Win a Catskills Vacation Home Contest

Published January 30, 2017 | By Clark Norton

Here’s the house you could win.

If you can write a convincing 200-word essay on “How would owning the Lakefront Dream Home change your life?,” you just might win a very nice Lakefront Dream Home in New York’s Catskills Mountains.

Entrepreneurs Andrew Bares and Kelly Livorgna are offering up their 5.5 acre retreat featuring more than 250 feet of lake frontage on Swinging Bridge Reservoir in the town of Bethel, NY, to the winning essayist. Bethel was the site of the original Woodstock Festival in 1969 and is now the home of Bethel Woods, a superb music venue.

The two-bedroom house is in a woodsy area and offers direct access to fishing, swimming, boating, kayaking, and cross-country skiing. It has a floor-to-ceiling fireplace, a large deck, and is well furnished.

I can vouch for the scenic beauty of the region, where I’ve spent a lot of time.

The catch is that the entry fee for the contest is $149 — which is a novel and inventive way of selling their home: just a few more than 2,000 entries would add up to a $300,000 “purchase,” while 2,700 entries would fetch over $400,000.

The owners, though, are shooting for 5,500 entries, which adds up to more than $800,000. Theoretically, if they don’t reach their goal they reserve the right to cancel the contest and keep a $49 administrative fee. That strikes me as quite high and I hope it’s not going to happen. I guess you take your chances on that.

They do promise that some of the proceeds from each entry will go to charity.

Not bad for $149.

The contest ends at midnight EST April 30, 2017.

Two hundred words isn’t a whole lot to write — this blog post is almost twice as long — and I trust that my readers are very creative people. As long as you can come up with a compelling reason why owning the house would be a life-changing event, you’ve got a shot.

You can read all about the contest rules and view more pictures of the house by clicking here.

And now I’ll end this post to get to work on my own Lakefront Dream Home contest entry. Good luck!