Fancy a gamble? £3m riverfront Huf Haus mansion with six bedrooms and a cinema room could be yours for just £25

The striking Hampshire home is up for grabs in a property raffle, with 250,000 tickets on sale.
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Jess Denham11 April 2018

A multi-million pound modern mansion in the Hampshire countryside could be yours this summer for the price of a takeaway.

Six-bedroom Huf Haus Avon Place near the historic market town of Ringwood is the grand prize in the UK's latest property raffle, with 250,000 tickets on sale at £25 a pop.

To be entered into the ballot, hopeful winners also have to answer a multiple choice question correctly (it’s about salmon fishing).

Do this and you have 560 times more chance of winning than you do in the Euromillions — and that’s if all the other entrants get the question right.

The bright glass and wood-built home was designed by cutting-edge German company Huf Haus and sits on an elevated plot of one acre, cut into the side of an escarpment above the River Avon.

It has 7,000sq ft of largely open-plan floor space, with seven reception rooms including a cinema room, music room and a games room that currently houses a snooker table.

The bedrooms are all double en-suites, some with balconies overlooking the rural Avon Valley towards the picturesque New Forest National Park beyond.

Outside, you will find a BBQ house set in landscaped gardens with 60ft of direct river frontage.

There is decking for enjoying sundowners with a view and fishing rights to the salmon-stocked river which you can kayak along to reach the local pub, appropriately named The Fish Inn. Parking is in a block of four garages.

GRAND DESIGNS

The owners, who wish to remain anonymous, have lived in Avon Place for more than 12 years.

They bought the site, which had a rundown bungalow on it, which they demolished before starting their Grand Designs-style project.

Kayak to the pub: jump in a boat and paddle along the River Avon to your local

It went on the market for £3million in 2016 but high stamp duty caused multiple offers to fall through.

With eight years' experience as managing director of a chain of estate agents under their belt, they found that the Dorset and Hampshire market for properties over £1.75million had softened.

To sell, they felt they needed to be creative. They decided to try a tactic that others have enjoyed success with in recent years, in the hope of reaching a wider market.

The owners stand to raise £6.25million if all the tickets sell, more than double the £3million they put it on the market for two years ago.

If fewer than 130,000 tickets sell, a cash prize of 75 per cent of the earnings will be awarded instead of the house but promoters Win a Mega Home confirmed that there have been a flood of initial entries since the raffle opened last week.

Bonus: all fixed fittings come with the house, including these Gaggenau kitchen appliances

“This is the highest value prize draw in the UK — a once in a life-time opportunity to win an amazing Huf Haus mega home in an unrepeatable location,” a spokesperson said.

“The £25 entry cost is equivalent to two bottles of Prosecco, a trip to the cinema or a takeaway and it could change your lifestyle forever!”

The fitted furniture – including Gaggenau appliances in the trendy red, marble-floored kitchen – will be remaining in the house as a tempting bonus.

Stamp duty will be paid for by the owners, as will solicitors’ costs of up to £1,500 including VAT.

The winner will have to pay the rest, so entrants should make sure they can afford it. Running costs are estimated at around £700 per month, including council tax, electricity, gas, water, sewerage and annual servicing.

COMMUTE TO THE CAPITAL

The nearest train station is in the town of Christchurch, a 15-minute drive away, with a direct route into London Waterloo taking two hours.

A half hour drive to Southampton Airport Parkway offers trains to the capital that take just over an hour. There are also airports at nearby Bournemouth and Southampton and fast roads accessible within three minutes.

Ringwood, a seven-minute drive away has bars, restaurants, shops and even its own brewery, while Blue Flag sandy beaches can be reached in 20 minutes.

HOW TO ENTER

The raffle closes at 11.59pm on 31 July 2018, giving you just under four months to enter.

For the best shot at victory, you can buy up to 100 tickets, but doing so would set you back a risky £2,500 so you might want to set up a syndicate (apply by post, listing all the members).

The draw will take place the following week, with local MP Sir Christopher Chope OBE picking out the winner at random.

Transfer of ownership will then happen within 28 days, meaning you could move in to a new luxury pad by the first week of September this year.

Future home: the lucky winner will be named owner of Avon Place by September 

PLAY BY THE RULES

Gambling Commission rules say that anyone thinking of “raffling” a property must be sure their scheme counts as a competition rather than “a lottery”. Running an unauthorised lottery can lead to a year in jail and a £5,000 fine.

A lottery requires buying tickets and getting lucky. To comply with gambling rules, a property raffle must be a competition requiring some skill on the part of the entrant.

This is why property raffles require entrants to answer a question as well as buy a ticket. Note that the Gambling Commission may take a dim view of a question that is too easy.

Sam Smith, a property solicitor at Streathers in Crouch End, warns that it would be very easy to set up a fraudulent raffle.

“We are having to run increasingly detailed ownership checks on properties as we have seen more and more cases of people fraudulently ‘selling’ properties that aren’t theirs. It would be even easier to set up a fraudulent online raffle.”

OTHER CHANCES TO WIN BIG

Other properties up for grabs for the price of a pint include a £1million one-bedroom flat in Angel.

Elaine Marsh is selling £10 tickets to win her redeveloped 1,000sq ft loft-style apartment in a converted print works because “the central London property market has stalled”.

The swish pad has a 35ft reception, kitchen and dining room with a bespoke French oak staircase leading to a bedroom with a feature wall of mirrors and a bathroom with cast iron claw foot bath and separate walk-in shower.

“It was a restoration project but it was a bit of a fantasy one so I did it up like a hotel suite,” she says.

If Marsh manages to sell 250,000 tickets to reach her target of £2.5million she will donate £25,000 of the prize draw to Shelter. You have until 20 June this year to enter.

Burton Hall: become lord of the Cheshire manor for a fiver

If you want to escape London, you might want to drop £5 on a chance to win this restored five-bedroom Elizabethan pile outside Tarvin in Cheshire.

Valued at £1.8million, Burton Hall has been used as a set for The Forsyte Saga and has a stunning landscaped garden.

The competition closes on 2 April 2019. Enter here.

Not rural enough for you? There is also this £800,000 four-bedroom family home on the Isle of Man, set amid ten acres of countryside with stables. Tickets cost £20 and you have until 31 May to enter.

Escape the mainland: this Isle of Man property is a 20-minute horse ride to the beach

HAVE ANY PROPERTY RAFFLES BEEN SUCCESSFUL?

Marsh was inspired to raffle the flat by Dunstan Low, who offered his Georgian manor house in Lancashire as a prize with tickets costing £2.

He sold £890,000-worth of £2 tickets for a chance to win the £845,000 property, so the idea worked for him.

In August, a finance worker from Warrington won the house having bought £40-worth of tickets. She put the house up for auction — with a reserve price of only £350,000.