A local art center in Palos Verdes, California has had one every year for the last 5 years. Now, they call it a raffle instead of a lottery, and I’m not sure what the legal difference is. If you don’t feel like clicking the link, they sell up to 25,000 tickets at $150 each, pull the winning ticket from a hat, and the winner gets the house. There are even runner-up cash prizes. So, under some conditions, it’s legal in California.
And you think this would make your home more attractive to potential buyers? We’re talking about a huge financial investment…people are not going to risk that in non-traditional ways, especially when we’re talking about a buying a house.
We have a rental property up for sale. It’s been on the market since February. You have to be patient. Check with your realtor to see if s/he has any suggestions to make your place more attractive to buyers. You don’t have to take a loss, unless you overpaid for the house when you bought it.
New Jersey real estate person checking in. You have to talk to a lawyer. You have to make sure you get a legally binding contract, do the title work and the search, get a Certificate of Occupancy, and that the deed is properly handled. I image the buyers will want a home inspection too.
Can you just collect the money and hand over the house to the buyer free and clear? No.
I don’t think you can get away with picking a name out of a hat, and throwing them the keys, but you may be able to use a raffle type idea to promote the sale of your house. Perhaps you could announce, in an ad, that you are listening to all offers and the best one will be selected on the nth of July. Or, that any reasonable offer will be placed into a hat and selected, at random, on that day.
I’m not sure that this will help you out, but it might be a way to create buzz about the sale. Especially if “selection day” includes food (and, I’m imagining, a clown. Sort of a circus atmosphere).
That being said, you’d just be selecting an offer, and not a sale. The person whose offer you selected would still have to sign a contract (and may decline, as the case may be), and you would still have to provide them clear title to the property at a closing later on.
It’s legal in England, last I heard. I have heard of people doing this.
However, the ticket sales were quite a bit less than the value of the house. If you do it, it may or may not be legal, but you’ll certainly lose money on it.
(no cite, just something I saw in the newspaper a few years ago)
I believe it’s legal, at least in some U.S. jurisdictions, to conduct a “contest” and require an “entry fee” for each submission, i.e: Each contestant must submit a letter, of 250 words, or less, stating why they want to live in East Undershirt, N.J., or some such. You would have to include a disclaimer saying that if you don’t receive XXX number of submissions by a specific date, the contest is void and you will return the entry fees. There was a news story, probably within the past 3 years, about a guy who was selling a business this way. I think it was a small restaurant.
Here’s an example of a current essay contest in Ohio to win a farm.