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I moved in with my future wife, Leoni, in March 2020. We had known each other for a few years and were casually dating online, but I lived in Wigan, a large town in the northwest of England, while she lived over 150 miles away in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare. Both of us have children from previous marriages and were finding it difficult as single parents during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, at the beginning of the year, we decided to take a leap and move in together.
After moving in together, we realized pretty quickly we wanted to carry on the relationship. In August, we traveled to Gretna Green in Scotland to get married. Shortly after the wedding, I got a teaching position in a nearby town and moved my three children to live with Leoni and her four kids permanently.
The move was great; our children are close in age so they all get on really well together. The only tricky thing was space. Initially, the house had three bedrooms, but we spent a fair bit of money putting an extension on the side of the property for a bit more living room.
Now we have four bedrooms, with our three boys sharing the largest space and our four daughters sharing two additional rooms upstairs. However, when it comes to the social aspect of being at home, there's not very much space. We struggle to fit all the kids around the dining table or on the couches if we're all watching the TV in the living room.
We have great memories in our house. Before moving in, Leoni came out of a very difficult relationship, in which she would have to move around a lot, so her current home has become like a refuge for her. My own kids don't see their mother very much, so they've become quite attached to the place where they found that additional maternal figure. Moving out has been quite an emotional idea, it wasn't a light decision. However, in a few years, most of our kids will be teenagers, which is a bit of a scary prospect as they'll be much bigger, so we need as much space as we can get.
After making the decision to leave our home, we started to consider how we would finance getting a bigger property for our seven children. It was looking pretty difficult. Leoni knew the process of purchasing a home can be really tough. Plus, quite a few houses on our street have taken a really long time to sell in the past few years.
Leoni originally moved into the property after her divorce, otherwise it would have been very difficult for us to be in this situation, we're both of the generation where it's quite tough to buy a house. I'm currently earning £37,000 ($40,999) and Leoni stopped working earlier this year while she's starting her own business.
Because we're financially responsible for the children, whatever mortgage check we run, regardless of our income or collateral, always comes back and says we can't really afford any sort of mortgage. Instead, Leoni came up with the idea of holding a raffle, which is a type of lottery, and is less restricted in the U.K. than in the U.S. People would buy tickets costing £3 ($3.30) to win the house, while we would receive ninety percent of the sale profits to purchase a new home.
She had previously stumbled across other people raffling off their homes on social media and decided to do some research into the process. Leoni and I came to the conclusion that there's not really a bad outcome, it's a low risk and potentially high reward situation.
We have a minimum of 300,000 tickets to sell, at which point it will become financially viable to be able to give someone the house for £3 ($3.30). However, if we don't make that figure, then the draw will occur anyway and the person who wins will receive all the money that has been raised by the sale, while we remain in our house.
Originally, we contacted a larger raffle website, but we found they had several rules, regulations and extra fees, plus Leoni and I did not feel they were very personable. Instead, we chose a smaller company who made us feel really happy with the process and made sure we were able to check they had all the appropriate licensing for the lottery. The website takes ten percent of the sale if we reach our minimum ticket sales. If the raffle is unsuccessful, they will take 25 percent of the money raised.
I was quite apprehensive about what other people would think of the idea, because it's quite unusual. I was worried about friends, family and my parents thinking it was crazy and potentially judging us, but it's not really been a problem. They have generally been supportive, though we did have to do quite a bit of explaining in terms of how it all works. Many of our loved ones are doubtful that we'll manage to sell enough tickets, but aside from the little bit of money we've spent on advertising, we won't really lose much.
If the raffle is successful, we want to find another home in Weston-super-Mare, where Leoni feels safe, we just want a house to give the children more space. We may move into rented accommodation temporarily, so we can get the winner into the house as soon as possible. It will probably take ten or twelve weeks after the draw to get a move-in date sorted, because we still have to go through the normal process of buying or selling a house, though it will be simpler because there's no moving money around.
So far, we've sold around 10,000 tickets, but the website predicts the majority of our sales will take place in the last few days of the raffle. We are still really hopeful, but quite nervous, because there's not long to go now. It hasn't cost us much, but we've put a lot of time and effort into advertising; making social media posts and handing out flyers. If we don't sell enough tickets, it will feel like a disappointment.
Declan Garrett, 38, and Leoni Webb, 35, are selling raffle tickets to win a four bed converted bungalow in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare situated on the southwest coast of England. You can find out more on Twitter at @HouseRaffleWsM or Facebook and Instagram at @wsmhouseraffle.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Monica Greep.
