HGTV Dream Home 2026 Winner Announcement
Meet the lucky winner of HGTV Dream Home® 2026 located on Lake Wylie near Charlotte, North Carolina.
Eileen Reimer of Atlanta, Georgia, is the official winner of HGTV Dream Home 2026, a grand prize valued at over $2.4 million.
HGTV Dream Home 2026 designer Brian Patrick Flynn surprised Eileen at a family lunch by holding up a set of keys with the words “Eileen’s lakehouse” engraved on them and asking her, “Do you have any idea why this says Eileen’s lakehouse?” After a long pause, Eileen asked hopefully, “Is this in Charlotte?”
When Brian confirmed that she was officially the winner of HGTV Dream Home 2026 on Lake Wylie just outside of Charlotte, the room, which was filled with Eileen’s extended family, erupted in screams of excitement.
“I didn’t enter but like once or something,” she confessed. “That’s all it takes,” Brian answered.
The Set Up
A few weeks ago, a producer tracked down Eileen’s sister-in-law, Margaret, and explained that Eileen had won and that they needed help coming up with the perfect surprise. Margaret sprang into action, explaining that their extended family was overdue for a get-together and that this would be an easy way to get Eileen and her family all together for the surprise.
As the family’s social planner, no one was the wiser when Margaret emailed her five siblings, their spouses, and their children to arrange for them to meet for Saturday lunch at their favorite neighborhood pizza place. The family-owned Avondale Pizza Cafe has a private room that the Reimer siblings have rented out for all kinds of get-togethers and special occasions over the years, so a call was made to secure the space, and a plan was officially set into motion.
The morning of the surprise, the camera crew arrived at the restaurant early to set up hidden cameras and find a space to stealthily hide out until the time was right for Brian to appear and surprise Eileen.
To keep tabs on the group and to identify Eileen when she arrived, the camera crew also had someone pretending to be part of the wait staff while also wearing glasses that doubled as a hidden camera.
Once lunch had been served and the family was happily mingling, it was go time. So with a camera crew in tow, Brian walked into the private room holding up a keychain and asked, “Is there someone named Eileen in here? I believe I have your keys.” The family, stunned into silence, cleared the way for Brian to find Eileen in the crowd and give her the news. Hilariously, Eileen’s husband Charles had gone to the bathroom just before the big announcement and completely missed it. He heard all the screaming and returned to find his wife surrounded by a camera crew and Brian trying to quickly catch him up. “She won,” Brian calmly told the completely stunned Charles.
Meant to Be
Eileen shared that she has been entering HGTV Home giveaways for years, telling us, “When I see something close (geographically) that appeals to me, I am going to enter…never expecting to win.” This year, Eileen noticed the beautiful home outside of Charlotte and was immediately intrigued. “I love the style of it, love the stone, love the color.”
Coincidentally, she and her husband recently discovered beautiful Lake Wylie when their son and his family moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and they would drive up to visit. “That’s how we came to know the area existed,” she said, explaining that the route they take from Atlanta takes them right past the lake.
Being closer to her son’s family, which includes a two-year-old granddaughter and a five-month-old grandson, was a big reason why Eileen entered to win this house, “Lake Wylie gets us four hours closer to them,” she said. “This was meant to be; it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t supposed to.”
Laurey Glenn
Serendipitous Style
The serendipitous location isn’t the only coincidence here. It turns out that Brian’s design aesthetic is oddly similar to Eileen’s. “I am not a white wall person,” she told us. “There’s no room in my house with no color, and when they showed the dining room, I was like, oh my gosh, that's me. My den is almost exactly the color of the dining room, and the pantry is the same color as my kitchen.”
Brian Rozar
The idea of living on a lake has also recently appealed to her, “I have always wanted to live on the water. I am going to live on that dock.” she told us. While she shared that she has not been fishing in “a million years,” she says she also can’t wait to wake up, grab a fishing pole, and spend her mornings relaxing outside.
“I still can’t comprehend that this happened,” she said, laughing.
HGTV Dream Home 2026
Guest Ready
At the restaurant, surrounded by Eileen’s family, Brian jokingly asked who was coming to visit, and everyone raised their hands. Luckily for Eileen, the over 3,000 square-foot house has a guest-ready second level, complete with one guest bedroom and an en-suite guest bathroom with a summer camp vibe. Eileen shared that one of her sons is an Eagle Scout, and the badges on the wall remind her of that.
The second guest suite is ready-made for a family visit, and Eileen could already envision her family there. “The red bedroom is perfect for my son and daughter-in-law to come with the kids,” she told us.
Tour HGTV Dream Home 2026
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Eileen still can’t get over the shock of the surprise, “I had no idea … none whatsoever,” she tells us. When recounting the moment that she saw the camera crew coming towards her, she says she heard Brian saying her name, “and he said it right, and that was unusual… and when he handed me the key, and there was an anchor on it, and [from] that point forward it was like a dream I was watching. Stuff like this does not happen to me.”
Except, apparently, it does. Congratulations Eileen.
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