lundi 6 avril 2015
Four-bedroom house in Spain 'sold' in €10 raffle
Posted on 06:08 by nice news
And it is a steal – given that its newest owner paid just €10 (£7.35) for it in a raffle.
When the previous owners, the Bolumar family, first wanted to sell the house they had inherited two years ago in Segorbe, a town of 9,300, they tried to do it the traditional way, listing it for €90,000. But the struggling Spanish housing market yielded few potential buyers. “It was really complicated,” said Pepe Bolumar, 35.
The family began bouncing around alternative ways to sell. Most ideas were dismissed quickly, save one. “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,” Bolumar said.
From there began a year-long project, with the family wrestling their way through seemingly endless amounts of red tape to obtain authorisation from the country’s tax authorities to be the first in Spain to raffle off a house.
The €10 tickets, sold from a kiosk in Valencia as well as online, offered the chance to win the 141 metre square home, no strings attached.
As news of the raffle spread through Facebook and Twitter, some 32,000 tickets for the raffle were sold, the majority of them in Spain but also as far as Australia and Canada. Those in Florida, he said, seemed to be particularly taken with the idea. “Lots of people from Florida called us, also from England,” said Bolumar.
Some of the calls that came in were heartbreaking, he said, from families who had been evicted from their homes or who had fallen on tough times and were desperately hoping to win the house.
As the family prepared to gather together with a notary to watch the numbered balls drop from a borrowed lottery machine, Bolumar was confident that the family had recouped the original sale price of the house, estimating it would walk away with further €10,000.
“It’s less
When the previous owners, the Bolumar family, first wanted to sell the house they had inherited two years ago in Segorbe, a town of 9,300, they tried to do it the traditional way, listing it for €90,000. But the struggling Spanish housing market yielded few potential buyers. “It was really complicated,” said Pepe Bolumar, 35.
The family began bouncing around alternative ways to sell. Most ideas were dismissed quickly, save one. “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,” Bolumar said.
From there began a year-long project, with the family wrestling their way through seemingly endless amounts of red tape to obtain authorisation from the country’s tax authorities to be the first in Spain to raffle off a house.
The €10 tickets, sold from a kiosk in Valencia as well as online, offered the chance to win the 141 metre square home, no strings attached.
As news of the raffle spread through Facebook and Twitter, some 32,000 tickets for the raffle were sold, the majority of them in Spain but also as far as Australia and Canada. Those in Florida, he said, seemed to be particularly taken with the idea. “Lots of people from Florida called us, also from England,” said Bolumar.
Some of the calls that came in were heartbreaking, he said, from families who had been evicted from their homes or who had fallen on tough times and were desperately hoping to win the house.
As the family prepared to gather together with a notary to watch the numbered balls drop from a borrowed lottery machine, Bolumar was confident that the family had recouped the original sale price of the house, estimating it would walk away with further €10,000.
“It’s less
Four-bedroom house in Spain 'sold' in €10 raffle
Categories: Four-bedroom house in Spain sold in €10 raffle
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