English man raffling off his mansion for $3 a ticket

You’ve got to be in it to win it – and at £2 ($3.26) a ticket, this raffle for a Lancashire mansion is quite an affordable way to get into the property market, even if it is England.

And it’s not just any house – it’s a six bedroom Georgian house called “Melling Manor”. Once a hotel, the stately listed property was built in 1797 and now offers six bedrooms, a brand new kitchen, cinema room and ballroom, and there’s 1GBPS internet available in the nearby village.

The vendor is 37-year-old father of two Dustin Low, who was faced with repossession after an increasing struggle to find work in the area in Melling, on the border of Lancanshire and Cumbria.

He has opted to run the lottery in the hope of raising the money for the £650,000 ($1.06 million) asking price. He and his wife bought the property for £435,000 in 2011 and worked on restoring it, spending about £150,000 on the process.

He had listed it twice previously, including late last year for £845,000 without success. 

Low told The Standard he was using the raffle method “out of frustration”.

“The whole process of viewings and offers, it felt antiquated and frustrating so last week I set up the website and it just took off.” Ideally, he says, he’d like to see the home go to a family.

If you fancy trying your luck, pop over to the website and enter – it involves answering a question on the property, and entries close on August 17. You might have a bit of competition though, with an update suggesting they’ve received 100,000 paid entries in five days.

And the house is remaining on the market in the meantime, so if someone’s willing to buy it, the winner will instead win the money raised by the raffle. Not a bad deal either.