Just when we starting to think that perhaps house raffles were dead on their feet, a few shoots of life start to appear. Since 2017 we’ve seen hundreds of homeowners try their luck with giving away their property in a prize draw format. The peak of this bandwagon was during 2020 which perhaps coincided with the pandemic and people’s desire to be distracted by the then current events. By the end of 2022 very few individuals were turning to platforms such as Raffall and Raffique to “sell” their homes. That could be down to improvements in the property market and/or the stark reality that raffling your house wasn’t the simplest thing to do. Whilst individuals vacated the space, platforms have filled the vacuum. Omaze has dominated things but others such as McKinney Competitions, Bear Competitions, Bounty Competitions, Raffle House and Tramway Path have all tried their hand with most creating new property winners. The latter two platforms have just started to emerge from various breaks and we’ll look at them shortly, but what else has been happing with house raffles lately?
Raffique Close Down
Raffique was set-up by a former house raffle individual. They’d used Raffall to market their property, Forest Side Home, but due to tech problems the prize draw didn’t go to completion. This led to the creation of Raffique which allowed people to put their own prizes up for raffle, including properties. A number of house prize draws did appear on the platform including another attempt to giveaway Forest Side Home plus Win A House In Wigan. The latter received quite a lot of publicity and Jamie Runciman even painted an advert on the side of the house. Unfortunately sales were slow and under 700 tickets were sold. The platform attracted a handful of other interesting prizes but nothing on the scale of Raffall, the site that they were aiming to compete with. We don’t know when Raffique closed down but the website has completely gone as has their social media. Loquax did have an affiliate relationship with Raffique and whilst it never generated that much revenue, yes you guessed it, it went unpaid. Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all too often with win a house companies!
Has Froghopping Hopped Away?
Another platform that hoped to make a big impact on property prize draws is Froghopping. They’ve listed a number of different properites and they did it in an estate agent style. Initially they charged £20 a ticket, then overnight reduced prices down to £1. Despite this they’ve never even come close to creating a home winner and ticket sales appear to have been relatively poor. The idea of Froghopping is good, and it has some nice touches including allowing hosts to earn even if the raffle didn’t complete, but they’ve never done any marketing and pretty much left the property owners to do it all. Their last two raffles, Win A Home In Airdrie and Win A London Barbican Apartment, closed in December but so far there have been no details of winners. Today Froghopping doesn’t have any home prize draws on their site and instead are only hosting “The Cash Stash” which for £1 you have the chance to win 80% of the eventual pot. We’d be surprised to see any further properties listed on this platform and wouldn’t be surprised to see it eventually go the same way as Raffique.
Raffle House Revamped
At the end of November Raffle House concluded their Win An East London Apartment prize draw and instead of immediately launching a new promotion they just put a coming soon notice on the website. We did wonder whether they’d move away from the property sector and instead focus on lifestyle prizes. However the good news is that they’ve gone more towards the Omaze model with the launch of a new promotion and a bit of a site revamp. The new Raffle House focuses on a single property prize, The Orchard near Brighton worth £2million, plus it aims to make donations to Great Ormond Street Hospital. The prize draw is scheduled to last until June 2023 and as far as we can tell won’t involve any extensions. However unlike Omaze, who always guarantee that a property will be awarded, Raffle House will dish out a 70% cash alternative (after costs, donations etc) if insufficient tickets are sold. Giving away a £2million property is going to involve a lot of ticket sales, but Raffle House have made things tougher by offering a further £1million in early bird prizes (4 x £250,000) and the GOSH donations. Given their recent track record with concluding prize draws with property winners it’s going to be interesting to see how things go over the next few months. We hope it goes well as an alternative platform to Omaze would be good.
Tramway Path Are Going Again
Tramway Path are probably the most successful of all the groups set up to giveaway properties. The Twenefour Brothers started their site in May 2020 and since then have successfully completed every single one of their promotions. In that time they’ve given away a £400,000 Medway House, various apartments and even a set of three apartments that were perfect for rental. On February 6th 2023 a cryptic post was made on Facebook with a “Get Ready” message. The post included an animated text message which suggests they’ll be running a prize draw for a property in London, but they’ll be a twist. Details of that twist obviously won’t be available until the prize draw goes live later this month. We expect this one to go the same way as the previous promos and another successful home winner created by Tramway Path. What the Twenefour Brothers have demonstrated is that it is possible to get the win a house mechanic to work, and work successfully. We’re pretty sure that Raffique, Froghopping and to an extent Raffle House would love to know their “secret sauce”. Beyond the above we’re expecting a new Omaze house draw to go live later this month but little movement when it comes to the likes of Raffall and individuals trying their luck. Raffall currently are hosting three property prize draws but it’s unclear how things are proceeding. Given the locations, Javea, Dubai and Cork, we’re not convinced that they will generate home winners.