Fancy a £1m home for £25?

Level 3 Advanced

1 Key words

Fill the gaps in the sentences using these key words from the text.

raffle slump downsize punter scam

sidestep acre return overgrown hurdle

1. An ___________________ is a unit for measuring the surface area of land, equivalent to 4,047 square metres.

2. A ___________________ is someone who risks their money through betting or gambling. It can also mean a
customer or someone who uses a particular service.

3. A __________________ is one of several problems you must solve before you can do something successfully.

4. Profit on money you have invested is called your ___________________.

5. If a garden is ___________________, it is covered with plants that have been allowed to grow in an
uncontrolled way.

6. A ___________________ is a dishonest plan, especially for getting money.

7. In property, if you ___________________, you move to a smaller house.

8. A ___________________ is a competition in which you win a prize if the number on your ticket is selected.

9. If you ___________________ something, you avoid it.

10. A ___________________ is a period when the value of the economy or part of the economy falls dramatically.

2 Find the information

Look in the text and find this information as quickly as possible.

1. How much will each ticket cost?

2. How much is the property worth?

3. How many tickets are they hoping to sell?

4. How much will they get if they sell all the tickets?

5. What are the annual costs of running the property?

6. How long have they lived at the property?

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Fancy a £1m home for £25?
Level 3 Advanced
Fancy a £1m home for £25?
After failing to find a buyer, a Devon couple are
raffling their country estate. Is it a scam, or a
genuine way to beat the property slump?
Patrick Collinson and Ben Steele
September 6, 2008
1 Is a raffle really the way to sidestep a cooling
property market? A five-bedroom house,
complete with 9.5 acres of woodland, a two-acre
fishing lake and four separate two-bed holiday
lodges – one lucky person will win it all for £25.
The owners, Brian and Wendy Wilshaw, will be
winners too. Last year they were struggling to
sell the property, marketed at £950,000 just as
the housing slump took hold. But after launching
an online prize competition on a website, they’ve
sold 34,000 tickets – that’s £850,000 – and are in
sight of their 46,000 target.
2 When all the tickets are sold, the Wilshaws will
become the first property owners to successfully
use a raffle to sell a house – and make a decent
profit. Sales of 46,000 tickets will earn them
£1.15m – they say the surplus will be used to
cover the costs of running the raffle. But it will still
leave them with a handsome return in a property
market that virtually everywhere else has gone
stone cold.
3 Wendy says: “We needed to sell. We’re getting
old. This place doesn’t run itself. The idea of
selling tickets kind of evolved. So many of the
people who have stayed here have said that if
they won the lottery, it’s the sort of place they’d
buy. It’s that that got us thinking.” The couple
have lived at the estate for 14 years and are
downsizing. “I want an ordinary family to live
here, people who would never normally be able
to afford this place, people who’ll be given a
chance to start over,” says Wendy.
4 The winners will get a 2,000 sq ft house and an
estate (much of it overgrown) that includes a two-
acre lake stocked with fish that Brian reckons are
worth £1,000. Council tax and other basic annual
running costs are around £6,000, but in a good
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2008
NEWS LESSONS / Fancy a £1m home for £25? / Advanced
year the Wilshaws reckon the timber lodges yield
£25,000 income. They’ve had ticket buyers from
Scandinavia, India and the US, and are quietly
confident they’ll hit the target of 46,000 sold by
the December 7 close.
5 But is it legal to sell a home this way? And how
can punters be sure this isn’t some sort of scam?
Wendy pounces on anyone who uses the words
raffle or lottery to describe their scheme. “This
isn’t a raffle, as it’s illegal to have prizes above a
certain value. After that it becomes a lottery. And
this isn’t a lottery either. To be eligible to win, you
have to answer a skill-based question. Only if
you answer the question correctly do you get
to enter.”
6 The question is: “What is the cost of an adult full
season coarse fishing licence for 2008/2009?”
The answer takes a millisecond to find on
Google. It’s illegal to run a lottery for personal
profit, and while competitions can be run for
profit they must involve an element of skill.
The Wilshaws’ lawyers have advised them
the competition meets legal requirements, but
Antoinette Jucker, a gambling law expert with
Pinsent Masons, is not so sure.
7 “How do you choose a winner when almost
everyone gets the answer right? You take their
name out of a hat. That makes it a game of
chance, and therefore an illegal lottery. When the
Gambling Act was going through parliament, the
clear intention was that the only legal lotteries
would be those operated for good causes ... This
competition is sidestepping that,” she says. The
Wilshaws are adamant their scheme is legal. At
one stage online payment group PayPal froze
their account while lawyers went through the
paperwork, but they gave it the thumbs-up.
8 Several people who have tried to raffle their
home have been charged by the police. One
woman was ordered to pay nearly £8,000
compensation after she admitted breaking lottery
laws. But the biggest hurdle is finding punters.
One man set up a website to raffle his £110,000
home at £5 a ticket, but sold only 229 tickets, so
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Fancy a £1m home for £25?
Level 3 Advanced
he drew a name from a hat and the winner got
£916 after his 20% costs.

9 The Wilshaws say they’ll do the same if they

don’t reach their target. “If there isn’t a winner
by the end of December, then someone gains
a cash prize, simple as that,” says Wendy. The
prize will be the sum they’ve collected minus
35% to cover expenses. The most common
question they get is how the winning ticket will
be selected. “It will be done by random number
software, overseen by our lawyers and in full
view of television cameras and reporters,”
says Wendy.

© Guardian News & Media 2008

First published in The Guardian, 06/09/08

3 Comprehension check

Choose the best answer according to the text.

1. Why are the Wilshaws selling their property by raffle?

a. Because they will make a bigger profit.
b. Because they think they will have a better chance of selling it this way in the present housing slump
c. Because they want to sell it to someone who has stayed there in the past.

2. Why do participants in the raffle have to answer a skill-based question?

a. Because this is the best way to choose a winner.
b. Because competitions like this are illegal unless they have an element of skill.
c. Because the Wilshaws only want fishermen to win the prize.

3. Why does the gambling law expert believe that this may be an illegal lottery?
a. Because almost everyone will get the answer to the skill-based question right.
b. Because it is illegal to sell houses in this way.
c. Because the skill-based question is too easy and anyone can find the answer on Google.

4. What will the Wilshaws do if they don’t sell all the tickets?
a. They will stay in the house (and not sell it).
b. They will accept a reduced price.
c. They will give someone a cash prize (minus 35%).
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Fancy a £1m home for £25?
Level 3 Advanced
4 Find the word

Find the following words and expressions in the text. The paragraph numbers are given to help you.

1. A two-word expression meaning to become stronger and difficult to stop. (para 1)

2. Two two-word terms that both mean good earnings. (para 2)
3. A phrasal verb meaning to begin doing something again from the very beginning. (para 3)
4. A two word expression meaning to react angrily to. (para 5)
5. An adjective meaning determined not to change your belief or decision about something. (para 7)
6. A verb meaning to legally stop a supply of money being available to someone. (para 7)
7. A phrasal verb meaning to examine something very carefully. (para 7)
8. A four-word expression meaning to give your approval to something. (para 7)

5 Verb + noun collocations

Match the verbs in the left-hand column with the nouns in the right-hand column.

1. launch a. compensation
2. win b. legal requirements
3. make c. the law
4. hit d. a bank account
5. meet e. a target
6. freeze f. a competition
7. pay g. a profit
8. break h. the lottery

6 Expressions with prepositions

Fill the gaps in the phrases from the text using prepositions. Check your answers in the text.

1. in sight ____________ the target

2. stocked ____________ fish
3. ____________ personal profit
4. a game ____________ chance
5. ____________ good causes
6. going ____________ parliament
7. charged ____________ the police
8. ____________ the end of December

7 Discussion
Can you think of any other ways of selling a house in difficult market conditions? What other items
could you or would you sell by lottery?
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NEWS LESSONS / Fancy a £1m home for £25? / Advanced

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Fancy a £1m home for £25?
Level 3 Advanced

KEY

1 Key words 4 Find the word

1. acre 1. take hold

2. punter 2. decent profit; handsome return
3. hurdle 3. start over
4. return 4. pounce on
5. overgrown 5. adamant
6. scam 6. freeze
7. downsize 7. go through
8. raffle 8. give the thumbs-up
9. sidestep
10. slump
5 Verb + noun collocations
2 Find the information
1. f
1. £25 2. h
2. £950,000 3. g
3. 46,000 4. e
4. £1.15m 5. b
5. £6,000 6. d
6. 14 years 7. a
8. c

3 Comprehension check
6 Expressions with prepositions
1. b
2. b 1. of
3. a 2. with
4. c 3. for
4. of
5. for
6. through
7. by
8. by
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NEWS LESSONS / Fancy a £1m home for £25? / Advanced

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