3 days ago
Omaze is cashing in on Gen Z's despair – and my friends are falling for it
How many bedrooms does your dream mansion have? I don't think I'd bother with less than five.
This is the sort of question I find myself asking as I am bombarded with inane advertisements for whatever McMansion Omaze is flogging this week.
Sigh.
A property lottery is a simple premise, and one that Omaze didn't invent, although it has successfully hijacked my social media to promote itself.
Buy a ticket – for £10, for £25, for £50 – and if you're the lucky winner, you'll be handed the keys.
But even without the notorious 'Omaze curse', which recently hit the former Miss Wales finalist, Vicky Curtis-Cresswell, buying a ticket (or, for goodness' sake, a subscription) to these lotteries is a complete waste of money.
The odds were never in your favour. Any lottery is an idiot tax, but this feels a particularly egregious example.
Maybe it is the excruciatingly irritating Instagram chirruping. Maybe it's the too-good-to-be-true gut feeling. Maybe it's the capitalising on Gen Z's despair of ever getting on the housing ladder with well-shot property porn.
And Omaze really capitalises.
It promised to donate 17pc of sales from what will eventually be Ms Curtis-Cresswell's house to Comic Relief.
The company donated £4.1m in all. My simple maths suggests Omaze raked in more than £24m on that single draw.
Given that it cost £10 to enter, you can get a good idea of how many tickets were sold.
With average UK prices hitting £265,000, is it any wonder that even my own 20-something friends are being lured in by Omaze's cheap tickets and glossy Instagram ads?
Some recently told me: 'It was New Year's Day and I was hungover.' And: 'It was 11pm, I was depressed.'
It's hard to blame them. A young professional desperate to get on to an ever-more difficult property ladder will obviously chance their arm at every possible opportunity.
Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, promised to have the answer, but her home building plans are substantially below target and face never-ending blockages.
The next time you're tempted, think again. Donate the tenner to Comic Relief directly. Spend it on a middling bottle of plonk from Lidl – or five battered paperbacks from the charity shop – or one-and-a-half pints at a London pub.
