This summer's free Daily Mail Dream Cottage competition seems to be attracting lots of interest so far. The 'idyllic' £320,000 thatched cottage is certainly picture-perfect: dating back to the early 17th century, it features 3 bedrooms and a beautiful mature garden. While the description sounds great, very little information is provided about the location. However, thanks to the investigative work of some of our members, we think we've found the place! | |
A number of UK win a house competitions have struggled to take off in recent months. While we've seen winners in other countries, so far 2010 has been relatively quiet in the UK. Although new competitions are launched every month, many UK organisers seem to underestimate what is required to make them a success. Here we offer some points for discussion to try to understand what lies at the heart of this issue. | |
| You could win a million dollar home in Cambridge, New Zealand for as little as NZ$25 (£10). Local pastor Murray Smith and his wife Michelle have decided to raffle off their house to help provide funds to build a new church and community centre in their home town. Buying a set of 6 Waipa District photos automatically enters you into the draw to win their family home, valued at around £435,000. The couple have already raised NZ$255,000 so far in the raffle, which closes at the end of January 2010. | |
| Winning a house free ranks at the top of pretty much everyone’s wish list. For years, companies and newspapers have used free house competitions as a powerful tool for marketing and promotions. However, this is usually reserved for big promoters who are able to reach out to large amounts of people and who can afford this type of prize. Recently however, some homeowners have come up with innovative was of 'selling' their home in a competition without actually charging players. | |
| The Win a Cheltenham House competition has re-launched yet again under a different format, called Pixahome. After featuring his home in Channel 4's Grand Designs, last year Tim Bawtree decided to run a win a house competition to give away his award-winning underground home in Cheltenham, valued at £745,000. After initially asking players to answer a simple question on his website, it was re-launched at the start of 2009 as a "Spot the Frisbee" competition. The competition ended in mid-March having sold some 5,700 tickets, around 43,300 short of the targeted amount. As a result, the winner, Christine Evelen, was handed a cash prize of £83,000 instead of the keys to the property. | |
| The winner of the win a Devon property with fishing competition has finally been announced. 36-year old Christoph Jaeger from Hamburg won the £1 million property called "Oldborough Retreat" with ticket number OR91897. | |
House competition organisers in the UK haven’t had it easy lately, demonstrating just how careful one needs to be when organising a property competition. With quite a number having had to halt or cancel their competitions due to direct intervention by the Gambling Commission, the overall issue of regulatory compliance seems to have also affected some payment providers’ willingness to process transactions for such competitions. Part of the eBay group, PayPal is an e-wallet system that lets anyone with an email address securely send and receive online payments. Choosing Paypal as a house competition payment provider seemed a judicious choice for many competition organisers, given its brand recognition and comparatively low cost.
However, using Paypal has turned out to be more problematic than many anticipated, with numerous reports of abrupt stoppages in service and monies withheld. | |
After years of unprecedented growth, experts agree that the UK housing market has slowed down in recent months. On the back of this, a number of win a house competitions have emerged online, with some notable successes in terms of selling tickets to the public.
If organised carefully, running a prize competition to give away a property can provide an innovative alternative to selling it in the traditional way. While demand for buying property outright has dropped in many countries due to falling valuations, lower mortgage approval rates and general concerns over the state of the economy, prize competitions are not necessarily affected by these factors in the same way.
As recent examples have shown, in this environment they can appeal to property sellers and players alike. It is interesting to consider why we have seen the emergence of these types of competitions, raffles and sweepstakes, and how much it costs to successfully run one versus selling a property in the conventional way. | |
Few people expected Brian and Wendy Wilshaw to be as successful as they have turned out to be. After a strong marketing campaign in the British media and online, the couple have just managed the impressive feat of selling all 46,000 tickets for their Devon property prize competition, nearly two months before their targeted completion date. | |
After spending months trying (and failing) to sell their home in the traditional way, British couple Brian and Wendy Wilshaw have kick started an exciting new competition to give away their beautiful home in Devon. As featured on BBC TV on 26 August 2008 and covered on a number of other popular news channels and websites, this competition appears to be very well marketed throughout the UK and online. The idea is simple: to sell 46,000 tickets at £25 each (around $50 equivalent), then to pick one lucky winner once the competition has closed.
The Devon property (named "Oldborough Retreat") is valued at £1 million (around $2 million) and features five bedrooms, 11.5 acres of woodland paddock, a 2-acre lake, and even four two-bedroom wooden lodges. Given the name of the website, we suspect the couple themselves are keen anglers, which is not surprising given the impressive features of the property. | |
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