A St Nicholas-at-Wade couple are running a spot the ball competition – with their £300,000 home and family car as the top prize.
Jamie and Maria Bass will sell a maximum of 1000 tickets at £500 each with one punter scooping the three-bed home in the village and car and an additional ten runners up netting £500 each.
Jamie, who has launched a digital marketing and website building business after being made redundant 18 months ago, says the aim is to bypass tough market conditions.
The dad-of-three said: “Years ago I saw someone giving away an island, a scuba diving company, and I thought it was a brilliant way to sell a business.
“The reason we have done it is because there are not many people buying property at the moment and we do not want to get stuck. We did not want to leave it to estate agents telling us what can or can’t happen so decided to give it a go.
“We aren’t sure where we will be moving to yet but after I lost my job I started my own company working from home and now need a proper office. We’d love to stay in the village, we love living here and it is a nice place to bring kids up, but it depends what’s available.”
Jamie and jewellery sales rep Maria set up the competition last month after hiring a gaming solicitor and chartered accountant to make sure all the proper rules and regulations were followed.
They will sell a maximum of 1,000 tickets. A minimum of 700 must be sold, if not a cash alternative based on tickets sold will go to a winner.
Jamie, 45, said: “We want to give the house away but rather than trying to manage 60,000 tickets we have reduced that number quite significantly but with a higher ticket value.
“My wife is a bit nervous but nothing ventured, nothing gained!”
The house is a three-bed semi in cul-de-sac Bridges Close and the prize includes stamp duty costs and much of the contents such as wardrobes and fridge-freezer. The odds of winning, if half of the minimum 700 entries spot the ball correctly is 1 in 350 compared to estimated odds of winning the National Lottery at 1 in 14million! To win one of 11 prizes the odds are one in 100.
Entrants need to look at the image and then pick a square which they think the ball should be in.
The closing date is when the 1,000 tickets have been sold or 11:59pm on 31 March.
The winner will be selected by an impartial adjudicator using a computer driven randomisation algorithm. The draw will take place on April 4
Find out more and enter on the website here https://take-a-moment.com/
