This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Imelda Collins, who is selling her house in Ireland via an online raffle. Each entry is 5 euros (about $6.75), and people can buy multiple entries. The drawing is scheduled for Thursday, May 22, at 10 a.m. local time. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m from Ireland, and my husband is from Italy. We’ve lived back and forth between the two countries for a number of years.
In 2022, I bought this home near Manorhamilton, a small town about 20 minutes east of Sligo, because we were going to stay in Ireland full-time.
It’s a two-bedroom house on 1.75 acres. I paid €133,000 (about $150,000), which was well over asking, but that’s just what the market was. I estimate I put about €150,000 ($170,000) into the home as well — we completely gutted it.
The area is just stunning. It has the most amazing views and mountains all around. We’re on a countryside road, and I barely see three cars a day. I love hearing birdsong. I love how we’re out in the country but still so close to a city.
Now, our situation has changed. My heart is in Italy. My husband’s family is in Italy. I got used to living there, with the amazing food, weather, and wine. That’s where we belong right now.
It’s really difficult to get a property in Ireland; there are hardly any homes for sale. It took me years to get on the property ladder.
I thought it would be really nice to give somebody the opportunity to win a home for the price of a latte.
Holding a raffle to sell my home seemed like a win for both me and the buyer
A year ago, I read online about a lady in Dublin who raffled off her apartment because she was moving to Paris. I thought that was kind of similar to my situation. I reached out to her a year ago, so this has been taking shape for a while. She’s the one who showed me the Raffall platform for raffles and explained what was possible.
Selling it the normal route would be easier, but I thought it was a cool idea and wanted to try something new. Also, if the raffle succeeds, I hope to make more money than if I sold it traditionally.
With today’s market, I would expect to get around €300,000 ($340,000). It’s so hard to predict an exact figure, but that seems to be where I’d land.
There are a lot of costs associated with the raffle. I’ve paid a marketing professional to help me, I’ve run national ads in newspapers for seven weeks, I’ve paid for a photographer and drone videographer. Then, when it’s all done, Raffall will take 10% commission on all the sales as well.
Even with all that, I expect to come in higher. Some people don’t understand all those costs and just say, “Oh, she’s sold 150,000 tickets, so she’ll be taking in €900,000.” It’s not that simple. (Editor’s note: Collins declined to share exactly how much she spent promoting the raffle. She also declined to share how many people had entered, but as of 1:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 23, 298,624 paid and free tickets had been issued, according to Raffall.)
I’ve laid out all the costs on my website. I’m paying for the legal fees associated with the transfer of the property, for example.
I want the winner to just pay the ticket for the home. There will be no extra costs whatsoever to the winner — none. I just thought that was fair.
The raffle has taken over my life, but it’s been the adventure of a lifetime
The lady who raffled off her Dublin apartment told me the process would take over my entire life, and she was right. Sometimes it’s caused me great stress. In the evenings, I come home from work and then I’m on the laptop for hours.
For months, I’ve been researching ways to get the word out, pitching myself to local newspapers in Ireland and the UK. I’ve joined Facebook groups where I thought there’d be interest, like one for Americans moving to Ireland. I even did research on where the most Irish descendants were in the US to target those cities.
You can enter the raffle from wherever you are as long as it’s legal in your country. I can only see names on the Raffall page, not nationalities. I know that I’ve been featured in the New Zealand press. It’s so fantastic to see the word is spreading.
It’s all overwhelming. Before the raffle, I was never in the media. I was never even on social media. I will be happy for it to come to an end. It was a long seven months, but it’s time now to find out who’s winning.
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