After many draws where no one wins, are dream home raffles a rip off?

July 5, 2019

It sounds so tempting – the chance to win a fabulous house for a few quid. But after so many dubious draws where no one wins, are dream home raffles a rip off?

Near a palace, a right royal let-down

After deciding to sell their £2m two-bedroom flat, a short walk from Kensington Palace, property developers Jonny Jackson and Harry Dee set up a raffle at £10 a go.

The pair, both 28, own a company to run such raffles. But in seven months, they sold only £227,000 worth of tickets — a tenth of what they needed.

Unwilling to hand over their house at such a loss, they gave the winner — named on a Facebook as ‘Caroline from London’ — a mere £53,500 in cash.

After deciding to sell their £2m two-bedroom flat, a short walk from Kensington Palace, property developers Jonny Jackson and Harry Dee (above) set up a raffle at £10 a go

They are keeping the remaining £173,500 to cover costs of running this and future raffles.

They say the small print made it clear that that a cash alternative would be offered if insufficient tickets were sold — a common get-out in such property raffles.

The pair, both 28, own a company to run such raffles. But in seven months, they sold only £227,000 worth of tickets — a tenth of what they needed. Unwilling to hand over their house at such a loss, they gave the winner — named on a Facebook as ‘Caroline from London’ — a mere £53,500 in cash

Little consolation over mega mansion

At the end of last year, with just one day before entries closed in their raffle for the sale of their £3 million ‘mega mansion’ in Ringwood, Hants, Mark and Sharon Beresford posted a Tweet, reminding people of the deadline.

They said ‘you have until tomorrow to buy a ticket to win this house’, with its six bedrooms, seven living rooms, and a 60ft frontage on the River Avon.

Despite generating £750,000 in ticket sales, the Beresfords (above) announced that the ‘winner’ would receive only £110,000, once all the ‘very high costs’ incurred in running the promotion had been deducted

In truth, people had virtually no chance of winning because only 30,000 of the £25 tickets had sold, far short of the 175,000 needed for the raffle to be concluded successfully.

Despite generating £750,000 in ticket sales, the Beresfords announced that the ‘winner’ would receive only £110,000, once all the ‘very high costs’ incurred in running the promotion had been deducted.

Also, the new £160,000 Aston Martin car runner-up prize failed to materialise.

Family tragedy led to a legal nightmare

With a heated outdoor pool, orangery and hot-tub, Robert and Avril Smith’s £500,000 home in the Yorkshire village of Grosmont seemed perfect for their retirement.

However, after almost 40 contented years, their grown-up daughter died following a sudden cardiac arrest in 2015 and they decided to move.

But they couldn’t find a buyer, even after dropping the price three times.

By last summer, they were so desperate that they came up with the idea of putting the four-bedroom Victorian house for sale using a raffle.

With a heated outdoor pool, orangery and hot-tub, Robert and Avril Smith’s £500,000 home in the Yorkshire village of Grosmont seemed perfect for their retirement

They hoped to sell 60,000 tickets at £10 each — giving them enough to cover its value and money left over to donate to the charity Cancer UK.

Seeking legal advice, they learnt that private prize draws must be done either by including an element of skill, such as a multiple choice question, or allowing free entries.

As for the element of skill, every entrant had to answer the question: ‘What year did the North Yorkshire Moors Railway open?’

But the Gambling Commission deemed the question to be so easy that the competition amounted to an illegal lottery — making the Smiths potentially liable to a fine of £5,000 and a prison sentence of up to 51 weeks.

Devastated, they felt they had no choice but to offer refunds to everyone.

Your own castle for the price of a pizza?

When a smuggler built Orchardton Castle in the 1880s, he was said to have buried treasure in the grounds.

The current chatelaine, Susan DeVere could have made good use of it as she faced ever-increasing maintenance costs on the sprawling 45-room mansion near Dumfries.

Ultimately, she decided to sell the castle, which has been valued at £2.5 million and includes a 20-seat cinema, music rooms and an art studio. But failing to attract buyers, she opted for a raffle, which began in May last year.

The current chatelaine, Susan DeVere could have made good use of it as she faced ever-increasing maintenance costs on the sprawling 45-room mansion near Dumfries

Despite a £5 price, she did not sell enough tickets to cover the castle’s value and had to hand cash prizes of £65,000, £7,000 and £5,000 to the top three buyers.

Another £20,000 of the proceeds went to various charities, including Riding for the Disabled and the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity, for families of youngsters with life-threatening illnesses.

She, too, was investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority and is now contesting a reprimand it delivered for lack of clarity in her raffle marketing materials — something she strongly denies.

Currently, she’s promoting the castle as a venue for weddings and weekend breaks. And she’s written a guide — How To Raffle Your House Or Not!— available on Amazon, with proceeds going to charity.

So would you enter for these?

After reading about the troubled experiences of those involved in such competitions, you might be wary of entering one.

But if still you want to, here are two you can join (via www.loquax.co.uk). The world’s tallest Gothic Folly, the refurbished Hadlow Tower, Kent. £4.50 a ticket.

Or Dancers Hill House, Barnet, Herts — Grade II-listed property, built 1760 in four acres including a one-and-a-half acre stocked lake with 2,000 fish. £13.50 a ticket

But if still you want to, here are two you can join (via www.loquax.co.uk ). The world’s tallest Gothic Folly, the refurbished Hadlow Tower, Kent. £4.50 a ticket

Dancers Hill House, Barnet, Herts — Grade II-listed property, built 1760 in four acres including a one-and-a-half acre stocked lake with 2,000 fish. £13.50 a ticket

P.S This really WAS given away

The east wing of a Grade II-listed Melling Manor in Lancashire was raffled by Dunstan Low, 39, who attributes his success in selling all £500,000 of his £2 tickets to being honest about his dire financial position.

He appealed to people to stop the bank grabbing it. The winner was 50-year-old Marie Segar, an office worker from Warrington, who had bought £40 worth of tickets. She sold it for £305,000.

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