Sunday, December 20, 2009

Unintended Problems For "House Raffle" Winners

Have you seen any of those stories over the last year or so about people who own big, expensive homes (usually valued over $1 million) and who need to sell them but can't find a buyer (because of the economy), so they decide to raffle them off instead? The owners then sell raffle tickets for like $50 or $100 apiece in hopes of making enough money thereby to approximate what the house might have sold for in better times. And then some "lucky winner" gets a million dollar house for a hundred dollars. Seems like win-win situation, huh?

Well, this 2 minute story from MSNBC embedded below reveals that the "winners" actually get stuck with huge tax bills and other expenses that they then find hard to escape themselves because they're unable to sell the house either.

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