Flash with cash
Convincing big lottery winners to appear on a TV show is a tough task. Understandably, many wish to remain anonymous as they work out how to spend their cash prize.
Then there are those who are happy to appear on My Lottery Dream Home, a feel-good US series in which lottery winners look for a property to buy with the help of the show’s host David Bromstad and local real estate agents.
While some buyers want to spend only a few hundred thousand on a house, others have no problem parting with millions of dollars.
Bromstad says one of the show’s most luxurious homes was in the pilot episode when a Californian man, who won US$180 million, was shopping for a property.
“His budget was I think around a million and a half,” says Bromstad.
“I showed him a few houses and then it was, ‘Let’s increase the budget’.
“Then I think we went to five million or something. That was my favourite house.
“It looked like a ski chalet. It was so beautifully decorated. It had a movie theatre and a gym and it was on top of a mountain.”
The lottery winner ended up buying part of the mountain and a buffalo ranch.
Then there was a Louisiana grandfather who won US$2 million. At the time he was living with his son and sleeping on a couch.
This particular winner ended up buying a property worth a few hundred thousand dollars and moving in with his extended family.
Bromstad, who has a fine arts degree and a background in design, reckons most of the lottery winners he meets don’t have particularly extravagant tastes.
“I think most of them are pretty modest,” he says. “I mean, most of the houses we look for have two or
three bathrooms. People are like, ‘Well look, what do you want?’
“They’re like, ‘Oh, I want an en suite’ or they just want two bathrooms so they don’t have to share one bathroom with their three kids or whoever they are sharing the house with.
“The one thing I do love about this show is that moving close to family or near family is 100 per cent the going theme.
“Everywhere I go they are like, ‘Oh, you know, I want to move back to my hometown’ or ‘I want to move back to the city’ or ‘This is where my mum lives’ or ‘This is where I grew up’.
“They are always moving back towards family or near family. I think that’s really wonderful.
“A lot of our winners can afford to leave their space. They can afford to go to Florida and finally start a life somewhere else. But none of them do.
“They stay in their own space, move closer to their families. That’s why I’ve fallen in love with the show because it just shows that the human heart is right there.”
He may be the face of a show, which is now in its seventh season, but Bromstad, who lives in Orlando,
Florida, doesn’t actually buy lottery tickets. “Fourteen years ago, I entered TV as an artist and I won a design competition reality show and that was my lottery win,” he says. “It’s opened up so many wonderful doors. I went from being a starving artist to hosting a fantasy show about people who win the lottery so I’m good. I don’t need to press my luck.” The design competition reality show that Bromstad, 46, is referring to is HGTV’s Design Star which led to further television work. Viewers of My Lottery Dream Home may have noticed Bromstad’s body art. He estimates that 30 per cent of his body is covered in tattoos and he hopes to increase that to 50-60 per cent. “My first one, which is very rarely seen, is a dragonfly and that’s on my right shoulder blade,” he says. “I was 23. It was right when I got out of my parents’ wing because they’re like, ‘You can’t get a tattoo while we’re helping you pay for school and I was like, great’. “Right when college ended, I moved to Orlando and I got my first tattoo the month I got here.”
“The one thing I do love about this show is that moving close to family or near family is 100 per cent the going theme.”
– David Bromstad