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spacing_right=”” type=”2_3″][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_color=”#666666″ content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”Roboto”]
A few months ago, we learned about Win A Country House and got an idea.
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Could this be a way to solve, in our own little way, the housing crisis facing this country? Just a couple of guys looking to house everyone in their own home?
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It may look mad on the surface but think about it. What do you have to go through to get a house? How much of your life’s labour do you have to dedicate to own a house so you can raise a family?
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And what of all the people who are having trouble getting any bank to offer any reasonable financing on a home? Banks are offering 40-year mortgages to help people onto the property ladder, way up from the old standard of 25 years. At that rate, you could still be paying for your home well after retirement!
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There had to be a way to shortcut this madness so people can feel secure about the future. And that’s why Win A Country House was so appealing to us.
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What if we bought homes in good locations, spruced them up, and then offered a skill competition to see who would win the home? Andrei found a good home, which you can learn all on the front page of the site, and we spruced it up and see if we could copy the success of Win A Country House.
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Here’s our reasoning. We knew the idea could work, but if we could get it to work ourselves then we could do it again and again. It would be our way of giving back to the world, one family at a time, at a time when affordable housing is incredibly scarce.
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The demand for housing in London is far outstripping supply. Even with recent declines in housing prices, there’s so much foreign investment driving up the prices that English citizens who don’t already have wealth find it terribly difficult to get a loan.
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The problem isn’t a lack of homes though. Across England, there are over 200,000 empty homes. 22,481 of these are in London. Families just can’t afford them.
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Our Offer
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If banks aren’t going to give out reasonable loans and sellers aren’t offering reasonable prices, is there a way to cut out the middleman to help people get a home? We think so and we think that a skill competition is a way to do it.
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It may seem daft, but we hope our posts over the next few weeks will help you understand why we’re doing this and get you interested in trying your luck at our competition. While it may not end up being the “normal” way to sell a home, we think it may be a way to help people who have no chance of getting on the property ladder get a leg up.
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By spending just ten pounds and fifty pence, you could get a piece of property in Greater London, free and clear for your family. We even pay stamp duty and legal fees. All you’ll have to worry about is yearly costs such as council tax and utility bills.
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Even if you entered numerous times, the downside is incredibly low compared to spending forty years paying interest, right? Only 16% of 25 to 34-year-olds in outer London owned homes compared to over 50% in the 1980s. Plus, home ownership in the UK has fallen further since the financial crisis than any other EU country.
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By investing just a single average mortgage payment for a three-bedroom home in London (~£1,240), you could get 118 chances to win through our skill competition. And you only need to win once! Just choose the number of tickets you want to purchase, pay the fee, and then answer the question correctly to enter the drawing. The odds of winning depend on the number of entries, but we need at least 200,000 tickets sold to cover our costs.
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And really, is spending ten pounds and fifty pence on a chance any crazier than losing 40 years of income to the bank?
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Buy your ticket now to get into the dream.
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