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Couple put £500,000 home up for prize draw
Aptly-named entrepreneur Mike Gamble is planning to beat the housing slump – by offering his £500,000 home in an online prize draw.
Mike and wife Debbie are selling 25 tickets for their four-bedroom West Herrington house, and the winner will have no stamp duty or property transfer fees to pay.
The lucky new householder will also get 15,000 in cash to help pay for removal expenses and redecorating.
Mike, 55, and Debbie, 40, came up with the idea as a way of getting the best return on property for its owner in the credit crunch.
They have set up a website called Wotstheodds.com, which offers their home in the prize draw, and hope to help other homeowners, stuck with negative equity on their property, in the same way.
"Hopefully, it will work out as a business for us and we'll help a lot of people along the way," said Mike.
"We're trying it with out with our house first. We didn't want to ask a private individual to take their home off the market for three or six months – which is how long the prize draw will run – without proving it is a viable business."
Five per cent of the ticket sales for each completed prize draw will be shared equally between three nominated charities.
The Gambles came up with the venture after the family motor firm, in Northallerton, was wrecked in a fire in 2006.
The family was struck by a further bad luck when Mike contracted a mystery virus in 2007 and spent months in hospital.
Doctors told him he would not be well enough to go back to his previous line of work.
"I spent the time in hospital lying there thinking 'what am I going to do?' and coming up with ideas," he said.
Wotstheodds.com has been set up as a prize-draw rather than a lottery, which would require a special licence.
Rather than relying purely on chance, entrants must answer a series of questions and complete a tie-breaker by writing up to 300 words on why they should get the house.
If tickets sales do not reach their target, Wotstheodds would add up the total raised and give away 60 per cent as a cash prize, with the rest going on costs, a share to the nominated charities and a pre-agreed share for the property owner.
Fawcett Street-based estate agent Thomas Watson, who is marketing the property and will organise the transfer for the winner, said: "It's an interesting idea and it might catch on as a new way of selling property. We'll wait and see."
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Saturday 04 February 2012
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