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by johnhenrehan from Fox Five

Last Post 49 days, 18 hours Ago


update on $100 house
Mar 2, 2008 | 12:36 PM
Category: News
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More than 3,700 raffle tickets have been sold (at a hundred dollars each) for the four bedroom house for sale in rural Maryland!  The goal is 5,000 tickets.  My original posting is below:

.........

[In January] I covered the story of a couple from Washington County, Maryland who are having a very hard time selling their refurbished, four-bedroom farm house.  It sits on a three-and-a-half acre lot with a year-round stream.

Linking up with a local non-profit, they are going to sell their house using a raffle.  Tickets will cost $100 each.  The owners will get no more than the fair market value of the house; the remainder goes to the local orphanage.

Ticket sales will be capped at 7,000, so the odds for any participant will be no greater than 7,000-to-1.  Those are actually far better odds than any state lottery.

BUT, the house is in the middle of nowhere.  It would take more than an hour and a half to commute to DC.  Even living there as a retiree, I would go nuts from the solitude.  But, it's some people's dream to live in the country.  About 900 people so far have signed up to buy raffle tickets.  You can search for my story on this website (HOUSE RAFFLE), or go to the orphanage's website for more info:  sanmarraffle.com  

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Member Comments Total Comments: 4
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beagle_buddy read my blog view my photos
Mar 2, 2008 | 2:29 PM

…small little news item from several weeks ago that your blog is missing John ...the owners who had dramatically reduced the home's selling price after an extensive period of time to of being unable to sell it even after dropping it to $339,000 then apparently with this real estate agent’s intuitiveness cooked up this deal raffling it that would require the San Marr to pay the “market value” out of the raffle proceeds which was expected to be the $349,000 number but the owners/agent had an appraisal done that raised the number $40,000 …the owners and the agent seem to want to hold the San Marr to the agreement giving them a price they couldn't get on the open market ...though there's been no follow up since this has development was reported it now has a shady, unwholesome look about it ...the trend at present is they will sell enough tickets but unless the owners have a change of heart they seem motivated to impose the language of the agreement leaving San Marr realizing $40,000 less net ...so it goes for charity schemes, the promoters make out and the charity organization takes it up the wahzoo….go back to your original blog several months ago and low and behold I expressed reservations then about this charity raffle approach…
jdwalker read my blog
Mar 5, 2008 | 7:15 PM

Hey Beagle_buddy, wanna repeat that one more time in English please????
beagle_buddy read my blog view my photos
Mar 5, 2008 | 9:14 PM

????????????????????????????
ReportFromTheFront read my blog
Mar 9, 2008 | 3:01 PM

Hmmm.....Seems to me that a homeowner on upper Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase tried this sometime around 1980 or so. My memories are rather vague, but as I recall, he/she were compelled to cancel the raffle and refund entrants' ticket monies received because this was ruled to be a lottery and not a raffle - something which violated state laws as they existed at the time.
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johnhenrehan

I am a general assignment reporter at Fox Five, and very much enjoy getting to know the different neighborhoods and personalities in our metropolitan area.

Member Since: 4/20/2007


 

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