If you believe the wider media, the credit crunch is directly responsible for this novel approach to property sales, and behind the Wilshaws of Devon and the Bawtrees of Cheltenham are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of desperate vendors, with barely a sniff of a viewing to show for months on the market, kneeling on the lounge floor, hugging each other and cutting lottery tickets.

But, the property raffle wasn’t invented during the credit crunch. Over at the Rat and Mouse property blog, we watched with interest as several schemes, came, talked the talk (‘a house for a fiver’, ‘a really great way for first-time buyers to get a foot on the rung’… really!), failed to sell enough tickets to meet the minimum figure necessary to release the deeds (always check the small print), and went… a portion of the takings handed over to the winner, the rest pocketed to cover ‘expenses’.

Our publisher tackles the numerical and legal uncertainties of the property raffle, in his guest column over at Citywire.

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