Miles Brannan and his wife are feeling the crunch just like everybody else. The Brannans are both South Florida realtors, and when their income dipped with the economy they put their $3 million Fort Lauderdale waterfront house on the market, only to watch it sit there idling. The Brannans had bought the place, at 2824 NE 36th Street, almost new in 2005; they'd added a movie theater, a salt water system for the pool, and a lot of expensive stonework to a house already replete with luxuries: a separate game room, a 4-car garage. But this year they'd had to sell the boat they parked at their 100-foot dock, and when the house failed to move, Brannan came up with the idea of offering it by lottery.
$10 sound like a pretty good deal for a 6,000 square foot, six bedroom house? The Brannans have already sold 75,000 tickets for $10 a piece on the website they set up, and they plan to keep the lottery going until they sell 300,000 -- or until December 25th, whichever comes first. "Actually we just looked on zillow.com [a real estate site] and the value of the house is going up, I think it was $3.2 million last time we checked," Brannan said by phone today. "For awhile the mortgage market took a lot of people out of the market, foreign investors were not buying because the lending policies were against them. They could just go to the Bahamas for a vacation home. But it looks like things are starting to turn around again."
The Branans plan to move to a "more affordable" Lauderdale neighborhood "for the time being," Brannan says. He doesn't sound particularly pained about it either. The final drawing, he hopes, will be held at the house, maybe with a celebrity to do the honors. "We've approached Jason Taylor," Brennan confides. "But I suppose it depends on his schedule."
