21-05-2025
Somebody will get this Irish countryside house for $9, if all goes according to plan
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Imelda Collins says she's figured out a way to sell her home for peanuts, while still turning a profit.
Instead of putting her house near Sligo, Ireland, on the open market through a real estate agent, she's raffling it off to a lucky winner, with tickets priced at £5, or roughly $9.30 Cdn.
"I just thought that was a cool idea," Collins told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
If all goes well, she sees it as a win-win for her and the new homeowner.
"The dream winner would be somebody that can't afford a house, or somebody that is struggling to get on the property ladder, which I'm sure a lot of people are," she said.
"If my raffle is successful, in the end, I would hope to make more money than had I sold it on the open market."
How it works
While raffling is an unconventional way of selling your home, Collins says it's become something of a trend in Britain.
She got the idea after reading a news article about a woman in Dublin who raffled her apartment so she could live her dream of moving to Paris.
Collins says she plans to use the proceeds of her raffle to move to Italy to be with her husband and his family.
"Initially, my husband ... thought I was crazy, to be quite honest," she said. "I assured him I'd done all the research. I wasn't jumping into it."
Collins is running the raffle through Raffall, a British company that primarily runs online charity raffles.
"We didn't anticipate house raffles," Stelios Kounou, Raffall's chief executive and founder, told the New York Times. "We never imagined people would do that."
The contest, which closes Thursday, is open to people anywhere in the world. The company requires a minimum sale of 150,000 tickets for someone to win the house. If Collins falls short of that, the winner gets 50 per cent of the ticket sales, Raffall takes its 10 per cent cut, and she keeps her home.
Kounou says the platform has successfully raffled 18 houses so far, while another 50 people tried but failed to reach the ticket sales target.
Only bidders are allowed to know how many tickets have been sold so far, says Collins. But she's not worried.
"I am very, very, very near to my goal," she said. "I can divulge that."
Is it legal?
To ensure everything is on the up-and-up, Raffall classifies its raffles as "prize competitions," as opposed to lotteries, which cannot be run for commercial or private gain.
Britain's Gambling Commission defines a prize competition as one in which "the outcome is determined by the participants' skill, judgment or knowledge."
To adhere to those standards, Raffall includes an entry question to qualify for the draw. For Collins' raffle, the question is: "Which colour is associated with Ireland?"
In Canada, the rules around raffling and contests vary by province. Provincial gambling authorities have, at times, investigated or shut down real estate raffles and other contests to win homes.
In an article posted by U.K. law firm Home Property Law, lawyer Cordelia Grassby urges potential buyers to take precautions before buying a raffle ticket for a house, including making sure you can afford utilities and maintenance costs, asking about associated legal fees and taxes, and, if possible, visiting the property or having it surveyed.
Collins says she's promised to take care of the stamp duty land tax and any legal fees associated with the purchase. The house, she says, has been recently renovated, and comes fully furnished.
Collins says anyone would be lucky to win her house, which she lovingly calls "Butterfly Cottage."
Nestled on 0.7 hectares (1.75 acres) of rolling green hills, Collins says the home is surrounded by nature. From her porch, she watches rabbits hopping through the grass. There's a swallow building a nest beneath her roof, and a robin who stops regularly to eat from her hands.
"I've had some really special experiences with nature," she said. "And the winner will hopefully experience similar things to what I did, you know, if they love nature as much as I do."
She says she's brought that love of nature inside, too, with bright colours and nature-themed wallpaper, curtains and bedding.
"Ireland is well known for not having good weather. So my idea was even if it's raining outside, at least you're sitting inside in your beautiful living room and you're looking at the beautiful design and the wallpaper and it's bright and cheerful," she said.
She admits just selling Butterfly Cottage through a real estate agent might have been easier. But she likes the novelty of the raffle, and is fond of the idea that someone will get a house for less than the price of a lunch.
"It would be lovely for somebody who can't afford a home to win," she said.
