Property: House up for grabs in Sudoku competition

Struggling to sell your house?
I found this article on the Internet and I do believe it is true and I also think it is legitimate, I am just not sure what the legal requirements are for foreigners to buy property in the UK and would advise any foreigners to first inquire before spending the £50.

A 49 year old finance broker, Dave Mackie from Hambleton near Blackpool, is looking to raise £700,000 by getting 14,000 people to enter the Sudoku raffle for £50 each. The money collected in entry fees would subsequently cover the value of the three-bedroom property, which stands at £675,000, plus £25,000 worth of advertising and legal costs. The winner, who will be picked from the entrants who complete the online Sudoku puzzle, will be announced in February 2010, or when 14,000 people have entered the competition.

He/she will then be awarded the prize of the detached red-brick property, which is situated in large grounds on the Lancashire coast. The home, located on the banks of the River Wyre, boasts landscaped gardens to the front and rear, two balconies, three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a sauna and a steam room. The lucky winner will also be able to rent a river mooring if they wish to do so.

Mr. Mackie said: "There's no catch. I'm looking to retire abroad and the time has come to move on. I thought this was a fun way to get rid of the old house and beat the credit crunch." Mr. Mackie admitted that he is a puzzle fanatic himself, before going on to explain that because he will be 50 later this year, he felt it was time to review his life. "I have properties in Egypt and have considered living there for some time," he said. "I don't believe anyone has ever set up a Sudoku competition to sell their home. This way everyone's a winner. The lucky person gets the house free from any mortgage and I get its market value."

Mr. Mackie bought the house back in the mid 1970s. In 2008, he installed new windows and built two balconies, a sauna and a steam room, at a cost of £200,000. Anyone looking to enter the competition for a chance to win the property needs to visit http://www.win-free-home.com, solve the Sudoku puzzle, and pay the £50 entry fee. Entrants will then receive a unique entry number.

All entrance fees are being held in a bank account which has been opened specifically for the competition, and will be independently audited. If 14,000 people have not entered the raffle by February next year, one of the entrants will be awarded the competition fund as a cash prize.

This is the most imaginative way of selling your house I have come across! I am hooked on Sudoku and must say I am very tempted!

Please leave a comment if you decide to enter this competition.

Source: PropertyIndex.com

I'm Back!

I am very embarrassed about my absence from my blog!

I have been studying for my NQF4 - Real Estate and trying to make money in a very depressed market. After I got the fabulous news that I passed my NQF4 I took time off to relax, but now I am back again, hopefully in a better market!

For those of you who don't know what NQF4 - Real Estate is, let me explain:
I completed my POE (Portfolio of Evidence) for my RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) for my NQF 4 - Real Estate (Don't know what NQF stands for but NQF4 is equal to matric). New legislation is forcing all current estate agents to qualify before 2011, I got a bursary (it costs R9000, not sure why it is so expensive - all you get is a file with all the questions and assignments and a two day lecture of how to put it all together - no answers!) and if I didn't meet the deadline I would have to pay back the R9000 and then pay another R9000 or more when I do it later.

I think it is a good thing to raise the bar for this industry (hopefully we'll improve our reputations) but I think someone has started another gravy train, the assessors get R300 per portfolio they mark so the average cost of the whole thing is about R1000 per person, how do they calculate R9,000 per agent?

Please don't get me wrong I am very happy about this, because it does mean that it will now be recognized as a profession and not something bored housewives do when they need a bit extra cash to pay for the next trip to Disney World. The current entrance requirements are NOTHING, you can walk into an agency, register as a candidate agent and start selling houses - the only restriction is that you are not allowed to sign a contract (so you don't even have to be literate!), you must have a full agent with you when signing an offer or mandate, but 12 months after you registered you automatically become a full agent and can even open your own agency!

No wonder people don't trust estate agents! I am amazed at how many of my colleagues don't have matric, this has now come to light because you have to either submit your certificate or do an extra 2 modules. If I had completed my B.com degree, it would have only cost me R750 to get exemption. I am intrigued about all this money, how are "they" calculating it and who and where are "they" and can't I sell "them" some property to invest the R400m "they" are making out of this! Remember there are currently about 40,000 registered agents in SA.

It seems the hard times in the property market are over and things are finally starting to improve! I am currently working on 7 transactions which are in different stages of the process, two are past delivery of guarantees which is close to conclusion, two waiting for bond grant and two very good prospects but low offers waiting to be accepted.

The last one I literally hatched, I have been working on it since November - sold it to 4 different buyers and twice to the current buyer! I'm amazed at the willingness of SA Homeloans to take a bath on this one instead of granting a 100% bond to a guy who has an excellent credit rating etc. They are now taking a R110,000 loss up front instead of R50,000 and the extra interest they could earn over 20 years. But I have always said these guys are given a "recipe" of how to grant a bond and are not taught to think out the box and do the calculations a little bit differently. But I am not complaining because at least they are starting to grant bonds again!

It seems the properties that have been on the market forever are now disappearing but at bargain prices - so if you are considering buying an investment property - now is the time and if you have been trying to sell be prepared to get an offer lower than your lowest threshold!

Real Estate Investment is not for sissies!

After a difficult week, I now need to write a blog which I promised will always be positive. I have decided to list all the difficult things that happened and turn them into a positive.

This week I started the process of selling a property which cost me dearly, fortunately I learnt a number of lessons in this process. Firstly, I bought an investment property for an emotional and not a business reason. Secondly, I went into a partnership trusting someones word and not doing it legally.

Two years ago a partner and I bought a beautiful old Victorian style house which had been badly neglected, the idea being to turn it into a guest house which would hopefully pay it's own bond and other costs and after a year or two start making a small profit. The agreement was that I would invest a substantial amount to bankroll the renovations and my partner would extend the bond on one of his other properties to pay his half of the renovations. Well I should have insisted that we open an account in which we both deposit our share of the renovation up front, but I trusted him to live up to his word. Renovations started by breaking the house and making it totally inhabitable, soon after this was accomplished my cash ran out and everything stopped, I was asked to bankroll the renovations further because of his current (over)exposure the bank was not prepared to loan him anything else. Well, fortunately I started to see the writing on the wall and was not prepared to spend anymore. He has now finally offered to "buy" me out, which really means he commits to pay the bond and will pay me about 25% of my initial investment back in 12 months time. The biggest positive outcome from this mess was that I decided to move to RE/MAX in the middle of this mess!

Many other people burn their fingers while investing in property and I found this story fascinating Real Estate Investing Is Easy Right?? In short this guy buys a property as an investment that he renovates and then tries borrow against the new value only to then find out that a portion of his dwelling in on his neighbour's property.

Yet another sale of mine was rejected by the banks this week. I felt so sorry for the buyers, they are so keen to get away from their current living conditions. They are living in a hostel and although they have a large living area they are surrounded by many other people. They have sent their daughter away to live with her grandmother in fear that she might be raped in these overcrowded conditions. They were going to buy the property in partnership with another couple and this way they qualified but the other couple had some bad payments. Looking at the big picture this was probably better in the long run, if the partner was a bad payer he could have gotten them in deep financial trouble in future.

Sad new was the death of Mama Africa - Miriam Makeba. She was another example of the miracle of South Africa. She was treated very badly by the previous government, but when democracy came to South Africa she came home with happiness and not bitterness and hate.

Well at least I ended the week on a good note - I was invited to go and see Beauty and the Beast and really enjoyed it.

This is embarrassing!

Today is the 9th of November, my last post was four months ago! This is certainly NOT the way to go. What has happened in these last four months?

1. The property market has gotten even worse internationally.
2. Stock markets the world over are bleeding, I personally must have lost about 20% of my estate - fortunately it is only paper losses at the moment.
3. The Rand has also taken a hammering and lost quite some value - making my next overseas trip so much more expensive!

On a personal level, from the eternal optimist:

1. I've had at least one sale per month since I started with RE/MAX, of which only two have not qualified for finance.
2. I seem to be working even harder but it's starting to get a bit smarter too.
3. I went to Vietnam in September, my first overseas trip in more than ten years! This is only the first of many!

Although I have not been writing in this blog I have thought about it constantly (guilt) and I think writing a travel blog while in Vietnam is forcing me to get to this one. I have been struggling with the format I would like this blog to take, I would like to keep it focused on real estate but I would also like to give you a glimpse into my life, so you can get to know me a little better. So the idea will be to use the titles of my blogs cleverly so you would be able to distinguish business from pleasure.

I hope you enjoy reading the ravings of a realtor who really believes that she has found the best job in the world and that you will write back sometimes.

Caroline