On May 7, 2026, HGTV announced that Eileen Reimer, a retired accountant from Atlanta, had won the 2026 HGTV Dream Home. Her husband Charles had entered the sweepstakes on her behalf. The prize is a fully furnished lakeside home, $100,000 in cash, and a stack of merchandise — a package HGTV values at $2,448,933.
The house, however, is not in Georgia. It sits on the North Carolina side of Lake Wylie near Charlotte, designed by HGTV's Brian Patrick Flynn. That single geographic fact reshapes the entire financial picture for a Georgia winner — and explains why most past winners never actually move in.
What Reimer actually won
According to the official sweepstakes rules, the Grand Prize ARV of $2,448,933 breaks down roughly as the home and furnishings (about $2.35M), $100,000 in cash, and merchandise. Winners may instead take a cash option of $750,000, plus the separate $100,000, for a total ARV of $850,000. The rules also state plainly that all federal, state, and local taxes are the winner's responsibility.
That "taxes are the winner's responsibility" line is the entire story.
The federal tax math
The IRS treats prize winnings as ordinary income at fair market value in the year received. A $2.4M imputed income event lands squarely in the 37% top federal bracket. For perspective, when CNBC ran the numbers on the 2019 Dream Home (a similar ~$2.3M ARV), it estimated the winner would owe roughly $789,140 in federal tax and about $105,937 in state tax. Reimer's bill in 2026 is in the same order of magnitude.
The catch is timing. The tax is owed in the year the prize is received, in cash, even though most of the "income" is a house. Without a liquid source, the winner has three real choices: sell the prize, refinance against something, or take the cash option in the first place.
The Georgia state tax math
Because Reimer is domiciled in Georgia, Georgia gets to tax the prize too. Georgia moved to a flat individual income tax structure, with the rate at 5.39% for tax year 2025 (filed in 2026), scheduled to step down toward 4.99% in coming years. Applied to roughly $2.35M of imputed prize value, that is about $127,000 in Georgia income tax — on top of the federal hit. Tax Foundation data confirms the flat-rate structure.
What the prize home actually costs to hold
Mecklenburg County's base property tax rate is 49.27 cents per $100 of assessed value, or about 0.49%, before any town or municipal add-ons. The North Carolina Department of Revenue's 2025–2026 county tax rate schedule backs that figure. On a $2.35M home, the county portion alone is roughly $11,500 per year, before town rates, jumbo waterfront homeowners insurance, lake-association dues, and the realities of maintaining a lakeside property.
Lake Wylie straddles the state line, and the Post and Courier noted the geographic split in its coverage. Effective rates on the South Carolina (York County) side run lower — roughly 0.25%–0.4% — but HGTV's release is authoritative that this home is on the NC side, so the Mecklenburg numbers apply.
Why Georgia HB 581 does not save her
Georgia's HB 581 created a statewide "floating homestead" cap that limits assessed-value growth on an existing homestead to the rate of inflation. Local government summaries walk through the mechanics. Two reasons that cap is not relevant to this prize:
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The prize home is in North Carolina. Georgia's homestead protections apply only to Georgia property.
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HB 581 does not carry over on sale. When a homestead changes hands, the new owner is reassessed at fair market value. HB 581 compliance summaries confirm the reset behavior. Even if the prize had been in Georgia, the cap would not transfer to Reimer.
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Most of metro Atlanta opted out. Per analysis from CutMyTaxes / O'Connor, Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb, and Chatham counties — and most of their school districts and cities — opted out of HB 581 for 2025–2029, so the cap is not in force across most of metro Atlanta anyway.
A bill tightening HB 581's mandatory application passed the Georgia Senate in February 2026, but as of this writing the rules above still describe the live regime.
The historical pattern: most winners do not stay
According to a Homes.com analysis of past winners, only about 6 of 21 prior HGTV Dream Home winners — roughly 28% — lived in the prize home for more than a year. The rest took the cash option, sold quickly, or were forced out by the combination of upfront tax bills and ongoing carrying costs. BiggerPockets covers the same dynamic: the prize is structurally illiquid, and the bills are not.
Mortgage option 1: Cash-out refinance on her existing Georgia home
If Reimer has substantial equity in her Atlanta-area home and wants to keep the prize, a cash-out refinance is the most direct way to fund the IRS and Georgia Department of Revenue without selling anything. Loan proceeds are not taxable income, the refinance is on a primary residence (not the prize), and she avoids the sequencing problem of needing cash before the prize is liquid.
The trade-off: this layers a new mortgage on an existing home, which retirees on fixed income may not want. Debt service has to come from somewhere.
Mortgage option 2: Asset-depletion or pledged-asset financing
Retirees without W-2 income are not always easy to qualify on traditional debt-to-income math. Two retiree-friendly approaches matter here:
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Asset-depletion underwriting, where lenders impute monthly income from a borrower's investable assets (commonly by dividing a discounted account balance over a fixed term) so the borrower can qualify without paychecks.
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Pledged-asset / securities-backed lines of credit, where a brokerage account is pledged as collateral against a line of credit, often at competitive rates and without forced sales that would trigger capital-gains tax.
Either tool can fund the tax bill or carrying costs without forcing a sale of the home or the portfolio.
Mortgage option 3: Take the cash, buy a right-sized Georgia home
This is, historically, the path most winners actually take. The $750,000 cash option (plus the separate $100,000) leaves Reimer with $850,000 ARV, still subject to federal and Georgia income tax, but with no NC property tax, no waterfront insurance, no lake-house upkeep, and no relocation. Used as a down payment on a smaller jumbo or even a paid-off home in the Atlanta area, it sidesteps the carrying-cost trap that has historically forced winners out within a year.
If she sells her current Atlanta home
If Reimer eventually relocates and sells her Georgia home, two things matter:
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Section 121 capital-gains exclusion. A married couple filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000 of gain on the sale of a primary residence, provided they meet the 2-of-5-year ownership and use test.
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Reassessment hits the buyer, not her. Whatever HB 581 protection (or lack of it, in opted-out counties) attached to her current home does not transfer to the next owner — they will be assessed at fair market value at sale.
The real story
The HGTV Dream Home story looks like a real-estate story. It is really a liquidity story. Whether a winner keeps the keys depends almost entirely on whether they can produce roughly a million dollars in cash within a tax year — and the mortgage market is one of the few places that cash actually lives. Cash-out refinancing, asset-based lending, and the cash-option escape hatch are the three levers that decide the outcome. The historical record is clear about which lever most winners end up pulling.
Related reading
Sources
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HGTV Unveils Dream Home 2026 on Lake Wylie, NC (PR Newswire)
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WBTV: HGTV Announces Winner of 2026 Dream Home Near Charlotte
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CNBC (2019): Hefty Tax Bill on HGTV's $2.5 Million Dream Home
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