About the Omaze house draw…

[BrokenToy]

…that I’m constantly seeing adverts for.

I don’t get it. What does a family on min wage/benefits from Liverpool (for eg) do with a 4million quid Cornwall beach house? How do they run it? You can’t just sell it, houses of that value sit on the market for months/years (and I suspect are the reason they go up for these competitions).

Every time I catch the advert I think this. They also offer a £50k cash prize alongside but that would only see you through about a years worth of bills etc really. We’re on a decent income but every time I see it I think hmm ok we could sell/rent this house and live there, but even then we’d drown in energy bills, maintenance of the swimming pool/tennis courts, you’d need a gardener for the huge grounds, really I’d need a full time cleaner as the house would be too much alongside ft jobs.

Surely you need a millionaire income to fund a house like the ones they give away? Am I missing something?

We were down in Devon in August and went out on a boat trip. The crew pointed out a beautiful house on the cliff top. Said it was one of the Omaze houses. The owner who had it built couldn’t get insurance for it because the cliff is eroding so fast. so it was being ‘raffled’ off. Told us it came with an Aston Martin car, but the only thing that would get down the drive in it’s current state was a tractor!! Seems like it’s a way of off loading ‘houses that get built in ridiculous places’!

www.mansionglobal.com/articles/to-get-to-this-clifftop-home-in-england-you-ll-need-to-take-a-glass-elevator-136587

I was wondering why I couldnt find the entrance on street view, seems quite a hassle to actually get into the house

I'm guessing for someone on minimum wage they would sell the house say it's worth 5 mil but they can only sell it for 3mil quickly 3 mil is a life changing amount of money for someone on min wage. It is to most people. I wouldn't live in something like that I would sell it.

Omaze say the value is 2.4 million, the article I quoted above says its worth 6 million, its obviously dropping like a stone

Be worth about 50k next year

I've never tried entering partly because the odds of winning must be so low. If they have to sell enough tickets to cover the value of the house plus the adverts plus whatever donation they make to charity plus make some profit, that's a hell of a lot of tickets.

Interesting to note in the mansionglobal url it says there was a gun emplacement ( WW2? ) on the site previously.
in fact part of it has been preserved in one of the living rooms.

Yes its called The Gunnery. It was a gun emplacement, then it was decommissioned and turned into a domestic dwelling but abandoned in the 80s from what I can find out

The current owner bought the site and made several applications for planning, many turned down. I cant find out why the appeals were finally agreed and he got planning.

Ive put the documents on another thread

I reckon he has lost a load of money on it. Probably sold it to Omaze for them to make a profit on the sale of tickets.

Cornish Omaze House being sold... DM link

There was one near us, it flooded every couple of years. The owners had built it on flood plains. How they ever got planning I don’t know. I think it’s greedy really, this way the owners get way over the market value and offload a problem house to someone probably in a less fortunate position, without losing any money. They often don’t sell the minimum raffle tickets required though.

The London house draw date was yesterday, winner notified today, check your email if you entered….

I didn’t win the house but I did win a £10 Amazon voucher!

Don’t spend it all in the same shop! Oh

I grew up near the second Lake District House, and I property porn hunt around there all the time.

No way was it worth its Omaze valuation (you'd expect an acre or two), but I think it was a sound enough property.

I wonder if they scout out houses for sale and approach the owners, and they just wanted another Lakes house to sell?

I’d also wonder how such a family - or anyone really would afford the council tax on the London house unless they were already earning megabucks. You could rent or air b & b it I suppose ……

The Cornwall house is one we could absolutely live in. Location is good for us, albeit slightly rural with all the isolation that entails.

I've worked out that the £100k cash it comes with would be used to make conversions to the house to make three separate dwellings. We'd install a mate in one (who is on the bones of his arse) at the cost to him of whatever his housing benefit rate would be plus some money towards bills, rent the 2nd out to either Air BnB or consider a long term contract with, say, an emergency services /military charity for respite breaks (close to our hearts), and we'd live in the 3rd. The yoga studio would be rented out to any business that wanted it and we'd need to build a garage and buy a boat 😂.

At that point, it could work very well.

Has anyone actually won any of the houses? I read that there's small print saying if they don't hit a certain draw revenue they just give the winner a cash prize instead.

Makes the whole thing feel very close to scam.

Apparently that house has £280/mth Council tax. Still a LOT less than paying rent or mortgage.... They publish approx running costs.

omaze.co.uk/blogs/news/what-are-the-omaze-london-house-running-costs#:~:text=We've%20listed%20the%20estimated,Window%20cleaner%3A%20%C2%A373

I thought about entering the London one recently as my DS is paying a fortune to rent, but when I researched it it was not in a great location for his commute, but it was also right next to a large secondary school. Wouldn't bother some people but I could see it being a nightmare at certain times of day.

😂 you’re not forced to live there - you can just sell it and pocket £2m.

Absolutely but I wasn't sufficiently bothered to buy a ticket!