Some Questions People Ask ...

I keep reading that many house raffles aren't legal.
What makes yours legal?

Most property raffles aren't legal everywhere. Ours is. That's because what you get, legally speaking, is a hotel voucher. As a small hotel chain it's perfectly legal for us to offer hotel vouchers. Thousands are sold around the world every day.

What makes our vouchers special is that they have unique numbers on them and ten of them have magic numbers that could win you a house.

So it's a hotel promotion?

Yes – technically, legally, and even actually. We are giving you a huge incentive to visit our hotels, stay with us a few nights. When you stay with us, we take the full price of your voucher off your bill so your raffle ticket is free.

But we aren't forcing you to visit us. If you invest in a raffle ticket, we give you a hotel voucher, but you don't win a house or studio, and can't visit us because you live too far away, you can still sell your voucher anytime until 2013. That way, you could take part in the raffles without it costing you a penny.

It still seems too good to be true. Convince me.

All right. You've seen what's in it for you. Now let's look at what's in it for us.

First, it's a way of selling our properties in a depressed market, and at our price, not the prices we were offered by a hotel chain, or bargain hunters or even money launderers, all of whom we turned away.

Second, because it's a hotel promotion, we save on advertising and publicity costs because everyone who joins the raffle is a potential guest, or at least potentially might send someone to us. The publicity has already helped our occupancy immensely in a weak tourism market.

Third, we'll not only have more people visiting us, but once the raffles are finished it's likely the winners will hire us to manage their properties for them, rent them out as we've been doing for several years, for which we'll take a commission.

Fourth, there's a catch.

Aha! So there's a catch?

Yes, and it's a simple one. We really want you to use the hotel vouchers, or, if you live too far away to use them (and you don't win a grand prize), for you to sell the vouchers to people who will visit us.

Let me tell you why.

The catch is that anyone using a voucher needs to stay with us for three night in order to get the cost of the voucher taken off the bill.

That's the catch – a three night stay is required (in a deluxe room or suite).

In that case, taking the price of the voucher off our guest's bill costs us no more than the commission we would normally pay a travel agent for sending someone to stay with us.

So it's an everybody wins situation – the raffle ticket purchaser gets the price of the raffle ticket off the hotel bill, so takes part free in the raffles, and we get a guest we probably wouldn't otherwise have had. Simple and mutually beneficial.

Believe me, we're not a charity for people who want a free vacation home in Spain.

If I win, what can I do with my prize?

Keep it to use, sell it for cash, lend it to friends and family, or rent it out for regular income. If you like, we could manage the rentals for you.

Wherever you live it might be nice to have a pile of euros if you sell, or regular income in euros coming in if you rent it out.

You'll send me my tickets and vouchers?

Not any more. We started off by doing that, but they got lost, people misplaced them and we were warned about fraud and forgery. Now we keep everything secure for you here in Europe, backed up by a second secure data base kept by the Hostgator people in Florida. Everyone says it's safer for you.

Where does my money go?

Into a blocked account administered by watchdog accountants. We have access only to a small portion of the funds to be used for promotional and clerical costs.

When is the next draw?

As soon as we arrive at the next 3,333 tickets sold. The exact date will depend on future voucher purchasers.

What if you don't sell all of the tickets?

That's the advantage of holding a draw every time 3,333 tickets are sold. If people were to suddenly stop investing in our tickets, it could be that we might have two or three or four or five winners owning their prizes, while we carried on renting out the other properties just the way we are using them now, as a second hotel. We're not like other raffles, dependent on reaching a high level of tickets sold before the draw can take place.

And if there were an odd balance in the account, we'd simply hold a raffle for the remaining cash.

What happens if I invest in only one chance?

Your number will take part in the next draw. Then it will go back into the pool to be sold to someone else.

But let me ask you something. What if you get only one chance, don't participate in any more draws and then that number – your former number – wins a major prize?

I wonder how you'd feel.

It's just a thought to consider when you decide whether to participate just once or for all the draws. We will automatically renew you if you'd like to go forward on a pay-as-you-go basis, but you should be aware it will be more expensive since the single ticket prices will go up as the value of the prizes increase.

What is the case for property raffles?

Governments don't seem to have refined their opinions on the question, but huge numbers of people are embracing them.

For a property owner, it can be a quicker alternative to waiting for the right buyer in a depressed market.

For ticket purchasers it's a chance to win a house for the price of a lunch, and at far better odds than state lotteries.

For charities, it's a windfall – money that comes in with little or no effort on their part. Also, if charities were allowed to sponsor house raffles in a less restricted way, it would likely cut the number of foreclosures by banks.

Lastly, participating in a house raffle isn't likely to become addictive in the way other forms of gambling sometimes can be.

Our Ironclad, Bulletproof Guarantee:
You may have 100% of your money back at any time and for any reason until such time as your number takes part in a prize draw.

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