Write an essay, win a beachfront home

Winston Ross | McClatchy Newspapers

1/19/2008 - 1/6/08

YACHATS, Ore. — For more than a year, Ray Sinclair tried to sell his ocean view home the old-fashioned way.

He had a Realtor. He drove in from his new place in Waldport five days a week to open the house in Yachats. Nothing worked. The market was a graveyard. People looked and went about their way.

Time for a fresh approach, Sinclair reasoned, one that could fetch more than the asking price for his 1,967-square-foot abode and finally free him and his wife from what has become a Herculean task in this 600-population enclave — unloading property.

"Everybody's looking for a $100,000 fixer-upper on the coast," Sinclair said. "Those don't exist anymore."

At www.win-this-home.com are details about how to enter an essay contest for a $200 fee that could result in the full transfer of title to the home, which sits on a 10,000-square-foot lot at 900 Ocean View Drive.

The rules are straightforward: No more than 100 words on "I should win this home in Yachats because ... " Judged on content and originality by a three-person panel, the winner stands to turn a $200 investment into potentially a half-million-dollar gain.

Sinclair's situation reflects an increasingly desperate housing bust in Yachats, which has relied on cash-flush California buyers for years, buyers who are nowhere to be found now that their homes south of the border are also stuck with indelible "For Sale" signs.

The supply of home listings in Yachats is a whopping 27 months, triple that of Lane County's, said Tawfik Adhab, a real-estate appraiser and expert on the central coast housing market.

"A six-month supply is considered imbalanced. As the California markets have dried up, people who wanted to come to Yachats can no longer do so," Adhab said.

Few know that better than Sinclair, who lowered his asking price from $600,000 to the current $539,000 after a year and still didn't get any bites. At first, he pondered a raffle, or lottery. After getting some legal advice, however, Sinclair realized that option was out.

Gambling games of chance are illegal in Oregon, explained Kitty Telles, gaming registrar of the charitable activities section at the Oregon Department of Justice, with a few excepted parties: the Oregon Lottery Commission, the Oregon Racing Commission, tribal casinos, tax-exempt charities and social gaming permitted by local ordinances.

What Sinclair can do legally is a skill-based contest, however. He formed a nonprofit corporation, hired three judges and has spent $40,000 on attorneys and accountant fees to perfect the contest rules. If the hoped-for 3,000 entrants throw their names in the ring, he'll earn $600,000.

Sinclair and his wife, Sharon, decided two years ago to sell the sprawling one-story ranch house originally built as a one-room beach cabin in 1964. The couple spent $250,000 renovating the place after buying it for $173,000 in 1995. They loved the house's RV-sized garage, its fenced backyard, the hot tub on a wind-protected deck and the second deck, also wind-buffered, that leads from the upstairs bedroom to a glorious ocean view. But after a trip to the hospital gone awry in 2005, the couple couldn't keep up with their dream home anymore.

Ray Sinclair wound up with a bacterial infection in his legs after having surgery to improve bad circulation in his legs. The infection was hard to pinpoint, causing him severe back pain and leading to 19 separate visits to emergency rooms. Doctors eventually figured out that the bacteria was devouring Sinclair's spine and vertebrae.

"I was 140 pounds and wearing my wife's clothes," he said. "They thought I was going to die."

He survived, but maintaining the house became too much for the Sinclairs to handle, so the couple bought a smaller home in Waldport and tried to sell the oceanfront place, to no avail.

Telles said she gets calls about once a month from desperate sellers such as the Sinclairs and their real-estate agents, wondering about their options. Those calls have increased in recent months as the nationwide housing market continues its free fall.

"It's getting to be more and more of an issue," Telles said.

She hasn't heard many success stories from essay contests.

"It can work, but I ask every one of them I send information to, 'If you make this work, please let me know,' " Telles said. "Nobody has ever come back and said 'Kitty, I did it.' "

Mostly, the feedback she gets is that the seller didn't create a high-enough entry fee or get enough entries to recoup the home's value.

Sinclair plans to extend the contest deadline by 30 days if he doesn't get enough entries, and there's language in the rules that reserves the right for him to scrap the plan altogether.