I have been watching the latest HGTV “Dream Home” unveiling of a monster 5,200 square foot mountaintop mansion packed full of furnishings, knick-knacks, and a brand-new 2007 GMC Yukon.
Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, “Down the road from the city of Asheville”, HGTV calls the Lake Lure home , “one of the most dramatic locations ever”. Local craftspeople contributed traditional elements in the home: hand-made railings, forged hardware and bark siding. There are also a few rooms that every house needs: a wine cellar, a project room, a sitting room, a sky bedroom, an attic bedroom, a bunkroom, a doggy dream home, a fire pit, an exercise studio, a sauna bath, a guest laundry room (not to be confused with the owner’s laundry room), and seven bathrooms.
For ten years, HGTV has been promoting these obese fantasies and advertisers have jumped on the bandwagon. Literally every single item in this home has a link on HGTV’s website. You can buy candles, dishwashers, shower heads, lamps, quilts, rugs– every single thing your eye can see.
And what about the “lucky winner” who actually beats the other 40 million contestants and ends up with this bark covered dinosaur? Misery, the IRS, and debt. Don Cruz and his family won in 2005 and according to this article,they owed $600,000 in taxes and had to sell or else they would go bankrupt.
It’s fun, in a pornographic way, to look at these enormous and “amazing” places. But imagine if you could afford to live in one? You would need a staff of 12 just to dust the floors, clean the shelves, polish the 35 lamps and clean the 25 foot high windows perched above the cliffside. What if you needed to get a half gallon of milk and had to drive three miles down the mountain? This house is an albatross. The seven bathrooms, the endless kitchen countertops, the 30 foot high ceilings with light bulbs that will one day burn out, the electric and water bills! Who would have a moment to relax in running this monstrosity? It’s enough to make you want to rent a studio apartment in Manhattan.
Here in Van Nuys 
What about getting a home equity line of credit to pay the taxes?
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There could be worse things for the winner from a financial perspective. Given, most people can’t afford to keep a monster house like the Dream House, but unload it on someone who can.
As the article mentions, sell the house for $1.5 million, pay the $600,000 tax bill, and you have $900,000 in your pocket that you did not have before.
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Where I live in Southern California, 1 million will get you a fixer-upper, and 2 million will get you a nice tract house built in the Sixties. So, the price of the fully appointed, fully furnished, brand new, Dream House isn’t such a big deal. Actually, the $600,000 tax bill compared to what $600,000 can buy here (maybe a shack or a garage) doesn’t look that bad.
I’ll continue to enter the contest and hope I win!! When does it start again?
Does anyone have info on who has bought each Dream Home from each winner? I would be VERY interested in finding out about the buyers and who they’re affiliated with (if anyone), and the selling prices.
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I agree its very strange to have a prize no ordinary person could afford to keep. And I’m not crazy about the house. But God Bless the consumers and their 2nd houses and their big first homes and all the things they have inside. Spend that money, baby. That is what keeps the economy going. So if you have homes that need saving, get off your butt and get them saved. But don’t complain if McMansions comes to your town, sell them something!
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Just wanted to thank you for the kind words on my blog. My best friend actually just commented on what good pts they were this morning and of course I definitely agreed. It’s always good to hear those stories, guess it keeps hope alive to get all corny and everything.
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Gee, you bring up some dire issues of this great country of ours. In Florida, they call the monsters McMansions. They tear down classic modern acrchitecture to put them up in an effort to block the great puffy, cumulus-cloud views that the Gold Coast offers.
Palm Springs where I live now, at least offers some safegaurds against the monsters. If you’ve ever been there they still leave the desert in the dark at night. To be sure, it’s hard to find your way around sometimes, but seeing the stars (the real ones) is what life is all about. Long live the sight of Orion (as in belt).
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Andrew,
If I may add, what’s even more disgusting would be that, to your lament and vexation here, monster houses like these are generally “investment properties” and/or weekend homes. In the craze of American real estate investment, owning these monstrosity junk spaces with endless assessory veneers and Pottery Barn sensibilities is a status or trend symbol. On weekdays, these houses are mostly empty. Oh, and as you probably know, such property owners possess more than one or 2 of these….
Such are also the cases in many recently developed properties in this great town of ours. Exurban lux along the central coast and foothills have also become very common for the past 10 years.
I do think there is an increasing need to take on this pathological consumption trend that has much outshadowed the staggering urgency and need to address urbaniztion, design and new housing (affordable, visionary ones). As you said, HGTV programs such as this is a porn equivalent but meant to caricaturize true noble efforts in space making.
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