Owning a house has never been more of a distant dream for many people, with rising prices making it nigh-on impossible to secure your very own brick-based castle unless you earn six figures and are the sort of person who talks about earning six figures. That, or the bank of mum and dad are feeling particularly generous at the moment.
But a new trend seems to have emerged in the housing game, with people offering up their houses to buy for an incredibly cheap price. How cheap, you ask? Well, you’ve seen the headline - just two of your shiny British pounds please.
But how, you bluster, can something worth hundreds of thousands of pounds be up for sale for that amount? Well, it’s because it’s a raffle. So you’re going to have to be pretty lucky to walk away (metaphorically, not literally) with the place.
The latest house to be raffled off is a five-bedroom detached home in Daventry, Northamptonshire which, as well as looking very nice, also offers excellent access to the M1 and the A45.
It’s owned by mum-of-four Kristie Searle, who became unwell with a long-term illness in 2010.
She explained: “I had the idea a few months ago and thought it would be such a fantastic opportunity and great way for someone to get on to the housing ladder for £2 and best of all, mortgage free. In a time when we could all do with a helping hand once in a while and have something to smile about, the lucky winner could sell the property, giving them a nice amount of money that can change lives.”
She’s aiming to sell a minimum of 500,000 tickets by 1 November, and explained that she had been inspired by another recent raffle, that saw a family in Lancashire sell their £800,000 country mansion.
If the minimum target is reached she has pledged to make £10,000 donations to the charities Cancer Research UK Kids & Teens, Alzheimer’s Society and Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance.
“Hopefully I will make a bit of extra money, over the price of just selling at an estate agents, to help buy a larger house for my family, we just can’t afford to do it the conventional way because I can’t work and I feel like I’m letting my kids down. With house prices the way they are, the kids will be with us for a quite a long time whilst they save for deposits of their own. If it wasn’t for a growing family I couldn’t imagine moving, but we don’t fit in this house and with five cars outside we don’t fit out there either. My competition will also do plenty of good for charity and needless to say, for the winner.”
While the Lancashire raffle went off fine, other raffles have not been so successful - in August, a Lanarkshire man saw his plan to raffle his mansion thwarted by PayPal, while in May the council got involved to stop a woman raffling off a five-bedroom house in London’s Blackheath, claiming it could breach gambling rules.
However, this time around, the Ts and Cs seem pretty comprehensive, so there’s no obvious reason this one won’t happen.
So what are you waiting for? Click here to enter and get your two quid in (and you can even enter for free with written entry by first class post).
(Images: Peter Boccia/Kristie Searle)
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