As expected, following on from the Oldborough Estate success (which incidentally will see a winner drawn on 16th October), a few more “win a house” competitions have surfaced. For the first time people are now taking more interest in these kind of competitions, but what are the new contenders like? And will they reach the same levels of success as Brian and Wendy Wilshaw?

Fellows Hall is a £650,000 home in Riverside View, Ingleby Barwick, Stockton. It’s being sold by Simon & Vicky Brown and they’re giving buyers a 1 in 28000 chance of winning this house. So far 26251 remain at £25 each. The house itself is quite stunning. It’s an individually-designed 6-bedroom luxury contemporary home and was featured on Channel 5’s programme ‘The Property List’. The competition is due to end on 24th December.

If a luxury home in Stockton doesn’t appeal then how about a Ski Chalet in Bulgaria. For the princely sum of just £3 you could Win a Cabin in Bansko. The 3 bedroom luxury log cabin is being sold by Brian and Michelle Jones and they need to reach sales of 150,000 by the 23rd December for their home to be given away. There’s no indication of the number of tickets currently sold, but if the ticket allocation is reached the prize fund minus running costs goes to Children in Need.

Both prizes are quite desirable, but it remains to be seen if either will have any degree of success.

Fellows Hall has the greatest potential, but with only 1750 tickets sold they’re going to have to get lucky with publicity. It is a nice house, but it’s not comparable to the life changing opportunity offered up by Oldborough Estate. Most win a house competitions fail because people just don’t want to move to where the prize is located, and this may be their downfall.

The Win a Cabin competition is a concern. Whilst the £3 entry fee is a lot cheaper, getting all 150,000 sold is going to require a lot of effort. With no indication of volume already sold and with no prize fund available if the allocation is reached, then this may frighten off would be players. The charity option is a nice touch, but just imagine if the tickets sold reaches say 140,000. The charity wins, but the promoters still get the running costs!

One final point about both competitions is the “skill question”! Neither competition has much level of skill involved and we’ve seen in the past win a house competitions fall foul of the authorities for running “pay to play” competitions lacking in skill elements. We assume both have done their due diligence on this matter, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if one day if the rule about skill and these kind of competitions gets some much needed clarification.

Popularity: 11% [?]

We’ve seen all sorts of prizes offered in online competitions, but the current competition from Ellis Brigham is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity. They’re offering one lucky winner the chance to climb the tallest mountain in the world - Everest! It’s a 26 day expedition and flights to Kathmandu, insurance and the Himalayan Expedition are all included in the prize.

Before you all rush on over to enter the competition there’s one very important rule to mention.

Ellis Brigham don’t want you to enter if you are unable to go, will not pass a medical stating you can climb to 7000m or do not have the trekking experience necessary to take on expedition. This competition is for serious climbers only!

That aside this is an exceptional prize - especially if you are a serious climber and fancy the challenge of taking on Everest. It is a once in a lifetime prize and good luck if you enter the competition.

Personally the thought of climbing 7000m and being cold isn’t top of the “things I want to do” or “would like to win” lists, I’d much prefer a nice beach holiday somewhere in the Caribbean!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Finally, after a last minute hiccup, the Devon Retreat win a house competition has reached the 46000 tickets sold mark and someone will win the house (or estate). Having seen a fair number of these competitions fail to even get close to the required number of tickets required to be sold to giveaway a house, it’s actually quite nice to see one reach a successful conclusion. The success of this competition no doubt can be attributed to the prize on offer.

The winner will become the owner of a five bedroom house, two bedroom timber lodges, 11.5 acres of woodland and 2 acres of coarse fishing lakes! Not a bad return for a £25 ticket.

As well as the prize on offer, the competition has been afforded plenty of media publicity. An appearance on The BBC back in August (Win a Devon Estate) increased the sales of tickets and as word spread that for £25 you could win the house or what would have been a decent cash prize had all the tickets not be sold then interest continued to build.

Finally as the magical 46000 came into view, a frenzy to pick up the remaining tickets meant that The Wilshaws took the step to suspend the competition whilst a few bugs were ironed out.

So what happens now?

At the moment the draw for the Oldborough Estate property is scheduled for December 7th. That may or may not be brought forward, but an announcement will be made on the official website. If you’ve bought a ticket good luck - we’ll be waiting for news of the winner with interest!

Now that the ceiling has finally been broken with “win a house” competitions - and coupled with the current economic crisis in the housing market - we expect to see more competitions start to appear. For example Jacks Car Parts are offering a 3 bedroom home in Rochester. They’ve sold 7 tickets so far - just 9993 to go!

Unfortunately we don’t expect other “win a home” competitions to be as successful as Win a Devon Property with Fishing! The prize winner of the competition will have a potentially life changing prize that captures the imagination. Couple that with a good publicity, a decent website and a little bit of luck and there’s the formula for a successful campaign.

Replicating those conditions is the key for future successes.

Popularity: 59% [?]

After years of “win a house” competitions never reaching the required number of tickets, could it be that the Oldborough Retreat Devon Estate competition will become the first to complete? As of today (15th September) the tickets sold allocation is 45006 - leaving just under 1000 tickets remaining. At £25 a ticket the competition will have brought in £1.15 million for Brian and Wendy Wilshaw if it reaches the magical 46000 tickets sold.

However, over on the official website there’s news that the competition has been “suspended until Monday”. The reason for the suspension they say is that there’s “only around a thousand tickets left (45,000 sold so far) - and they just want to make sure that we don’t over-sell the remaining tickets”. This does seem a strange move as surely some kind of mechanism was put in place that said “if ticket number > 46,000 don’t sell any more tickets”?

The decision to pause things has caused some annoyance over on the couple’s MySpace Blog where it’s alleged that some comments regarding Sunday’s decision to suspend entries whilst the technical issues were sorted have been deleted.

The Wilshaw’s also claim the suspension is due to “certain Spam filters are blocking the entry number emails getting through”. However surely the emails are sent after a ticket has been purchased making this claim totally irrelevant? All is required is an option to resend confirmation emails!

So is there genuine cause to be concerned?

At the moment we’d say no! It may well be that the techies behind the site didn’t put in features required to cope with the competition completing. However, we’ll be keeping an eye on the Oldborough Retreat Devon Estate to see when the suspension is lifted and what happens if and when all the 46000 tickets have been sold!

Update - The competition is now back running and there are just 288 tickets left!

Popularity: 45% [?]