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HOUSE raffles have boomed in popularity – and they could be the key to you becoming the owner of your dream home for just a few quid.

These property competitions are prize draws, which you can enter for free, or by buying at least one ticket.

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The winner is then drawn at random on a specified date and is given the advertised home as a prize.

Of course, the chances of winning are slim, but if you’re one of the lucky ones, scooping your dream home can be life-changing.

Simon Williams, 41, scooped the picturesque cottage in Devon and £100,000 cash to spend after entering the Omaze Million Pound House Draw.

While Rose Doyle, 73, and husband Tony were able to move out of their three-bed council house in Birmingham after winning a £3million mansion in Cornwall.

But before you buy a ticket to win your dream home, it’s important to bear in mind the pros and cons.

Consumer expert Martyn James said: “There’s nothing wrong with having big dreams or fantasising about getting a brand new house of a big cash payout. But bear in mind that lotteries are a form of gambling and as such, can be addictive to many people.

“So set yourself a maximum spend and never go over it – and be realistic. Whenever you gamble, the house always wins.”

We round-up all the current house raffles – and how you can win a property worth up to £4million with just a £2 ticket.

£2million home in Devon – Omaze

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A stunning three-bedroom coastal home in Devon worth over £2million could be yours in Omaze’s million pound house draw.

One lucky winner will get the keys to a beautiful contemporary home and entries start from as little as £10.

This two-tiered West Country residence comes complete with countryside views, a guest annex and a heated pool.

In addition to the property itself, the Omaze winner will receive £250,000 in cash to help them settle in.

The winner has the option to move straight into the property, or they can rent it out, or even put it back on to the market.

An estimated monthly rental income is around £4,000, according to Omaze.

Additional costs including stamp duty, mortgage fees and conveyancing costs are also covered.

The house also comes fully furnished.

The cost of entries starts at £10 for 15 entries and goes up to a costly £150 for 320 entries. The full details are below:

• £10 – 15 entries
• £25 – 40 entries
• £50 – 85 entries
• £150 entries – 320 entries

Omaze has guaranteed a minimum donation of £1,000,000 from the draw for suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

The Draw closes on Sunday, October 27 for online entries and Tuesday, October 29 for postal entries.

£4million home in Surrey – Raffle House

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Raffle House allows people the chance to win either their multi-million pound dream home.

You may have heard about Raffle House, which was established in 2017, but might not know what it entails, or how to get started.

The company operates by selling raffle tickets for a small fee and then selecting a winner randomly.

The current Raffle House prize is a £4million property in Surrey, complete with £200,000 of furnishings.

The kitchen and family room overlook and have access to a garden terrace, perfect for alfresco summer mornings.

The dining room and living room both have huge glazed sliding doors, perfect for taking in the sun while keeping warm.

There are five bedrooms in total, with the principle featuring its own private bathroom.

If all this wasn’t enough, there’s also a private gym.

As with the Omaze draw, there’s no Stamp Duty or fees to pay for the winner.

If you want to be in with a chance to win, the draw closes at midnight on Thursday, October 31 and it costs the following to enter:

• £10 – 15 tickets
• £25 – 50 tickets
• £50 – 150 tickets
• £100 – 500 tickets

£450,000 apartment in London – Raffall

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Homeowners and organisations can pay to host their own raffle on a portal such as Raffall.com.

Users have a web page which advertises their property, the maximum tickets they will sell, the price and the closing date.

Raffall draws the winner at random.

If the owner doesn’t sell enough tickets to make the raffle a success, the platform gives 75% of the money as compensation to the winner and keeps 25% for commission and costs.

The two-bedroom apartment in Catford, south east London is valued at over £450,000 and is being raffled by Kerb Appeal Raffle through Raffall.

Once a neglected and rundown property, the apartment has undergone a dramatic transformation.

A brand-new kitchen and bathroom has been installed, plus it has a striking glass banister in the entrance hallway, and stylish, trendy interiors ready for immediate occupancy.

Entries cost £2 and the raffle draw will take place on Friday, November 8 at 12pm or when the last ticket is sold – whichever comes sooner.

£1.2million Town House in Somerset – Raffall

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This seven bedroom property in Frome, Somerset, is also being raffled off by Raffall.

There’s no stamp duty, mortgage or conveyancing fees to pay and you chose to rent it out, sell it on or move in.

You could earn £3,500 per month by renting the property out, according to the raffle’s host Taylormade.

The property measures 3,000 square and has oak wood flooring, bespoke lighting, high-end fittings, premium wool carpets and encaustic tiling.

It is set in a generous plot with a the stone walled garden, which is perfect for entertaining.

It can be accessed directly from the main dining kitchen area through two sets of glass doors.

There is also road parking, with space for four cars.

Entries cost £5 and the draw will close on Saturday, December 7 at 11pm, or when the last ticket is sold – whenever is sooner.

In addition, 10% of the host’s revenue goes directly to the charity Busoga Trust, which brings clean and safe water to rural communities in Uganda.

£850,000 home in East Sussex – Raffall

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This Idyllic Country House in Sedlescombe, East Sussex, is set within large gardens close to the historic town of Battle.

It has its own heated swimming pool and is close to beaches in Hastings, Bexhill-On-Sea and Camber Sands.

Plus, there’s no stamp duty, mortgage or conveyancing fees to pay.

Tickets for this raffle cost £5 and 5% of the host’s revenue goes directly to Alzheimer’s Research UK.

The draw ends on Friday, 10 2025 at 5.30pm or when the last ticket is sold.

£25,000 narrowboat – Raffall

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It’s not just houses that pop on these rafffles, you could even be in with the chance to set up home on a narrowboat.

The boat, called Sloe Patrol, has been restored over a four-year period with a new fully fitted kitchen, a bathroom with a shower and a bedroom with an extending king size bed and storage space.

The raffle’s host – James Posner – said that while the boat is currently worth around £25,000, he expects its value to increase to £40,000 over the next few years.

The raffle ends on October 16, or when the last ticket is sold.

Tickets for this raffle also cost £5.

Houseboats are exempt from stamp duty, and if you have a residential mooring and you fill fall into the lowest council tax band.

What should you check before entering?

National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team advises entrants to make sure they are aware of the terms of the raffle before entering.

The advert should explain what happens if not all tickets are sold. It should spell out if a lesser cash prize is offered, when the raffle closes and when the draw will take place. 

If the date of the draw keeps changing the organiser is struggling to sell tickets.

Check the odds of winning. Competitions that specify the number of tickets they need to sell give you a chance of working out the odds.

Look for hidden bills. Lots of adverts state that stamp duty and legal fees will be paid for. If they don’t you need to foot the bill.

Check you can afford the maintenance and council tax for the house too.  

Before handing over your cash, read past reviews of the organiser’s raffles, look at how long they’ve been established and whether there have been previous winners. 

If it’s a homeowner hosting their first raffle, then it’s a case of buyer beware.

Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.

Plus, you can join our Sun Money Chats and Tips Facebook group to share your tips and stories

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Cameroon President Paul Biya is alive and in “excellent” health, the central African country’s government has said in an attempt to quell intense speculation about the wellbeing and whereabouts of the world’s oldest leader who had not been seen in public for more than a month.

The 91-year-old, who has been in power since 1982, has not been pictured since attending a China-Africa summit in Beijing at the start of September.

He missed the UN General Assembly meeting in New York at the end of last month and cancelled a planned appearance at last week’s International Organisation of La Francophonie summit in Paris.

The Paris no-show in particular raised eyebrows, given his country’s warm ties with France and his presence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in the city in July.

The head of the cabinet sought to explain Biya’s absence by saying the president was in Geneva, the Swiss city where he spends a considerable amount of his time. Indeed, Biya’s visits to Geneva are so common that he has earned the nickname “President of the Hotel InterContinental”, a reference to the luxury accommodation where he is said to base himself while in the city.

That Biya did not make the short flight to Paris fuelled speculation in his home country that he was seriously ill, or even dead.

The Guardian Post, a respected newspaper in the capital Yaoundé, channelled the national mood on Tuesday when it splashed its front page with the headline: “One month after China-Africa summit: Biya’s whereabouts unknown!”

“Biya’s government doesn’t communicate much. That’s always been the case for the past 25 years of his travels,” said a political consultant with ties to the Biya government. “But there’s something different this time.”

The clamour was such that the Cameroon government was forced to issue a statement late on Tuesday, with spokesperson René Sadi saying Biya was on a “brief private stay in Europe” and would return to Cameroon in the “next few days”.

The cabinet secretary also sought to “reassure all our compatriots as well as the international community about the excellent state of health of the head of state”.

He continued: “For some time now, a few people, malicious through social networks, have undertaken to make believe that the president of the republic would be seriously ill, or even passed from life to death.”

The statements are unlikely to quell unease in Cameroon, where the nonagenarian president has become an increasingly isolated figure, with only a small band of advisers and family members, including first lady Chantal Biya, having unfettered access to him.

Cameroon, which has had only two presidents since becoming an independent country more than six decades ago, is beset by a long-running secessionist war between government troops and English-speaking guerrilla fighters seeking an independent state along the border with Nigeria.

Cameroon is also in a part of Africa where Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan, Niger and Gabon have suffered coups since 2020.

Under the Cameroon constitution, the president of the senate would become head of state in the event of the president’s demise. That would be 89-year-old Marcel Niat Njifenji.

“Their hand has been forced,” the person familiar with the government’s thinking said of the government’s statement insisting Biya was alive.

“There are worries that if something were to happen, who would take over? Biya has centralised power so much around him that all the potential presidential hopefuls are either in jail or — because he’s been there so long — they’ve passed away.”

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Chinese stocks tumbled more than 7 per cent on Wednesday, snapping a 10-day winning streak on investor fears that Beijing’s stimulus package will not be enough to revive growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

The CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed shares fell 7.1 per cent, closing below the 4,000 mark in a partial reversal of the market’s historic equity rally over the past two weeks.

The fall was sparked by a meeting of Chinese state planners on Tuesday — the first by policymakers after a week-long holiday — in which they provided no details of significant new spending plans to lift the economy. Wednesday’s drop was the biggest one-day decline for Chinese stocks since February 2020.

The sell-off came despite signs policymakers were preparing to announce more detailed measures this week. On Wednesday, officials announced that a finance ministry special briefing on Saturday focused on “intensifying countercyclical adjustment of fiscal policy”, which economists believe could point to additional stimulus measures.

Many economists and investors say a package of fiscal stimulus is needed to boost growth, on top of the monetary stimulus announced last month by the central bank.

“To exit deflation, we believe the need of the hour is a package of Rmb10tn geared towards supporting consumption and clearing the property inventory,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note.

But they added that “policymakers appear hesitant to enact forceful fiscal easing”, with the size of any stimulus constrained by China’s already high public debt and declining tax revenues as local governments suffer a fall in land sales.

The yield on China’s 30-year government bonds fell 2.5 basis points to 2.345 per cent, and the renminbi weakened just under 0.1 per cent against the dollar to Rmb7.07.

Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, sought to boost investor sentiment, telling a gathering of economists and entrepreneurs on Tuesday: “When formulating and implementing policies, we should pay attention to . . . the voice of the market.”

Economists believe China needs to inject up to Rmb10tn ($1.4tn) to reflate its economy after a property slowdown and government crackdowns on sectors such as ecommerce, finance and private education weakened consumer confidence.

While the country’s manufacturing sector is surviving on strong export volumes, household demand is weak as consumers save money out of concern over falling property values and pay cuts.

“We see limited fiscal measures in the near term,” the Morgan Stanley analysts said, adding that if “social dynamics weaken materially, it could act as a trigger for forceful fiscal easing”.

Many analysts believe Beijing is reluctant to issue large amounts of new debt to channel funds to consumers, as many western countries did during the pandemic, preferring investment-led stimulus instead.

But if an economic downturn threatens social stability — the overriding priority of Communist party leaders — they might be forced to take more extreme measures to restore confidence, such as steps directly targeting household incomes.