Housing raffles have taken the UK by storm – but how likely are you to win?
In an increasingly grim housing market, the chance to own a once-in-a-lifetime home for the price of a £5 ticket seems too good to be true.
And that’s because it usually is.
But amid a cost of living crisis, it is the chance to “escape from reality” that drives people to continue gambling on a win, one psychology expert has told Sky News.
This week, a woman who thought she had won a £2m villa in Nottingham was left “heartbroken” after the small print meant she had won £5,000 instead.
Loretta, a teacher, was over the moon when a representative from Win My Home visited her to say she had won the grand prize – but this turned out to be just 0.25% of what was advertised.
Competition organisers said they had actually made a loss, and the prize was a gesture of goodwill.
This £5.2 million house was a lottery prize – but the winner ended up with an (undisclosed) cash sum instead
Where did housing raffles come from?
Housing raffles first cropped up in 2008, as a way to beat the economic slump, when a couple from Devon raffled off their £1 million estate at £25 a ticket.
Then in 2018, Win a Country House sparked a revival of the trend, and more recently Omaze has been combining it with fundraising, promising entrants both the chance of winning a luxury property and a warm fuzzy feeling for donating to charity at the same time.
But although they still seem popular in the last three years, the number of competitions involving winning a house has declined, according to Loquax, the UK’s competition portal.
In 2020 there were 93, followed by 108 in 202.
In 2022 this dropped to 34 and this year there have been 29.
Win My Home declined to comment for this story – and Omaze has been contacted by Sky News for a response.
The North London home was “raffled” in 2019
But the lucky winner never got a chance to live in it
The charity house raffle
The most recent iteration of the housing raffle is Omaze’s million-pound house draw, which promises to raise at least £100,000 for each charity partner and give away a stunning home at the same time.
In 2020, their first home raised £250,000 for the Teenager Cancer Trust.
But a slick advertising campaign has boosted popularity, and their most recent draw – a Norfolk home – raised £1.4 million for the RNLI, while the one prior raised £1.9 million for Blood Cancer UK.
However, Omaze is still a business. Once each campaign is over, it takes the total amount raised and reimburses itself for the cost of the prize and the cost of marketing – it does not publicly disclose what this is.
Then it divides what is left, with 80% going to the charity and 20% to the company.
How likely are you to win?
Of the 264 competitions run since 2020, just 89 have resulted in a house being awarded, says Loquax.
Some 143 house raffles awarded a cash prize instead, and 18 issued refunds. Loquax wasn’t able to say what had happened in the case of 14 raffles.
The most expensive house awarded since 2017 was the £4.5m Omaze Cornwall River Rowey House property, won by June Smith.
But cash prizes are often lower. The first Raffle House competition dolled out £173,012, while the Dream Home Prize awarded £365,366 in place of the £1.2m home that was promised.
And they can do this because it is all there in the often-ignored small print.
So, you probably won’t going to win – why do you keep entering?
Annika Lindberg is a chartered psychologist who specialises in gambling addiction. She says these lotteries – and gambling of any kind – run on “intermittent reinforcement schedules”, which is the idea that we are motivated by the anticipation of a potential win, rather than any certainty.
“The unpredictability of the reward actually has a positive effect on our motivation,” she says.
And it is actually people who are poorer that are more likely to enter – particularly during times of recession.
“When you look at why people who have less financial means, and why they would be more motivated to gamble, it is because the meaning of a potential win is much greater,” she says.
“It gives people more motivation to escape from reality.”
While these lotteries aren’t nearly as addictive as betting shops, they can still be problematic, in part due to their “enormous mass appeal”.
“We should be concerned if a larger portion of the population starts taking the view that we have a reality of living that is so difficult that we want to escape,” she says.
“I think there is something very problematic about our population in any way at all being prompted to turn to escapism or ‘hope’ through any form of gambling during tough financial times.
“It will remain innocent for many but could prime others for more intense forms of gambling later.”
Ms Lindberg says, while “hope is a human trait that saves our lives” when “something like gambling taps into that, it’s not all that positive”.
Annika Lindberg
When housing lotteries fall foul of the law
The Gambling Commission has investigated a number of different housing lotteries and found many of these competitions were being run illegally.
In 2017 and 2018 – the most recent data available – it received 88 reports regarding 55 different raffles. Just 13 of these resulted in no further action being taken – meaning 77% of those investigated were breaking the rules.
And one of the key rules is who is going to benefit.
“You cannot create a lottery to raffle a house where the beneficiary (that is, the recipient of all lottery profits after expenses and prize costs are deducted) is not a good cause and the organiser/promoter of the lottery is not a non-commercial society,” the GC says.
“The only competition style that might be appropriate would be a free draw or prize competition.”
Many Labour MPs have been left shellshocked after the chaotic political self-sabotage of the past week.
Bafflement, anger, disappointment, and sheer frustration are all on relatively open display at the circular firing squad which seems to have surrounded the prime minister.
The botched effort to flush out backroom plotters and force Wes Streeting to declare his loyalty ahead of the budget has instead led even previously loyal Starmerites to predict the PM could be forced out of office before the local elections in May.
“We have so many councillors coming up for election across the country,” one says, “and at the moment it looks like they’re going to be wiped out. That’s our base – we just can’t afford to lose them. I like Keir [Starmer] but there’s only a limited window left to turn things around. There’s a real question of urgency.”
Another criticised a “boys club” at No 10 who they claimed have “undermined” the prime minister and “forgotten they’re meant to be serving the British people.”
There’s clearly widespread muttering about what to do next – and even a degree of enviousness at the lack of a regicidal 1922 committee mechanism, as enjoyed by the Tories.
“Leadership speculation is destabilising,” one said. “But there’s really no obvious strategy. Andy Burnham isn’t even an MP. You’d need a stalking horse candidate and we don’t have one. There’s no 1922. It’s very messy.”
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Starmer’s faithfuls are ‘losing faith’
Others are gunning for the chancellor after months of careful pitch-rolling for manifesto-breaching tax rises in the budget were ripped up overnight.
“Her career is toast,” one told me. “Rachel has just lost all credibility. She screwed up on the manifesto. She screwed up on the last two fiscal events, costing the party huge amounts of support and leaving the economy stagnating.
“Having now walked everyone up the mountain of tax rises and made us vote to support them on the opposition day debate two days ago, she’s now worried her job is at risk and has bottled it.
“Talk to any major business or investor and they are holding off investing in the UK until it is clear what the UK’s tax policy is going to be, putting us in a situation where the chancellor is going to have to go through this all over again in six months – which just means no real economic growth for another six months.”
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Why is the economy flatlining?
Read more:
Starmer and Reeves ditch plans to raise income tax
Former chancellor Osborne is shock contender to head HSBC
After less than 18 months in office, the government is stuck in a political morass largely of its own making.
Treasury sources have belatedly argued that the chancellor’s pre-budget change of heart on income tax is down to better-than-expected economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
That should be a cause of celebration. The question is whether she and the PM are now too damaged to make that case to the country – and rescue their benighted prospects.
UK
Home secretary vows to end UK’s ‘golden ticket’ for asylum seekers – as Denmark-based reforms to be unveiled
The home secretary is set to unveil sweeping measures to tackle illegal migration, vowing to end the UK’s ‘golden ticket’ for asylum seekers.
People granted asylum in the UK will only be allowed to stay in the country temporarily, in the changes expected to be unveiled on Monday by Shabana Mahmood.
Modelled on the Danish system, the aim is to make the UK less attractive for illegal immigrants and make it easier to deport them.
Planned changes mean that refugee status will become temporary and subject to regular review, with refugees removed as soon as their home countries are deemed safe.
The Home Office said the “golden ticket” deal has seen asylum claims surge in the UK, drawing people across Europe, through safe countries, onto dangerous small boats.
Under current UK rules, those granted refugee status have it for five years and can then apply for indefinite leave to remain and get on a route to citizenship.
As part of the changes, the statutory legal duty to provide asylum seeker support, including housing and weekly allowances, will be revoked.
The government will seek to remove asylum support, including accommodation and handouts, to those who have a right to work and who can support themselves but choose not to or those who break UK law.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Pic: PA
‘Last chance for a decent politics’
A government source said Ms Mahmood believes her reforms are about “more than the electoral fortunes of her party”.
“This is the last chance for a decent, mainstream politics. If these moderate forces fail, she believes, something darker will follow,” they said.
“But this demands that moderates are willing to do things that will seem immoderate to some. She has reminded those who are reluctant to embrace her ambition for bold reform, with an ultimatum: ‘if you don’t like this, you won’t like what follows me.'”
Ms Mahmood said they were the most sweeping changes to the asylum system “in a generation”, as she vowed the government will “restore order and control to our borders”.
The home secretary also told The Sunday Times that “I can see – and I know my colleagues can – that illegal migration is tearing our country apart”.
Read more:
What Sky News witnessed after tip-off about migrant crossings
Could Danish model save Labour’s bacon?
System being ‘gamed’
The source said Ms Mahmood believes the system is being “gamed by those travelling on boats or abusing legal visas”.
Some 39,075 people have arrived in the UK after making the journey across the Channel so far this year, according to the latest Home Office figures.
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The gangs smuggling people to the UK
That is an increase of 19% on the same point in 2024 and up 43% on 2023, but remains 5% lower than at the equivalent point in 2022, which remains the peak year for crossings.
What happened in Denmark?
The UK government points to Denmark remaining a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, while also cutting the number of asylum applications to the lowest number in 40 years and successfully removing 95% of rejected asylum seekers.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the Labour government has “lost control” of the UK’s borders” with illegal channel crossings “surging to over 62,000 since the election”.
He said some of the new measures were welcome but “they stop well short of what is really required and some are just yet more gimmicks – like the previous ‘smash the gangs’ gimmick”.
Mr Philp added: “Only the Conservative borders plan will end illegal immigration – by leaving the ECHR, banning asylum claims for illegal immigrants, deporting all illegal arrivals within a week and establishing a Removals Force to deport 150,000 illegal immigrants each year.”
And Enver Solomon, chief executive of Refugee Council, said: “These sweeping changes will not deter people from making dangerous crossings, but they will unfairly prevent men, women and children from putting down roots and integrating into British life.”
Ms Mahmood will be appearing on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.
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