WIN A HOUSE: For the second year in a row, local homebuilder Fischer & Frichtel is building the new St. Jude Dream Home.

The company was selected last year to be the builder for the first-ever St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway program in the St. Louis area. The local campaign achieved the fastest sell-out in the history of the nationwide event, which originated in 199. Ruth Hasse-Ellsworth won last year's dream home in Hazelwood.

The annual national Giveaway program is one of the largest single-event fundraisers benefiting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the pediatric cancer research center in Memphis, Tenn. All proceeds go directly to the hospital and support its mission of finding cures and treating children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases.

This year's Dream Home will be a "Wyndham," a brand new story-and-a-half plan from the company's upscale Heritage Collection, designed by Barry Glantz of Glantz & Associates Architects. Construction of the house -- which is the first of this model ever to be built -- will begin late this month at Talbridge, a top-selling residential development in St. Charles.

Estimates on the value of the house put it in the mid- to upper $500,000s. The way the giveaway works is that raffle tickets are sold for several months and then ultimately a winner is selected. Fisher & Frichtel and the subcontractors donate their time and labor and the cost of materials is taken from the raffle proceeds. The rest of the money goes to St. Jude.

A schedule has not yet been determined for Dream Home Giveaway activities, which will include a groundbreaking, open-house tours, availability of raffle tickets and the televised drawing. KTVI (Channel 2) is the campaign's electronic media partner. Information will be posted on the homebuilder's website.