What kind of house in Florida can you get for $10, $50 or $100?!

It seems that interest in property competitions - or raffles, or whatever you may call them - is growing, perhaps not unsurprisingly! If the fee for entering the competition is relatively low (say, $50 or below) whilst the prize - a property often worth several millions of dollars - is high, it does seem worthwhile to take a chance.

Moreover, the majority of these raffles restrict the number of entrants (usually to the point where revenue from ticket sales equals the value of the house). The odds of winning the competition are probably higher then winning the lottery for example - and think of the amount of money people spend playing that week-in, week-out.

For example, I previously blogged about a house in Fort Lauderdale that was up for offer in one such competition. All entrants have to pay a fee of $10 to enter, and the homeowners hope that they will sell 300,000 tickets. The house in question is a rather palatial 6 bedroom waterfront home, bought for $2.35 million in 2005. I think I could manage $10 to be in with a chance of becoming the owner of such a sumptious, million-dollar property! (One would assume that the house is isn't quite worth the same now, due to the property slump...but let's gloss over that for once, shall we?) The competition is currently still running.

This isn't the first example of a competition being used to sell a home. In a slightly different vein, last year I also blogged about a lady in Northern Florida who was giving away her $1.25 million house in Ocala to the winner of a competition in which entrants would have to write a short essay about their pet. I can't, however, find out the result of the competition and whether the house was actually won by someone.

So, what other property raffles and competitions are currently or were recently run in Florida - and what is or was the prize? Here's a few examples:

A Coral Springs house for $50 - a 2,164 square foot, two-floor, three bedroom house that was built in 2005. I'm sold by the his 'n' hers walk-in closets in the master bedroom - which of course would be two walk-in closets for me! The competition is still running.

Here's a Miami Beach condo for $100. The one bedroom, 850 square foot modern condo overlooks Biscayne Bay. The raffle actually closed only 9 days ago - the winner received a cash prize of 50% of the net proceeds (which equalled $30,850) as not enough tickets were sold for the condo to be won. Just doing some rough maths, it seems the number of entrants fell far, far short of the anticipated 5,000 entrants. Nevertheless, the winner still received a rather substantial sum, with the same amount raised for the chosen charity.

These competitions don't just occur in Florida. In fact, let's take a look at one that was run a little closer to home. Here's a £1 million house in Devon, UK with 11 acres of grounds, plus lodges and a lake that was won in a competition last autumn in which 46,000 entered. (Each ticket cost £25.)

The main issue with property raffles and competitions is that they never quite seem to attract the number of entries that's hoped for - and the property in question often doesn't actually get "won". Sure, a considerable amount of interest in generated, and a winner selected does normally win some sort of (cash) prize...but the actual idea of raffling off a property rarely really works.