One of the Valley's most famous homes is up for grabs. Nichol and Bryan Okvath, whose ranch-style home with a leaky roof was leveled and replaced on ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in early 2005, are selling their Gilbert house for $1.2 million.
One of the Valley's most famous homes is up for grabs.
Nichol and Bryan Okvath, whose ranch-style home with a leaky roof was leveled and replaced on ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in early 2005, are selling their Gilbert house for $1.2 million.
The couple said they came to the decision two weeks ago after several strokes of bad luck. Last year, Bryan Okvath lost his job at Western Pilot Service, a company that extinguishes brush fires by dumping slurry from the air. Although he found employment as a truck driver, he stopped working six weeks ago after a nasty fall from the cab of his truck severely injured his back.
Nichol Okvath, a stay-at-home mom, is looking for a job, and the family put the house on the market after realizing it was impossible to keep up with expenses, including utility bills.
"We just pretty much have just the basics," Nichol Okvath said.
But the basics still include a whopping $1,200 a month for electricity and a $400 water bill.
The couple said they haven’t decided where to move with their seven children: Kassandra, Gabby, Johnathan, Tatyhanna, Levi, Josiah and Tobiah.
"We're looking at everything," Bryan Okvath said.
"We've had great memories here," he said. "Tatyhanna was born here and the kids have grown up here."
The house was featured in a two-hour episode of "Extreme Makeover" on KNXV-TV (Channel 15) on March 13, 2005.
The original home was leveled and replaced with a 7,200-square-foot, six-room Spanish Colonial-style mansion replete in extras like a movie theater, hardwood and travertine flooring, granite countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms and ultraviolet-light air and water filtration systems.
The whole affair materialized after the couple's oldest daughter, 13-year-old Kassandra, who was battling a rare form of cancer, requested that the shows producers do a makeover on some of the hospital rooms in which she was living. Kassandra wanted to do away with the sterile and depressing white walls and make the rooms more cheery and inviting for her fellow patients.
What the Okvaths didn't know was that while volunteers were sprucing up the hospital rooms where she and her parents were spending so much of their lives, the show's producers and about 1,000 volunteers were working feverishly to give them a new home.
Kassandra is being monitored to make sure the cancer doesn't come back, but because of the chemotherapy, she suffers from migraines, hearing loss and other problems, Nichol Okvath said.
Tony Moore, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty who is handling the transaction, said selling the Okvath home won't be easy.
The luxury market has a two-year inventory in the pipeline because there are fewer people able to purchase homes that are $800,000 and above. Obtaining financing for those who qualify is another obstacle.
"So I've been very honest with them and explained that it is a challenging time to sell a luxury home," he said.
