At 300 Words, This House Is a Steal

You can’t exactly have Darriel and Melanie Gregory’s custom-built, two-story home for a song.

But it might be yours for an essay.

The Gregorys have grown so desperate in trying to sell their home alongside the San Bernardino National Forest that they’ve decided to give it away as the prize in an essay contest.

They say their 2-year-old home will go to the person who best completes an essay beginning: “I would like to live in a house in Summit Valley because. . . .”

There are a few rules, of course.

Three hundred words or less. One page. Make it legible. And, uh, don’t forget the $50 money order entry fee.

And be forewarned: If Melanie Gregory determines that there won’t be enough entries to make her efforts financially feasible, she reserves the right to cancel the contest and return the entry fees to the contestants.

So far, about 1,000 people have entered the contest. The couple are hoping for 8,500 entries--enough to raise $425,000, a fair price, they say, for their house along California 138, across from a llama ranch and a mile from the local bait and beer shop.

They plan to pay off the mortgage, cover the closing costs and get the property taxes current, then skedaddle off to their farm in Tennessee.

There, they say, they can live free of all that California craziness.

Craziness, like giving away a house?

“People have thought I’ve been crazy for years, but when I came up with this, I’ve had nothing but compliments,” said Melanie Gregory, 41, an out-of-work medical assistant.

In fact, the idea of giving away houses or other real estate through essay contests is growing in popularity around the country, thanks to the success of a couple from Lovell, Me. Bil and Susie Mosca’s 250-word essay contest attracted 7,000 entries at $100 each, but since they said the bed-and-breakfast was worth only $500,000, they returned the entry fees from the last 2,000 contestants.

The Moscas’ success has spawned similar contests in Philadelphia (a $250 essay contest for a five-bedroom, three-bath house); in western Colorado ($100 per entry for a chain of three Mexican restaurants); in Minneapolis (for another bed-and-breakfast inn, but the $100 essay is limited to a scant 75 words); in Brooklyn (a 100-word, $100 essay to win a steak and seafood restaurant), and in Atlanta (a $35, 500-word essay contest for a 4,800-square-foot house), among others.

Now the notion is spreading to California, where a handful of home-giveaway essay contests have surfaced in recent weeks. In Los Osos, for instance, John Dutra hopes to attract 7,800 essays--but will settle for 5,000--in a contest he announced Sept. 1. He’s soliciting 250-word essays, at $50 a pop. With 7,800 essays, Dutra said, “that will give me the house (value) plus a few thousand over what it was appraised for three years ago.”

So far, he has received about 250 entries.

Gregory, meanwhile, says she’s getting calls from realty agents, lawyers and others who are considering the same strategy to unload their places.

Among those calling for advice is a Sacramento politician--she won’t say who--who’s got three homes on his hands and wants her to manage his essay contest.

Whether it is legal to give a home away in an entry-fee essay contest is a close question of law, says Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Herschel Elkins, who heads the consumer law section for the state prosecutor.

At issue, he said, is whether penning an essay that wins judges’ favor is more a matter of luck or of skill. Giving away a home in a lottery is illegal. But the state permits awarding prizes in games of skill.

“The courts haven’t spoken directly to it yet, but in most cases these essay contests are extremely subjective and a matter of chance,” Elkins said. “You won’t see the same person winning each time.”

Elkins said his office is monitoring home giveaway contests but won’t speculate on the legality of the Gregorys’ efforts.

Regardless of legality, Elkins warned in general of the danger of sending in money orders to a contest with no absolute guarantee of its return if the contest is canceled. He also said an ultimate winner will face paying “a very substantial sum” in income taxes because of the value of the prize.

Gregory acknowledges that she’s treading in an untested area of California law.

“Hey, life’s a chance,” she said. “I met my husband through an ad in Easy Rider magazine, when he advertised that he wanted to meet ‘an Amazon woman’ and I answered it. If that’s not a gamble, what is?”

The couple moved into Darriel Gregory’s cabin, about six miles east of Interstate 15 as it winds through the Cajon Pass into the high desert from San Bernardino, where he drives a ready-mix truck.

They liked the cabin but it wasn’t big enough for Melanie and her two daughters, so they started adding on in 1985. They finished the project two years ago, with all the requisite building permits, and ended up with more a lodge than a house, big enough for them to stretch. (He’s 6 feet, 6 inches; she’s 6 feet tall.)

Everything inside the 2,750-square-foot, three-bedroom place is tall, from the 12-foot-high bedroom ceilings, 24-foot-high open-beamed family room and 18-foot-high vaulted dining room to the bathroom with the seven-foot-high shower head.

Figuring to build a self-sufficient place come earthquake or high water, the Gregorys put the house atop a 26-inch-thick foundation; it is heated by a 20-foot-wide fireplace and relies on propane gas, well water and even an emergency power generator out back.

But Melanie Gregory tired of California life and with her husband’s blessing, put the house on the market. With its five acres and 60 apple, pear and cherry trees, the house was appraised at $417,000 when it was completed in 1991, she said. They listed it for $399,000.

The house has been on the market for two years, even after the price was dropped to $289,000. “A lot of people wanted it, but wanted us to carry the mortgage or give us their Winnebago as a down payment,” she said.

So she pursued the essay contest.

The bank that held the loan scoffed at the notion, but after the attorney general’s office sent the Gregorys a copy of the law regulating contests, they decided to pursue it anyway.

Gregory said people interested in the contest must send a self-addressed, stamped, business-size envelope to Summit Valley Essay Contest, P.O. Box 401402, Hesperia, Calif. 92340. Rules and an entry blank will be returned.

She said entries will be held by her bookkeeper, and the $50 entry fees are being deposited in an escrow account.

The entries will be judged by a panel of teachers who will remain unidentified.

“Essays won’t be judged on grammar or spelling--because that would eliminate half of California,” she said. “We’re looking for content, originality and sincerity to live in the house.”

If people aren’t sure whether to take a funny or a poignant approach, they can enter twice, she suggested. And that will be $100, thank you.

If there are enough entries, a winner will be announced Feb. 1. Gregory doesn’t plan to read the essays, “but my bookkeeper has shown me a few funny ones--like the lady on welfare with three kids who says she can’t afford the $50 but wants to enter anyway. Hey, lady: How are you going to pay the taxes?”

She said she also got a call from a “David Koresh clone who told me it was my duty to God to donate the house. I told them I was a satanist and don’t call me anymore. And there was the nice gentleman from Mexico who said he had 13 children and desperately needs a large house. I told him to get a vasectomy and enter the contest.”

Gregory is going worldwide with her promotion. She’s done interviews for radio and television stations in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Next is that popular morning show, “A.M. Tasmania,” she said.

Meanwhile, Tennessee beckons her, just 7,500 more essays away.

“My mom has never forgiven me,” she said, “for moving in the first place to California.”