http://houserafflesecrets.com Your guide to a successful house raffle Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:29:26 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en With the successful Edgewater house raffle hitting the network news, I've received lots of emails from homeowners interested in holding a house raffle as a way to sell a house in a difficult housing market. Some homeowners see it as an antidote to foreclosure, others see it as a solution ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-question-how-much-money-does-the-homeowner-get-to-keep/ Another house raffle in sunny California! The 2009 Palms Springs Dream Home raffle is being held by DesertArc, an organization founded in 1959 "to enhance the quality of life for people with developmental disabilities". Tickets are $150 and they are selling no more than 18,000 tickets. Here's something I haven't seen ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-alerts-palm-springs-dream-home-raffle-california/ Maryland's first house raffle drawing of 2009 is being held a week from today: Friday, January 23. Tickets will be sold only until Wednesday, January 21 so don't delay if you are interested in benefiting We Care and Friends and winning this home in Edgewater, Maryland. [details...] Some pleasant surprises about ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-alert-edgewater-50-maryland/ I got a great house raffle question from a reader right at the end of 2008. I just found it in my SPAM folder (sorry!) and sent out my reply. I expect many people have the same question and concerns, so I'm posting both his question and my answer--- Question for ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-questions-postpone-the-house-raffle-drawing/ When is a house raffle not a house raffle? When it's an essay contest! If that doesn't make sense to you, you're not alone. I was confused until I read the entire story at Own A Home For 1.00. The gist is this: frustrated by the gambling laws in her state ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-alert-house-raffle-via-essay-contest-in-new-jersey/ I've read the rules for many a house raffle this month, but the Marin Dream House Raffle held by Community Action Marin is the only one I've found that offers cash to the Grand Prize winner as an alternative to the house---$1.6 million dollars. Of course a large chunk of that ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-alert-marin-dream-house-raffle/ Winning a house raffle can be an unwelcome surprise if you haven't considered the federal and state taxes, closing costs, and state and local property taxes that come with winning. With grand prizes valued from $390,000 to $2,000,000, it may be that you can't afford to win that house raffle. But ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-winners-4-ideas-for-claiming-the-grand-prize/ There have been quite a few house raffles in 2008, and Ohio's 2008 Westerville House Raffle has become one of the first for 2009. The original November 20, 2008 drawing date has been postponed until mid-January, so house raffle tickets can be purchased until Friday, January 16, 2009. The five Early ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-alert-westerville-house-raffle/ If you read this article from Forbes magazine online, you've seen this bit about house raffles near the beginning: Other homeowners have resorted to raffles to drive sales. In March 2008, after 18 months on the market, Karen Crawford, a Hagerstown, Md., resident, sold 6,500 $100 tickets for her $390,000 farm ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-laws-get-information-from-the-source/ The more house raffles I discover, the bigger the impression that many of these fundraising efforts are doomed from the start because of poor planning. Not from a lack of energy or excitement or effort, but from less-than-ideal decisions that have a huge impact on the outcome. I found a post ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-flop-american-red-cross-idaho-2008-house-raffle/ 9 Secrets to a Successful House Raffle Douglas Heddings over at True Gotham interviewed Bruce Anderson, CEO of the San Mar Children's Home, about how they managed to hold Maryland's only house raffle in 2008 that's met their ticket sales goals. Here's what I got from the interview: Make sure a house ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/san-mar-house-raffle-2008-success/ House raffles---like any other raffle---are games of chance and considered gambling by most states. Every state has raffle laws and some states forbid raffles altogether. Even if a house raffle is legal in your state, it may not be legal in your county, city, town, or municipality. Also, your local ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffles-are-they-legal-in-your-state/ To Profit, or Not to Profit... I saw a snarky comment today on another house raffle blog. The author was concerned about the per ticket "processing fee" some house raffle hosts keep when the raffle is canceled. In the house raffle rules I've read, 1% is kept by the host and ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-expenses-about-that-1-percent-processing-fee/ The Value of Your House Raffle Ticket A house raffle ticket is not just any ol' piece of paper. Like a lottery ticket, your house raffle ticket has the potential to be worth far more than what you paid for it. It may have "$100" or "$50" printed on it, but a winning ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-ticket-security-paper/ Do House Raffle Winners Pay Taxes on Their Win? If you've read house raffle blog posts on the Web then you have probably seen comments like this one from Annette W. on True Gotham: Does the winner of the raffle have to pay taxes on the appraised value of the house that ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-the-high-cost-of-winning/ This article pulled from the 2006 archives proves that holding a house raffle isn't the new idea that newspapers might have us believe. According to this article from G W Scott, successful (and unsuccessful) house raffles have been around for at least 7 years. And it's worth noting that raffles help ... http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-a-new-thing/ [wp_surveys] http://houserafflesecrets.com/house-raffle-survey-a-quick-question/