[LifeStyle] Too good to be true? What it is really like to win a £3m dream home

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If someone approached you on the street and told you that, for just a tenner, you could win the kind of house that would cause Kevin McCloud to collapse into a puddle of adjectives and help raise millions of pounds for charity, you would probably ask what the catch was. But that improbable offering is Omaze’s core business.

Since launching in the UK in April 2020, the organisation has been running prize draws in which, for a relatively small amount of money, you can be in with the chance to win a multimillion-pound dream house. When the draw ends, a chosen charity partner gets the lion’s share of the profits.

The exact odds of winning are unclear – Omaze doesn’t publish precise figures, and the odds get worse as more people enter – but people do win big, and that has kept me interested enough to enter every competition since it first popped up on my Instagram feed. While I have only won a £10 Amazon voucher, it hasn’t stopped me dreaming about what my life would be like if my ticket was drawn – I’d probably rent out the house as a luxurious holiday home, giving family and close friends free usage (off-peak weekends only – I’m not made of money), before eventually selling it.

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The po[CENSORED]rity of these draws – each receives hundreds of thousands, if not millions of entries and it’s still growing – tells us a few things about the UK. Namely that, as a nation, we love escapism and the thought of a big win transforming our lives; look to the tradition of doing the pools, having a flutter on the Grand National and getting a ticket for the national lottery.

From another angle, it illustrates the sheer ridiculousness of the housing market, where the greatest prize we can comprehend is a roof over our head, albeit a fancy one. It is certainly why, as I approach my 25th year as a renter, I have been so committed to entering these giveaways. There is very little chance of me winning, but, while the cost of living crisis continues, interest rates push 5% and inflation remains double that, there is little chance of me being able to afford to buy a house in London, either. The average property price based on sales in the capital last year was just over £730,000, according to Zoopla. Alternatively, renting has cost me the best part of £150,000 since I moved to London in 2006. Who wouldn’t dream of a golden ticket out of that scenario?

I’m far from the only person daydreaming in this way. “I want to help my granddaughters get on the property ladder,” says one Omaze Trustpilot reviewer. “People like me can’t afford to get on the property ladder. This is maybe my only opportunity to own my own house,” says another.

Until recently, Kevin Johnson, a 34-year-old carpenter from north London, was also prone to daydreaming about life as the owner of a luxury home. But he no longer has to wonder – he has just won a £3m house in an Omaze prize draw.

Johnson and his wife, Dee, along with their four kids, will soon be moving into a beautiful four-bed Victorian semi just 15 minutes from where they now rent a three-bed flat. As part of the prize, as well as any fees and stamp duty being covered, they have also won £100,000 to help them settle in. “I don’t think it’s ever going to sink in, to be honest,” says Dee.

Johnson has been entering the dream-house competition for about two years and never really thought he would win, but was happy to be giving money to charity. More recently, he says, he had been practising a more positive approach, going as far as cutting out a photograph of the London house from an Omaze newspaper advertisement and showing it to his youngest, telling him it is where the family would be moving to.

“The parking permit for my van is running out at our current address, so I said I wasn’t going to replace it until the house had been drawn because I had a feeling I was going to win,” he says.

On the day of the draw, Johnson received a call from the Omaze team telling him he had won something, but not exactly what, and that they were on their way to his house. He immediately called his wife, who works in childcare and education part-time and in healthcare at a hospital. She was sceptical. “As no one was in, they went to the pub around the corner to wait for Kevin to get home. I thought: ‘Who does that?’ It definitely sounded like a scam.”

But Johnson recognised the Omaze presenter’s voice from the TV adverts, and he and the children were soon greeted by the team, complete with a mock key to hand over, and a camera and lighting crew ready to film a reaction video. Johnson later called Dee to tell her the news. On her way home from work on a packed train, she took the video call, but couldn’t find her headphones to take it in private.

“He was using this voice I’d never heard before, he was shaking,” she says. “The whole carriage heard what had happened and they all cheered and applauded,” she says. “I got off at my stop, but sat on the platform for 20 minutes to take it in.”

Apart from looking forward to having more space, the couple, who have been married for almost 13 years, say that very little about their day-to-day lives will change – they will be staying in their jobs, which they love, and, as the new house is so close to their old one, their children can still go to the same schools. In the short term, aside from starting their mortgage-free lives, Johnson is excited about kitting out the annexe in the garden – “a big TV and a sofa, nothing crowded,” he says – but the longer term is packed with freedom and opportunity.

“We have dreams and desires about setting up our own business, so we have flexibility with that because of this win,” says Dee. “And the children definitely have more security, too. It’s a big win for them.”

“Seeing the children living in a house like that … I can’t put that into words,” says Johnson.

link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/04/too-good-to-be-true-what-it-is-really-like-to-win-a-3m-dream-home