Three online retail professionals are turning their attention to the property competition space with the launch of Homes2Win.

Part of e-commerce business the Red Monster Group, the site aims to provide a platform for the current trend of competition websites that offer property as raffle prizes – and the first listing is pretty close to home as it belongs to one of its directors Robin Benjamin.

Fellow director George Schofield told EYE that Benjamin was not a fan of the traditional method of selling due to the fees and having to deal with viewings and negotiations.

Benjamin’s property listing, a one-bedroom maisonette in Guildford, Surrey, a few miles from where the Homes2Win offices are based, is valued at £320,000 but competition entrants could snap it up for the £2.50 cost of a ticket and by answering an easy multiple choice question (in this case, ‘what is the main ingredient in Bombay duck?’).

Schofield said: “Although we spoke to a number of large housing developers and have had a lot of other private owners wanting us to put their home up for competition, we decided in the end to use a property of our own to test the concept rather than someone else’s.

“We’ve got some really ground-breaking property in the pipeline for 2018 and can’t wait to start revolutionising the industry and changing lives.”

Schofield says Homes2Win’s solicitors will vet properties before they are posted online and the raffle ticket price will include legal costs and Stamp Duty.

Each competition will run for six months, with a portion of the money raised donated to charity. The winner will be announced on a live stream on the Homes2Win website. The website takes some of the funds raised to cover running and marketing costs.

If the target price isn’t reached, the vendor will have an option to: extend the length of the competition for up to another six months; to accept a lower price if the total raised is close to what they are looking for; or to run a prize draw for a cash prize made up of the money raised to date, but with no property prize awarded.

You can enter as many times as you like online but postal entries can only be made once.

Schofield added: “We can sell a house for someone in a matter of weeks and all at absolutely no cost to the vendor.

“What’s not to love about that? We’re not in this to make a quick bit of cash – we really see this as a potential new way of moving property in a market that’s possibly more in need of change than any other.

“We, unlike others, have a physical address, an office, phone lines and have been established for well over a year, though we’ve worked together for many.”

Homes2Win says it has followed Gambling Commission rules in setting up its competition.

According to the Gambling Commission, property raffles must have an element of skill or competition such as a question to answer.

www.homes2win.co.uk