When Aily Chalmers and her husband Nathan decided they were going to put their £600,000 home in Buckinghamshire on the market, they opted for a slightly unusual approach.
Instead of going through an estate agent, they landed on the idea of selling up through a raffle – and for £2 a ticket, they’re hoping to make a profit.
If they’re successful in meeting their goal of selling 450,000 tickets, they’ll end up making £900,000 – which is £300,000 more than the four-bedroom home, where they’ve lived for the last seven years, has been valued at.
However, they’ll only end up making a £5,000 profit, as alongside £600,000 for the home, £20,000 will be provided in cash for the winner, as well as £65,000 to cover all stamp duty and legal fees, a £90,000 commission for the raffle host, £90,000 for the affiliate commission, and a further £30,000 in marketing costs.
They had initially considered selling through an estate agent, but in February, after making some enquiries, they were told that they’d have to cut the price and wait at least 18 months to make a sale.
And so, Aily feels they’ve had to take a different approach as ‘everything has halted’ in the housing market.
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‘We never thought we’d be doing something like this, but we want to move closer to family and just thought: “Go for it,”’ 32-year-old Aily, a website designer from Grendon Underwood in Buckinghamshire, shares.
‘All you can do is try, in these situations. We’re looking to move ASAP – it sounds mad, but it’s a win-win for us and someone who gets to live in a four-bed house for £2.’
She also believes that the government’s plans to introduce a new property tax on houses over £500,000 are ‘punishing people who own property.’
She adds: ‘I feel like it’s the whole property market at the moment, with the government putting in all this new legislation just to get more money off people.’
When their mortgage rate doubled a couple of years ago, Aily and Nathan knew that they couldn’t afford to keep their home.
‘A lot more people are wanting to just rent. It’s terrible. I don’t know how some people are surviving,’ she reflects.
The couple were first introduced to the idea of selling their house through a raffle after they read articles online about it.
Nathan was instantly on board, and when he suggested they go for it, Aily agreed that it was the best course of action.
‘The house is basically just going to be given away – all stamp duty and other fees will be paid, and the winner won’t have to pay anything other than £2 for the ticket,’ she explains.
‘We had lots of Zoom calls with the company hosting the raffle, to iron out the legalities of it all, and now the competition is live.’
In the first couple of days after the listing went live, they sold 1% of the tickets and subsequently made £6,000.
Once they’ve found their winner, who they estimate could make £2,500 per month if they choose to rent the property out, the pair are hoping to move closer to family in Forest Way, Hampshire.
Here, they’re looking for something similar to their current home: three bedrooms, a study, a snug, and an open-plan dining room-lounge.
But what happens if they don’t manage to sell enough raffle tickets? The winner will receive a cash prize amounting to 50% of the total ticket revenue generated for the competition.
The company – Raffall – will then receive 10%, the affiliates another 10%, and Aily and Nathan the remaining balance.
‘Our house is perfect at the moment, and our budget is the same – the only downside of being here is that we have to drive miles and miles if we want to see our family,’ Aily concludes.
‘It sounds mad, but we’re really hoping we can pull it off.’
How does selling your house via raffle work?
It might sound like a left-field way of shifting your home, but selling via a raffle is perfectly legal in the UK.
The crux is getting enough people to buy a ticket, as failing to sell as many as you need could mean you aren’t able to cover the cost of your home, as well as any necessary fees.
If you’re wanting to carry out a property raffle, you’ll need to adhere to the Gambling Laws, which means you’ll need to add a ‘competition element,’ like asking entrants to answer a question or a quiz before they can purchase a raffle ticket. Notably, these rules don’t apply if you’re looking to donate the money to charity.
In the Chalmers’ case, they’ve opted for a simple multiple-choice question: what is the main function of a watch?
According to The Property Selling Company, property raffles usually feature dream homes that might be more expensive and so can ‘often take far longer to sell on the open market than average homes.’
So, for this reason, they can be an efficient way to sell a property in a ‘fraction of the time.’
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