HGTV Dream Home in Newport RI sold for big chunk of change
The winner of the HGTV Dream Home in Portsmouth never got to enjoy the stunning views or sea air, but new owners are about to get the experience.
According to property transactions records, the three-story contemporary Cape Cod-style home at 470 Vanderbilt Lane recently sold for $2.751 million to WJDJG LLC. It is not immediately clear who operates the limited liability company.
Property transactions records show the seller was Little Rhodie Home LLC. The address for Little Rhodie Home is listed as 9721 Sherrill Blvd., Knoxville, Tennessee. That is also the address for Discovery Inc., which owns HGTV.
Tracie Hall, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Coastal, sold the property.
The house went on the market in early May and was initially listed at $2.39 million. According to Portsmouth tax assessment, the home and land are valued at $1,387,200.
The 3,300-square-foot home includes four bedrooms, five total bathrooms, a rooftop deck with a built-in wet bar, a custom outdoor kitchen, a backyard putting green and a basement game room with a lounge area.
The home’s interior designer, HGTV’s Brian Patrick Flynn, said the home is “full of modern nautical design and rich colors that honor Newport’s coastal New England charm, such as deep reds and blues, with neutral tones and pops of pattern.”
More: Go behind the design of this dream home
The open floor plan between the living room and the dining room, located off of the chef’s kitchen, includes a large island, state-of-the-art appliances and lots of storage.
The upstairs is home to four bedrooms, including the main bedroom, which includes a walk-in closet and bathroom en-suite. Up one more flight of stairs is the rooftop deck, with a wet bar and water views.
The backyard includes a custom outdoor kitchen to multiple outdoor living areas and a putting green.
In April, Jeff Yanes, a resident of Austin, Texas, was named the winner of the Dream Home. In addition to the fully furnished house, Yanes also was awarded $250,000 in cash from Rocket Mortgage and a 2021 motorhome from Camping World — a grand prize package valued at $2.8 million.
“In the back of your mind you always think about it, but then it’s like, ‘Nah, it’s not going to happen to me,’” Yanes, an independent contractor who owns a bread delivery route, told the network at the time.
Yanes, like many others, gave up the Dream Home.
In 2014, Laura Martin of Boise, Idaho, was stunned when she learned she had won a 3,200-square-foot home with three bedrooms and 3½ bathrooms situated minutes from Lake Tahoe in California. Martin’s name was chosen from the more than 72 million entries.
Ultimately, though, after filming the episode for HGTV, she too didn’t keep it.
“Unfortunately, Uncle Sam was the reasoning,” she wrote in an email to The Daily News in October 2020. “I was completely ready to pack up and move to Tahoe to live in the house but Uncle Sam decides that he wants his tax cut and that was too cost prohibitive to retain the home.”
Instead, she took the cash prize option and “bought our own different dream home in our current city.”