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Would you gamble your home? The risks and rewards of raffling a house

Would you gamble your home? The risks and rewards of raffling a house

Times24-06-2025
W hen Natalie Rowcroft and her husband, Bradley, resolved to relocate to Brisbane, Australia, with their three children, they decided against putting their five-bedroom home in Salford, Greater Manchester, on the market. Instead they chose to raffle it, charging £2 a ticket.
Pretty much overnight, their lives were transformed, with numerous live Facebook videos turning them into minor celebrities — and helping them to sell 200,000 tickets. 'It was entertainment,' Rowcroft, 38, says of the period in which their novel house-selling method hit the headlines. People 'absolutely loved it'. The couple even threw in the family car.
Their experience in 2020, during the homebuying frenzy of the pandemic, was an early — and successful — example of a way of doing a deal that appealed to both sellers, put off by the time it was taking overwhelmed estate agents to get sales over the line, and 'buyers' dreaming of striking it lucky.
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