After more than a year of economic uncertainty, it’s no surprise that various industries and markets are changing drastically – but there’s nothing quite like what’s happening in the housing market right now.
As well as all of the very scary and serious stuff about house prices rising near 10%, unsafe cladding making houses unsellable and government policies worsening inequality in the market – the housing market is ‘on fire’, according to the Bank of England’s chief economist – there are a whole host of viral housing stories that show just how wild the market is becoming.
First of all, the woman selling her home in a raffle for £2 a ticket. Yes, really. Lucie Mieville is a nutritional therapist and mum of one using the service Raffle House to sell her £750,000 home. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, judging by the website alone it’s become more and more common.
Raffle House gives you the option to ‘win’ a home by entering the cheap raffles, with 2.5% of ticket sales going to London-based charity Housing for Women and Centrepoint (which works to help young homeless people). Lucie is doing it then, because it feels good, she says.
The kitchen in Lucie’s £750,000 home being raffled on Raffle House. ©Lucie Mieville
‘I went with Raffle House as I love the idea that instead of long protracted negotiations a lucky individual will wake up one day and win our home,’ she told Grazia. ‘It’s got to be good karma all round. Plus they give 2.5% of ticket sales to charity which again makes the process of selling our first home an actually enjoyable experience.’
According to House and Garden, Lucie and husband James hope to sell 650,000 tickets for their house raffle, raising nearly £1.3million and thus near doubling the price of their home. Raffle House though, has come under fire by regulators for misleading advertising.
According to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), Raffle House received three complaints in 2019 for misleading raffle entrants as the prize awarded in the first raffle was ‘not a reasonable equivalent’ to the property that had been advertised. It comes after Raffle House gave one winner a cash prize of less than 50% of the final profits, rather than the London house that had been advertised. This also resulted in an investigation by Which?, calling for greater regulation into house raffle companies.
But that’s not the only wild housing market story to re-emerge this week, one Twitter user also pointed out that an estate agent selling a home nearby there’s is demanding cash upfront for house viewings.
‘A house around the corner is for sale with a sign up saying “viewings £5pp, cash only, payable in advance”’. Seriously lads, you are not a theme park,’ Jem Collins, director of Journo Resources, tweeted on Monday.
‘That’s what the CMA would label an “aggressive practice” and advise sellers or agents “should not place the prospective tenant under undue pressure to pay a deposit or any other pre-tenancy agreement”’ journalist Nick Stylianou responded. ‘It’s likely to be an offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations [CPUTR].’
Ultimately, it seems that the housing market is quickly turning into the wild west as the economy begins the slow recovery from the pandemic. Unfortunately, the biggest losers in that situation are likely to be the poorest in society, and those of us that are yet to enter the housing market.
But hey, what’s being millennial if not never owning a home? Finding yourself consistency screwed over by landlords and estate agents alike is just another day in the life, right?
Read More:
10 Questions To Ask Before Buying A House
The Fact That Parents Are Now One Of The Biggest Mortgage Lenders Shows Just How Inequitable The Housing Market Is
This Is How Much Money First-Time Buyers Need To Buy A Home
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