After selling out in September and then being suddenly halted just before picking a winner due to an investigation by the UK's Gambling Commission, the Oldborough Retreat Devon property competition has yet to be resolved. Unfortunately, it seems these problems are affecting a large number of other similar house competitions across the UK and Ireland.

Dozens of win a house competitions were launched on the back of the apparent success of the Devon property with fishing competition organised by British couple Brian and Wendy Wilshaw. The couple sold all 46,000 tickets at £25 each to give away their £1 million Devon estate. The vast majority of other house competitions were apparently rushed to launch and closely mimicked the structure of the Devon property competition: requiring players to answer a simple set of questions before buying a ticket.

As we reported in October last year, the Commission has written to a number of organisers asking them to demonstrate their competition was indeed legal, and not a game of chance or lottery. While some competitions have since been postponed pending these discussions, a number had to be cancelled due to their sudden inability to process payments with PayPal. In other cases, the legal uncertainty simply meant the organisers were forced to cancel their house competition, either due to lack of resources to support their case, not being able to wait long enough for these undertainties to become resolved, or simply because they lost momentum overall.

On a more positive note, one house competition in Spain successfully gave away one property to a British couple. The competition, organised by Scott's Hotels in Mallorca, aims to give away a total of 10 properties - a mix of studios and houses worth between 200,000 and 400,000 euros.

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