A 51-year-old woman from Warrington has been revealed as the winner of a massive lottery prize – a manor house in a perfect condition located in Lancashire. Marie Segal won the property, which has six bedrooms and is estimated to £845,000, after one of her raffle tickets appeared to be the lucky one in the yesterday afternoon’s draw.
The raffle came as an idea of Dunstan Low and Natasha Dobosz – a couple who had difficulties finding a buyer who would buy their home, Melling Manor, at a prize large enough to cover their mortgage debt. Earlier in 2017, Mr. Low started selling raffle tickets at the prize of £2 each, as the two of them were facing the chance of losing their home and the unusual idea seemed as their only hope to raise the money.
The couple managed to raise a total of £998,000 from the lottery tickets’ sale, which was enough for them to pay their mortgage debt out as to pay the raffle winner’s stamp duty and legal fess. The draw took place yesterday evening, so Ms. Segal, who has spent only £20 buying 10 raffle tickets, emerged as the new legal owner of the property. At the time she learned of winning the prize, she could not believer her luck, saying she had never won anything from the lottery. The mansion features six bedrooms, a cinema room, a new family bathroom, a ballroom and a kitchen. There is also parking for six cars as well as a swimming pool.
The former owner of the Lancashire manor house – Mr. Low – described the whole experience as stressful, but still amazing. At the beginning of the year, he and his wife revealed that they had been struggling to sell the mansion, so they had decided to raffle it off selling tickets worth £2 each. At that time, the couple said that the raffle was pretty much their last resort to find a buyer at the weakening housing market.
After talking to a number of estate agents and companies, the couple decided to take the sale of their property in their own hands. First, the two of them have put the property for sale, but they did not succeed finding a buyer, despite they considerably dropped the prize. Then, the idea of a raffle appeared.
Despite the fact that offering a 18-century country home as a lottery prize is still considered a bit extravagant, perhaps, home raffling is actually becoming more popular among home owners who face certain difficulties to dispose of heir properties. Currently, there is another residential property in Glasgow that is being raffled with the owners offering £5 lottery tickets. Recently, there was another home owner in Blackheath, London who was trying to raffle their home off, but the lottery was suspended after the owner got suspected in gambling rules breach. Later, the home lottery was given the green light once again.
- Author
Daniel Williams
