A four-bedroom house of 141 m2 in Spain has been raffled off to a winner who paid just €10 for a ticket.
The house in Segorbe, a town of 9,300 near Valencia, was inherited two years earlier by the Bolumar family who tried but failed to sell it through agents for €90,000.
When no buyer was found, the family came up with another idea. “Raffling it off seemed interesting – people would have the chance to acquire a home for a low cost and we would still end up covering the cost,” Pepe Bolumar said.
It took one year to struggle through Spanish bureaucracy to get authorization, but eventually raffle was underway with tickets sold from a kiosk in Valencia and online. Facebook and Twitter helped spread news of the raffle.
In the end, some 32,000 tickets were sold, predominately to people in Spain. The family says it has recouped the original sale price and managed to additional €10,000.
“We didn’t receive €320,000, because we have to cover our costs of the past year,” Bolumar said, pointing to publicity cost and those of the website and maintenance. The family says it will pay any transfer taxes the winner has. “The winner doesn’t have to pay a thing more.”
The numbers were drawn by a borrowed lottery machine in the presence of a notary.
During the year, Bolumar said the family had many phone calls from others interesting in raffling off their own houses. It now plans to keep its website open to offer guidance on the process. “It was a huge amount of effort. It took up a whole year and became a second job for me,” said Bolumar, 35, who runs a small business in Valencia.
But it had proven to be an effective way to beat the tumbling Spanish property market, he said. “If you’re trying to sell your home and its not working, this might be the solution for you.”
