HGTV dream home winners: It takes a lot of green to be green

"It's all mine?" asked Marsha Coulthard in disbelief as she wiped away tears and accepted the keys Friday to the "free" Green Home in Tradition Hilton Head.

Coulthard, a former Bluffton resident now living in Florida, said she loves the "gorgeous" neighborhood along U.S. 278 in Hardeeville.

"It's just going to be wonderful," she said of her environmentally friendly home.

But if she actually moves in, she would be somewhat of a rarity among HGTV dream-home winners.

For many past winners, "dream home" dreams collided with a nightmare of hard financial realities.

Take John Groszkiewicz, for example. He won a dream home in Florida in 2003. On his Web diary, he wrote of balancing the euphoria of winning with the accompanying economic realities.

"The next day (after winning) ... I heard some of the tax estimates," he wrote. "They brought me down."

Federal taxes on dream homes cost winners hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Groszkiewicz, like at least six other past winners, ended up selling his prize. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he said HGTV officials told him "the dream is what happens after you sell the house."

Closer to home, Coulthard indicated she would seek financial advice soon.

But not just yet.

For now, she wants to bask in the moment.