Win a house competitions - Omaze etc..

For housing, I'd imagine it's a way for people who can't get a mortgage or buy their dream property to get on the ladder or own what they want. Plus as opposed to say the lottery or whatever in relative terms you have a higher chance of actually winning the prize. It's 500,000/1 against for that house versus the lotto, which is 10s of millions against. Both still astronomical odds but for me, I would see it as a potential reason. Then you could still sell the prop and end up with a substantial amount of money
 
I entered one of Omaze's raffles when the charity was one I supported (RNLI IIRC). I viewed it as giving 80% to the charity and 20% to the chance of winning whatever it was.
 
The advert was funny “imagine waking up with the sun streaming through the windows” I thought yeah that happens already, they must think we’re a bunch of cave dwelling troglodytes.
 
Lartyconshayo said:
This one is aiming for 500k but house is valued at 350. As he plans to pay 10% to charity if the full amount is reached (doubt it will happen in time as 1/7 is cut off) he would trouser 100k more than his home is worth. Seems a great scheme to get a wedge IF all tickets sold
https://fundraising.co.uk/2021/06/24/nhs-worker-raffles-his-house-for-nhs-charity/
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Yeah those types of competitions often fail unfortunately, could well miss the target despite this "NHS worker" (manager) trying to that angle...


Tom_ed1987 said:
I don't understand why these have recently become a 'thing' - raffles for houses, cars, even rubbish like raffling off luxury pamper hampers on Facebook with people seemingly queuing up for tickets... Can anyone explain? :D
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The house thing started quite a few years ago when there was a downturn in the property market and some family decided they'd raffle their house to make sure they got what they believed it was worth... it's less of a novelty now though I think Omaze have cracked it - serious prizes + they take a risk and spend heavily on advertising and promotion + they get the charities (often major brands) involved in marketing it. Some of the other competitions are a bit hit and miss and can be quite amateurish.

Quartz said:
I entered one of Omaze's raffles when the charity was one I supported (RNLI IIRC). I viewed it as giving 80% to the charity and 20% to the chance of winning whatever it was.
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That's a bit of a misconception, your ticket purchase is nowhere near giving 80% to the charity, it's more like 20% the the charity and 80% to the chance of winning the house... it's a % of the proceeds that are given to the charity, i.e. after the cost of the house, the other prizes and the marketing has been taken away.

You also see this a bit on social media - you get some posts where people think the charity owns the house or something and are questioning why they don't just sell it and use the money for the charity, or other posts confused about the draw date because they have a prominent countdown for the chance to win the next car or whatever they're giving away too.

I guess that is part of the marketing, it's a tiny portion of sales going to the charity but if people view it as a charity donation with a prize attached then that helps.
 
Liquid_Entity said:
£25 for 40 tickets. I can imagine quite a few considerably richer people are throwing a few £1000s to buy up all the tickets. The chances of you winning on about 40 tickets must be minute.
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Quite possibly though I guess that’s the same with anything like this, lotteries etc.. This probably has better odds though as more of the ticket price likely goes towards the prize than with state lotteries etc.. It’s still -EV but less so.
 
Quartz said:
No misconception: the Ts & Cs explicitly stated it. It might not apply to their other competitions, of course. I only entered the one so don't know about others.
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thought it was 80% of their net? Hence 80% of the extra kidney they raised after paying for their house and their costs? So on a £500k house with let’s say £50k “surplus”, after they have deducted stamp duty, legal fees, advertising costs, admin etc there might be 80% of only £10k going to the charity so only 1.2% of your ticket cost
 
Quartz said:
No misconception: the Ts & Cs explicitly stated it. It might not apply to their other competitions, of course. I only entered the one so don't know about others.
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Not quite, the T&C's for the omaze draws splits the net proceeds, not gross takings

Omaze is the promoter of the Wimbledon House Draw with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity being the charitable beneficiary, registered charity number (1160024) in England and Wales. 80% of the net proceeds of the draw will go to the charity, with Omaze being paid 20%. It is expected that approximately £500,000 will be raised for the charity, which would mean Omaze being paid £125,000. Irrespective of sales, Omaze has guaranteed a minimum total payment of £100,000 for the charity. No purchase necessary. The Wimbledon House Draw closes on 21st November 2021..
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https://omaze.co.uk/pages/enter-wimbledon

So costs etc come off before the split, as Dowie highlighted.
 
Quartz said:
No misconception: the Ts & Cs explicitly stated it. It might not apply to their other competitions, of course. I only entered the one so don't know about others.
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Definitely a misconception, I already explained why in the previous post too, how do you think the house is paid for? Or the advertising and all the other prizes and just the admin costs for running the thing?

Greebo said:
thought it was 80% of their net? Hence 80% of the extra kidney they raised after paying for their house and their costs? So on a £500k house with let’s say £50k “surplus”, after they have deducted stamp duty, legal fees, advertising costs, admin etc there might be 80% of only £10k going to the charity so only 1.2% of your ticket cost
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It's not quite that brutal, they raised circa £1 million for the BHF with a previous London house draw for example.

That house was valued at £3 million, but there are marketing costs, other small cash prizes, cars and Omaze takes their 20% profit too.

All in they might have sold say £5 million in tickets... ergo the charity ends up with say around 20% of the ticket sales...
 
Quartz said:
Sorry, no. As I said, I checked.

In this case I believe the house was a gift, but it was so long ago that I cannot be sure.
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Sorry but you're definitely mistaken, perhaps you didn't understand what you were reading, this is a for-profit company, no one has gifted them a house!

edit - they only started offering these last year so I'm not sure what you're on about re: it being so long ago and none of the draws supported the RNLI as you claimed either - you're definitely getting very muddled here.
 
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Quartz said:
Nope. Now swallow your pride, recognise that you do not have perfect information, and refrain from responding.
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Sorry but this is silly, you're just wrong here. Omaze UK started offering houses in competitions in 2020 they've had 3 completed competitions so far:

The Cheshire House - supporting the Teenage Cancer Trust
The London House - supporting the BHF
The Cotswolds house - supporting the Princes Trust

You're getting confused by "net" proceeds.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200529153754/omaze.co.uk
BIpBerB.png

There was no RNLI competition, you've forgotten which charity it is and you're just getting muddled re: the T&Cs which talk about the donation to charity.... it's not 80% of your ticket price going to charity, it's 80% of the net proceeds of the draw.
 
dowie said:
Sorry but this is silly, you're just wrong here. Omaze UK started offering houses in competitions in 2020 they've had 3 completed competitions so far:

The Cheshire House - supporting the Teenage Cancer Trust
The London House - supporting the BHF
The Cotswolds house - supporting the Princes Trust

You're getting confused by "net" proceeds.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200529153754/omaze.co.uk
BIpBerB.png

There was no RNLI competition, you've forgotten which charity it is and you're just getting muddled re: the T&Cs which talk about the donation to charity.... it's not 80% of your ticket price going to charity, it's 80% of the net proceeds of the draw.
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And what Omaze failed to declare about the Cotswold House is that it was built in a valley that floods yearly & is un-insurable because of it & techically the grounds can't be used as a garden because they're still registered as Agricultural lands, requiring planning to change it.

A £25 ticket is likely to leave them with a massive pile of bills later down the line.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/23/oxfo...0-new-home-won-in-omaze-draw-floods-14818807/
 
Resident said:
And what Omaze failed to declare about the Cotswold House is that it was built in a valley that floods yearly & is un-insurable because of it & techically the grounds can't be used as a garden because they're still registered as Agricultural lands, requiring planning to change it.

A £25 ticket is likely to leave them with a massive pile of bills later down the line.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/23/oxfo...0-new-home-won-in-omaze-draw-floods-14818807/
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Yeah, I did mention that earlier (I think I typed Devon house instead of Cotswold House), didn't realise it was uninsurable too though... will be interesting if there is another news story from the new owners - that would be something Omaze might want to avoid! You'd think the neighbouring houses would be kicking up more of a stink in that case and getting the council to fix it - issue there seems to be a culvert that gets blocked and isn't really big enough - it's only a stream/rainfall causing it, not like it's next to a river or something ergo should be fixable.

I do wonder if the neighbours are rather anti the fact it had been built in general - seems a bit sus re: the original developer if most of the "garden" is agricultural land, like they've got planning to build where an old barn once was but not for a garden LOL.

That's what concerns me about these, none of them (save for perhaps the latest one) would be homes I'd necessarily want to buy if I had a spare few million and was looking for one, even the latest one which does seem nice is the lowest price option of the 4 homes developed at the same time. They certainly don't seem to have been "donated" to the charities as the poster further up seems to have claimed, though he seems a bit confused, Omaze is the one running the draws the charities just lend their name in return for a guaranteed donation/profit split, more likely Omaze approaches the owners of the houses after they're unable to sell.

Anyway, I decided to have a go and entered the Wimbledon one as there was a 2 for 1 offer that included a draw for the Devon one too - that would annoy me a bit if I'd bought some tickets already without an offer, depending on how many tickets of different categories have been sold the 2 for 1 tickets could be +EV even.
 
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