if I don't), please sell the home. HGTV will buy it from you. Take the money and pay your tax bill. Tithe if you are a Christian. Set aside enough money to pay for 3-6 months of expenses, if you don't have an emergency fund already. Out of whatever's left, take a little bit and have some fun with it, and invest the rest. That way, winning the HGTV Dream Home will end up being a positive experience, and not a nightmare.
Sources:
Associated Press. "Dallas Man Buys Tyler 'Dream Home' for 1.3 Million At Auction". Dallas News.com, http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011508dntexdreamhome.3d70d5.html
Gandel, Stephen. "The House That Swallowed Don and Shelly Cruz." CNN Money.com, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/2006/06/01/8378645/index.htm
Published by Brooke Lorren
Brooke Lorren is a freelance content producer living in central Arizona; she has been writing for over 10 years and has created over 1000 articles, blog posts, and web sites. She has also helped her husband... View profile
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23 Comments
Post a CommentAs far as the contest being rigged, I guess there's a couple of things to keep in mind:
1) they do have to publish their rules and abide by them. However, they do look into the backgrounds of the winners before they award the prize. Maybe this step is geared in favor of people who already have standing in the community? I don't know what their standards are.
2) HGTV probably gets more home owners that watch the channel, percentage-wise, than renters. As someone that rents myself, I don't have much reason to do home improvements. We have a small backyard that I pull weeds in, but that's about it.
Congratulations, guest who won the home! I'm glad to see that everything worked out for you. I'm sure that there are quite a few winners that do fine after winning, but this guy made a lot of stupid mistakes.
Why don't people who really need a home ever win. It always seems as though the winner always already owns a home. Am I the only renter who enters this contest. I would never even consider living in it.I wouldn't know what to do with such space coming from a NY apartment. I'd use the money to buy a normal home in NY of course.
I would love to live in Vermont, I would sell the home and buy a smaller one right there in stowe and take what ever is left and make investments and work. It would still be amazing and I live in Fl. and hate it.
It seems to me that HGTV picks locations and builds homes where it wouldn't take much of a financial genious to figure out how to make the property financially self-sufficient. And since they give you a bundle of cash along with the house - even if after taxes you start out at zero, you will still come out ahead with a little foresight. If I ever won, the first 3 calls I would make are 1) my attorney, 2) my accountant, and 3) the local Chamber of Commerce for wherever the home is.
I have won a $1million home in Florida. It wasn't the dream home from HGTV, but the 2008 WindMark Beach Idea House from MyHomeIdeas.com (a website from the same publishers as Southern Living, Coastal Living, etc.) I DID keep the home, and still own it today. I do not live in the home, but use it as a vacation home and rent it out to other families who vacation there throughout the year. Though this solution is not for everyone, it was the right one for us.
The real estate market had just dropped considerably at that time, so selling it wasn't really an option. The tax burden was enormous, but we were able to mortgage enough equity from the home to pay the taxes. The rental income has covered that mortgage and the other expenses of the home so far. We've been very lucky.
However, I can tell you that finding a bank to give us a high enough percentage of the equity to pay the taxes was not easy. The fact that my husband has been in the military for many years was th
Mr Cruz in another interview that it was all a great experience. They loved the winners weekend and still made money in the end. I wonder if they rented the Batavia house.
HGTV Offers to buy the house from the winners. Most winners take them up on their offer. In this particular case, they thought they could have it all.
They that you've won this beautiful house but the n it sucks you dry? Kinda hard to believe after seeing 09's winning couple?
Unfortunately, upkeep on these homes can also be fairly expensive. The energy costs alone can be higher than some people's mortgages. In the Cruz's case, upkeep on the home was $2900 a month; when I had a home, my mortgage payment was 1/3 of that.