House Lust: Inside HGTV’s Dream Home Giveaway in Portsmouth, RI

A fully furnished home worth $2.8 million, $250,000 cash and a new RV — all without having to leave the area code: It sounds like a Rhode Island dream come true. But there’s a hitch. (Isn’t there always a hitch?)

Marking twenty-five years of Dream Homes, HGTV is giving away a 3,300 square-foot, multi-level house near McCorrie Beach in Portsmouth — the first-ever Dream Home in Rhode Island. The house, which affords views of the Sakonnet River, was designed by Brian Patrick Flynn and built by JPS Construction in Middletown.

Beginning Monday, December 28, you — and millions of others, to be sure — can enter to win the property and its accoutrements twice a day until February 17. Here’s the “but,” and it’s a big one: The winner will have to pay federal income taxes on their earnings, as well as state income taxes and property taxes.

Such expenditures — could be upwards of a cool million, in this case — have dissuaded many previous winners from keeping their dream homes altogether. According to a report by Country Living, a large majority of previous winners chose lump cash prizes in lieu of the home or sold their houses back to the developers within a year. Only six out of twenty-one previous winners chose to keep their Dream Homes in the long-term, per Country Living’s count.

Would you take it or leave it? Here’s your House Lust:

Visit hgtv.com to enter to win this year’s Dream House beginning December 28.