A couple trying to sell their home through a prize draw have been forced to scrap the competition two weeks before its closing date.
Nick and Liz Turner, from Middletown, put their £500,000 seven-bedroom home up for sale in an online prize draw to try to sell it so they could move to France.
Last month, they announced that they had not sold enough tickets to be able to offer the house as a prize, but intended to continue the draw with a cash prize.
But this week they received a letter from the Gambling Commission ordering them to stop selling tickets as they needed a licence. The Turners are trying to resolve the issue before the competition’s deadline of December 31.
Nick, 47, said: “They said the way we’d structured the question to enter the draw made it a lottery instead of a prize draw so we’d have to have a lottery licence. We did discuss it all with a lawyer before we started the competition, but the problem is the Gambling Commission has more say than a lawyer.”
The couple have written back to the commission offering to change the question, but have been frustrated by the lack of advice offered to help them resolve the problem.
“The way we set up the site, people could select the answer to the question, so they couldn’t get it wrong,” Nick said. A statement on the commission’s website says: “In response to the downturn in the housing market a small but growing number of homeowners have recently opted to use a prize competition as a method of realising the value of their homes. The commission has been keeping a close eye on the recent developments with such house competitions and warns potential organisers to take note of its guidance and to take independent legal advice before proceeding.”