Romanian Property News

This is probably one of the most appealing headings that I’ve seen for a while – getting a house for a fiver. You can’t avoid a sceptical chuckle “yeah, right…”, but cannot refuse your curiosity, so you may as well have a look and humour yourself. You’re guaranteed to have a laugh at some point in the process, so why not?

What is the story? As expected, there’s no free lunch. The Own A House for Five Pounds website (catchy name) is running a lottery-like competition: the tickets cost up to £5 pounds and the prizes are actual houses. There isn’t a lot going on at the moment, as the site only includes three houses, one of them…somewhere in a sunny place, judging by the pictures (there is not further information regarding the location), and two of them in Bulgaria.

One thing you do need is patience. The website, in spite of the fact that is designed by a company called TidyEcommerce, takes (literally) minutes to load each page, so you might want to open several pages (in new windows) to begin with, make a cup of tea, then come back and get ready. Once the pages load, don’t expect loads of information; in fact, don’t expect any information, beyond a blurry picture for one of the Bulgarian houses, some more detailed pictures confirming what the text says (i.e. derelict), and…nothing on the sunny location dream property which is apparently worth £250k. But there’s more…

It’s tricky to do the maths with the Bulgarian houses, but the £250k seems to be getting a nice profit to the seller; the website still has 249957 available for sale for a price of £2 (or at least that was the figure today, 8th of November). Given the proximity to 250000, it looks like the gathered sum would be doubling the actual price. Should you be short of cash for lottery, you can buy some spare parts from the ebay shop of the website owners (madmadscorpioman…yet another attractive corporate brand) and you’ll get a ticket for free.

The last but not least amusing bit is the terms and conditions page. In spite of the fact that no actual details are provided about the property, the T&C state that “Although we will describe the property and its appliances in as much detail and as accurately as possible, we accept no responsibility for the condition of the property or the appliances belonging to the property”. For a description that does not include location, measurements, more than one picture, the concept of accuracy is clearly misused here…Also, the last paragraph under this heading also discretely indicates that they might have been (badly) reproduced from somewhere else “As the seller of the house needs to be in a position to be able to move out within 6 weeks of the conveyance process commencing, they should not be involved in a chain.” While two of the properties are nowhere near the condition where somebody can move in them, you would think that the owners of the website are aware of the condition of the seller (whether they are or not currently involved in a chain).
Enjoy and let me know what you think of it. :)

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