New listings have been increasing, but the U.S. housing market is still in the doldrums with more sellers than buyers, giving buyers the advantage and forcing price decreases and other concessions from sellers such as agreeing to pay the college tuition of the buyer’s eldest child.
Sweet revenge after those COVID years where buyers were outbidding each other just to get inside for an open house.
There may be a similar issue for sellers overseas as the New York Times reported a couple of months ago that one Imelda Collins decided to sell her house in the north of Ireland through an online raffle.
What an innovative idea! Anyone could take a shot to buy her two-bedroom house on 1.75 acres for only $6.70 (the cost of a ticket). Hey, the house was even being offered fully furnished!
Ms. Collins hoped to net more than she could with a traditional sale and, since this seemed like the kind of thing with scam written all over it, Ms. Collins tried to prove she was legit by setting up her raffle through Raffall.com, a British technology company that hosts such raffles.
Raffall’s business took off during COVID when people bored sitting at home pretending that they were working took a shot at landing “match worn” sports team jerseys (eeeeeew - - do they wash them first?), concert tickets, mail order brides, and similar items, but never a whole house.
Under British law, raffles are viewed as “prize competitions” rather than unlawful gambling as long as the outcome is determined by the participants’ “skill, judgment or knowledge,” so Raffall requires that ticket buyers correctly answer an entry question.
Ms. Collins’s question: “Which color is associated with Ireland?”
Really? Sounds like the Irish version of “What color is Abraham Lincoln’s white horse.”
Ms. Collins hoped to sell 150,000 tickets at five British pounds per ticket (750,000 pounds for you humanities majors) or around $1 million.
If she achieved that goal, Ms. Collins had to give the house away per the raffle terms. If she did not hit that target number, she had the option to give the winner half of the ticket revenue (the other half being distributed 10 percent to Raffall, 40 percent to Ms. Collins plus she keeps the house) or, she could go through with the sale and keep more of the revenue for herself.
The house was valued a few years ago at about €300,000, or $336,000. Ms Collins also had some out-of-pocket costs (raffle promotion costs such as newspaper ads, stamp duties, legal fees, Ireland’s capital gains tax of 33 percent, and airplane tickets so she could get out of town ahead of the police).
And the winner is …
Kathleen Spangler, a 29-year-old U.S. Marine who bought three tickets and threatened to invade the country right after she is done invading Greenland if she did not get the house.
Don’t you wish now that you had bought a ticket?!
And what about Ms. Collins? She ended up selling 206,815 tickets, grossing 1,034,705 pounds (about $1.4 million) and is “thinking strongly about a career in marketing” (or perhaps Ponzi schemes) as others have asked her for advice about selling their homes by raffle.
Full disclosure. Ms. Collins and I are in negotiations to move forward with a few ideas for other raffles.
You may be looking for Mr. or Ms. Right. Why bother with all that dating, uncertainty and exhausting romance when it could lead nowhere? Your odds of eternal happiness are likely to work out just as well with a raffle. Besides, the money you raise can pay for the wedding.
Is your business looking to hire and overwhelmed with an AI-generated resume tsunami? Based on your prior hires, you probably cannot do worse with a raffle and can save on any headhunter’s fee. Added benefit; the sums you raise can cover the legal fees to cover any damage caused by your new hire.
As long as I have hit the ground scamming, this may be a good time to let our readers know that I have decided to think even bigger.
That is why I am proud to announce that this newsletter will be issuing its very own cryptocurrency meme coin, which will be known as “Official Brilliant $PROSE” and will be hosted on the AARP blockchain.
Yes, it is true that I do not know what that last sentence even means, but Official Brilliant $PROSE is meant to celebrate my iconic “Fight, Fight, Fight” rise from the ashes of a legal career and celebrate my newfound retirement life.
What the heck is a meme coin? Good question.
According to the website Investopedia, meme coins are altcoins (cryptocurrencies that are not Bitcoin) named after “trends, humorous or fun topics, or anything else someone can think of” and are “created without a use other than being tradable and convertible.”
So, someone creates a token on an existing blockchain, begins marketing it and, says Investopedia, similar to other cryptocurrencies, they “generally do not have anything backing them or generating value other than belief, hype, speculation, and hope.”
Let me see if I understand.
Basically, they are about nothing, do nothing and have no inherent value (sounds a lot like this newsletter so maybe I am in the right place!).
Our newsletter fans (assuming there are any) can own a piece of history with our historic meme coin, which will be available in lieu of creativity on this newsletter.
You really are a nobody without a meme coin. There is a Dogecoin, an Official $Trump coin, an Official Melania Meme, a Peanut the Squirrel coin and, of course, a Fartcoin.
Some whiners complain that since money can be dropped into the meme coin fountain anonymously, certain autocrats, Middle Eastern oil sheiks, drug kingpins and foreign ne'er-do-wells could be trying to buy influence through meme coins issued by political figures.
No way; these guys are just being awesome with no strings attached but, as a public service, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, these swell people can take the heat off themselves and their politician friends and instead invest in the Official Brilliant $PROSE coin.
Maybe that trend has already started among the rich and infamous since The Wall Street Journal indicated today as breaking news that the Official Brilliant $PROSE meme coin has quickly passed the DOGE meme coin in value.
And we haven’t even fired anybody. Yet.
In order to close the deal, we will be offering a private dinner at Wendy’s for the top 25 investors in the Official Brilliant $PROSE meme coin. Details to follow.
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