House raffles...what do we think..?..!

[earsup]

I have started buying some tickets each week for several of these house raffles...people do win them !...I don't do national lottery as poor odds and a waste of money, I dont go out, drink, buy lots of clothes etc etc, 3 cancelled holidays, 0.001% interest on savings etc so instead am spending about £12 a week spread over about 5 different raffles....if won could rent out house or sell it cheap...as I am not spending any money on myself at present just thought its a gamble and could maybe even win as odds are so much better than lotteries......opinions......?

What are the chances of you winning? Also a lot of these things fail cos they don't get enough tickets bought. It isn't even a dead cert that it will therefore go ahead.
Also a lot of the time, stamp duty is not paid and nor are solicitors fees so you may have to pay for those.
Think your £12 a week would be better invested elsewhere.

Odds are about 1 in 16000... If you buy about 6 tickets..it varies...You get 75% of money back if raffle fails to take place. All fees are paid.

I thought they all fell through

Seems a bit of a con, you only get 75% of the money if enough tickets are not sold so homeowners get 25% for not doing anything, may as well enter a cash raffle, surely odds are better and you get all of the money?

I would suggest you do some more research...

www.propertyreporter.co.uk/property/concerns-raised-over-too-good-to-be-true-property-raffles.html

www.wjm.co.uk/news/the-pitfalls-of-property-raffles

Personally I think in principle they are a good bet. Think about it,
If you win then you have a house for say £1 million, you then flip it immediately for £600k, there will be no shortage of takers for a house £400k below market value. Everyone’s a winner. So for a £12 outlay you’ve trousered £600k minus expenses.

@Alex1970

Personally I think in principle they are a good bet. Think about it, If you win then you have a house for say £1 million, you then flip it immediately for £600k, there will be no shortage of takers for a house £400k below market value. Everyone’s a winner. So for a £12 outlay you’ve trousered £600k minus expenses.

Who is giving away £1,000,000 houses though? The raffles I've seen are for run-of-the-mill houses that the vendors have been unable to sell by normal means (including lower-than-market-value price), and are desperately trying to get rid of another way.

If you can cover the costs of conveyencing and survey if you win, then it looks better.

But the possibility of extremely high service charges, dry rot on a listed property, the “sale at undervalue” concerns...

If it was a house I really wanted them I might be tempted to give it a whirl!

I enter the "win a house" competitions but I enter not expecting to actually win the house. Most of them don't sell enough tickets to award the house and instead award a cash prize which is usually somewhere around 75% of the ticket sales. The odds of winning a cash prize are much better than they are for the lottery

The odds are very poor for the return in reality, its actually one of the worst ways of gambling. If you want to gamble (I dont recommend it) then you should seek out the best odds and play that. Outside a casino its probably a bookmaker that will allow you to bet on the Irish lottery (not participate). If you did win - you could choose the house as well!

On a roulette table you can make over £1m by placing a £25 bet on a single number and winning 3 times in a row. Of course you would probably have to find a high end casino to do this as the final bet would be £92,000 on a single number!

I’ve not heard of any that actually went ahead as in got enough tickets?
Also one I looked at the small print was that there were huge maintenance fees or can’t think of the word....
Leaseholder fees type things
You know for lifts, communal gardens etc

I actually "won" one a year or two ago - I only won £5k so they must have sold hardly any tickets. I bought a £5 ticket and won £5k so I was quite happy with that. It's £5k towards a house deposit. Since then, I've been entering them regularly. I don't go over the top and spend what I can't afford so it's fine.

But yes, the odds are poor and you are of course better off putting the money in a savings account, especially if you're spending a lot of money. I enter for a bit of fun, you've got to be in it to win it.

Can you afford to spend nearly £50 every month on these raffle tickets? If yes, then carry on, if no, then stop. You may be better off putting the £600 per year towards a house deposit.

Well I haven't won any of the houses so far and not bought any more tickets...it was only a few pounds a week anyway...!!...I dont gamble on any thing else....the sellers pay the legal fees and stamp duty etc..lets see what happens with the remaining raffles i am in....!!...i do go to the casino with a friend sometimes but just watch..i find it quite fascinating...some people gamble huge amounts and seem to be in a trance on the tables....

It's illegal gambling. No one has a gambling licence to run these things. The websites say the onus is on the person running the raffle who is Joe Bloggs from The Street and none the wiser. Drives me mad with all the raffles on social media, particularly by those in MLMs.

Weren't they made illegal in the 90s?

Why not put the money in premium bonds? You still get the chance of winning a million, and your money isn’t going to waste, it’s there for you to withdraw whenever you want.

I think they get round the ‘gambling’ thing by there having to be a question you have to get right or something? But it’s always pretty easy.
So weird that I can’t at all remember how I know that. But I think it has to be a competition so hence a question

Quite often it gets cancelled because they haven't sold enough tickets. It's a scam.