In a recent blog the childhood refrain ‘it’s not just the winning, but the taking part that counts’ was mentioned when thinking about the impact that the Raffle House winners and wider community have made to critical needs in the UK by donating a portion of their ticket price to charity. That perhaps there can be a higher purpose to entering that makes having a flutter on a Dream Home competition more worthwhile.
Now of course, we all want to win, don’t we? And Raffle House recognises that winning is the main driver for entering a dream home competition. Particularly when a key benefit of entering the Raffle House draws is that winners can have the option to take the prize, car or house, or take the cash alternative instead!
Typically, Raffle House winners choose the cash as the prize – it’s the divisible nature that brings freedom and flexibility being the principle rationale.
Hard though it is to imagine, winning may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. Sure, the financial security it brings is perhaps the most compelling reason to enter, but there are some surprising second order, less positive effects that winners encounter, even suffer, when notified that they’ve won.
Yes, yes – while, like us, your heart no doubt goes out to these unlucky souls, it is well documented that money does not guarantee happiness, but it certainly solves lots of life’s stresses.
So, as we enter in the hope of winning, you might find yourself asking ‘what are the odds?’ and can you really win a house raffle? Read on to find out.

What are the typical house raffle odds?

For now, let’s not concern ourselves too much with the heavy burden of a win, and the associated risk that a criminal, or worse, a family member, might come for a piece of the pie (all concerns laid bare by the Raffle House community). Instead, let’s gain an appreciation for what the odds are of holding the Raffle House winners’ ticket.
As an entertainment industry, prize competition sites have seen an explosion of interest and activity across the UK in recent years. For decades, the National Lottery was the only ‘game’ in town, and now there are quite literally hundreds of competition sites with prizes to be won. In some instances, certain companies provide a fixed number of tickets to be sold, and your odds of winning are simply a function of how many tickets you purchase. In that example these prize competitions are somewhat more akin to the National Lottery, that while the number of tickets to be sold with the National
Lottery is unknown, the set format of six winning numbers defines the odds, about 40,000,000 to 1. Where the prize competition sites are arguably better, is only one ticket can win, whereas there is no knowing how many other people will share the National Lottery jackpot prize.
In the case of the Raffle House competition there is no fixed number of tickets to be sold, and well-known comparisons that also have this model are the People’s Postcode Lottery and Omaze. Because the interest and engagement of the competitions that Raffle House runs are continually growing, placing a number on the odds risks giving a false impression of the likelihood of winning. Interestingly, we find that Omaze doesn’t appear to publish its odds either, however the People’s Postcode Lottery recently stated the number to be about 4,500,000 to 1 of winning. What can be said about
Raffle House is that the odds are not quite as attractive as the People’s Postcode Lottery but are significantly better than that of the National Lottery. It’s worth bearing in mind that there are also ancillary prizes and benefits to being part of the Raffle House community, so while we all want the big win, there are weekly prizes if you subscribe, donations with every ticket purchased, and rewards available to take advantage of at checkout and in the ‘Rewards Room’ on your profile page.

How are the winners chosen and how do we find out who has won?

Raffle House was the first UK incorporated property prize competition website, and in 2018 when the company first began trading the job and process of selecting prize winners, big and small, was done by the employees of the company. Tickets were collated from the Company database with the winning ticket selected using third-party random number generator tool www.random.org.
Within 18 months of trading the decision was taken to form a partnership with Civica Electoral Services, managers of national governmental elections among other things, to provide the service of selecting winners, thus providing Raffle House with an independent, transparent and arms-length process. Their remit is to conduct the draw of the high value prizes, that is the monthly Early Bird and Dream Home Draw prizes. Those smaller value draws, such as the subscriber £1,000 exclusive draws, continue to be managed in-house as before.
On the day of the draw, Raffle House provides Civica with all valid paid and postal entries, pulled directly from the website’s CMS system. It’s worth noting that this dataset of tickets also includes all postal entries that are sent in lieu of a paid ticket, the processing and validation of which is also conducted by Civica to avoid any potential risk of impropriety. Civica then informs Raffle House of the winner, along with three potential runner-up names should the winner fail to get in touch (in terms of the high value prizes, defaulting to a runner-up has happened only once. In the case of the lower value prize the frequency of a runner-up going away with the tax-free cash is higher, estimated at about 1 in 30 times.
It’s then down to the team at Raffle House to contact the lucky ticket holder and confirm that they have won. Usually within a matter of hours the winner has been notified, and typically after several checks by the winner that the Raffle House email and phone calls are legitimate, Raffle House then needs to do its age verification and anti-money laundering (AML) checks before the prize can be awarded. The whole process from collating all the tickets for Civica to do the draw to the winner taking receipt of their prize is a matter of days. Then, as soon as is practically possible, an announcement goes out on email and the Company’s social channels, as well as on our winners page.
Could you be one of our lucky winners? Enter our latest competition today!