Is it really a dream come true?

updated 5:47 p.m. ET Jan. 1, 2006

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 too attached to the idea that you’ll 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, N.C. 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, you might find that taking up residence is prohibitively expensive.

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 interview, Cruz said he’s still living in the house 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.

Alan Marler / AP One of the bedrooms is shown inside HGTV's Dream Home near Lake Lure, N.C.

“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 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 Pioneer Elite plasma television that hangs in the home’s game room: A life that includes a wine cellar, an exercise room and your own sauna.

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