Weird and wacky ways to sell your home

Donna Ferguson takes a look at the strangest approaches desperate homeowners have actually taken in a bid to sell of their properties.

What lengths would you go to if you were desperate to sell your home?

Would you offer it up in a raffle for £25? Or pose naked in the bath for newspapers, holding a teapot? How about walking your local streets, advertising your home on a sandwich board? These are just some of the crazy things that homeowners have actually done to try to sell their homes on this side of the Atlantic. And don’t get me started on the Americans...

The Youtube music video/Naked man with teapot approach

In the last year, property prices in some parts of Scotland have fallen by more than 10%.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that a homeowner in Fife recently resorted to making a You Tube music video in an attempt to sell his house. He then went a step further, posing naked in the bath with a teapot for the newspapers in an attempt to bring to life some of the lyrics.

In the video, which caught the media’s attention after crime writer Ian Rankin tweeted about it to his 40,000 followers, he begs the viewer: “Please buy my house! We haven’t sold by conventional means so have gone for a gimmick to bring home the beans.” Catchy.

Effectiveness rating: Sadly, it still hasn’t sold. But he has raised money for Shelter through his video and it is quite funny to watch, so I’ll give it a three out of five.

The sandwich board advertising approach

Last year, a man from Bristol got so desperate to sell his £350,000 house, he decided to traipse up and down his local streets wearing a sandwich board to advertise it.

It begged the reader: ‘Buy my house! 3 bed Vic - St Andrews’. Apparently the owner, a self-employed property investor, got the idea from some friends who said it was commonplace in Sydney. Do Aussies really walk along the street thinking: "Shall I buy a sandwich? Sorry, no, I mean, shall I buy a house?"

Effectiveness rating: Clearly, this is only one for people who are, ahem, bored of using an estate agent but I guess it could work in theory. Still, factoring in the inclement weather and the fact that you look like a pillock, I’d have to give this a two out of five.

The ‘I’ll pay you to buy my house’ approach

At the height of the credit crunch back in 2008, a couple from Nottinghamshire was so frantic to sell their house, they offered buyers £500 a month towards their mortgage payments for 18 months, plus £2,000 cashback.

They had struggled to sell the four-bed cottage in the village of Kimberley through traditional methods for a year and knocked £20,000 off the £360,000 asking price, but to no avail.

Effectiveness rating: Builders offer this sort of gimmick all the time, so on first glance you might think: why shouldn’t you do the same? But if your buyer’s mortgage lender finds out about such incentives, it’s likely to affect their valuation of the property. Not one you should publicise too widely, which means I think it’s unlikely to succeed. Can I give this one zero out of five?

The scorned and bitter victim of adultery approach

This one is my favourite, and it comes from over the pond.

A “scorned” and “bitter” mother-of-two from Oregon used her husband’s affair to try to sell her home back in July. Instead of the usual For Sale sign, she put up this sign saying: “Husband left us for a 22-year-old... House for sale by the scorned, slightly bitter, newly single owner.” Apparently when she told her husband about her plan to put up the sign, he thought it was hilarious. “Neither of us saw it as airing our dirty laundry,” she told the Daily Mail. “It’s not about revenge. We just want to sell our home.”

Effectiveness rating: I don’t think this would make anyone more likely to buy your house but at least you might get some dates out of it. Just imagine if everyone did it though - how much more fun it would be to walk down a street where there were houses for sale! For the comedy factor alone, a four out of five from me.

The £25 raffle approach

Back in 2008, we reported that the Cheltenham ‘underground house’ from Grand Designs was being raffled off at a price of £25 per ticket. The idea was that you bought a ticket for £25, answered an easy competition question and were in for a chance of winning the house once a certain number of tickets had been sold.

This ensured the owner got the asking price, plus it paid for the cost of setting up and running the competition. As a concept, it captured the imagination of credit-crunched homeowners, and suddenly people were raffling their houses off up and down the country.

Unfortunately for such owners, the Competition Commission decided to get involved, stopping the contests before the critical numbers of tickets had been sold and creating administration nightmares for the owners who had to offer refunds on sold tickets.

Effectiveness rating: There is now legal guidance from the Law Society and Competition Commission regarding house competitions although I’ve never heard of one actually working out for the owner.

If any lovemoney.com readers know anyone who has done this and succeeded in selling their house, please let us know using the comments box below. In the meantime, bearing in mind the fact that owners incur lots of legal and administrative set-up costs and might not sell enough tickets to meet their asking price, another zero out of five from me.

What about you? Have you attempted anything out of the ordinary in order to sell your home? How did it go? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below.

More on buying and selling property:

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Dealing with estate agents

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How to beat Stamp Duty

The cheapest and most expensive places to buy property

What to do when a home survey goes wrong

When should you stop renting and buy?

Five reasons you should never buy leasehold

How to deal with property chain problems

How to rent out your home