A four-bedroom house in rural Valencia has been sold off by its owners in a raffle, with the winner acquiring the property for the price of their ticket, just €10.
The vendors, the Bolumar family, inherited the house two years ago but failed to sell it through traditional means before coming up with the novel approach to offloading the property. Many months of red tape later and they gained permission to sell it by this means. The Bolumars sold 32,000 tickets at €10 each for the €90,000 house, but claim not to have made a great profit from the sale.
“It’s less than what it appears. We didn’t receive €320,000, because we have to cover our costs of the past year,” said Pepe Bolumar, explaining that the costs of publicity and hosting and maintaining the sale website ate up a lot of the income. The family will also pay any taxes incurred by the winner from the transfer of the house. “The winner doesn’t have to pay a thing more.”
Bolumar says the project became a “second job” to him because it was so complicated, and had to deal with enquiries from all over the world. His family plans on keeping its website open to offer guidance to others looking to sell their homes in the same way.
