With the pound plummeting and mortgage rates through the roof, how do you fancy winning a house for the price of a coffee?
Declan Garrett, 38, and wife Leoni Webb, 35, from Weston-super-Mare, north Somerset, are auctioning off their four-bedroom family home for just £3 a ticket.
With seven kids under the age of 12, the couple were struggling to fit the whole family round the dinner table and on the sofas to watch TV in their four-bedroom converted bungalow.
After repeatedly being turned down for a mortgage due to the size of their brood, the blended family-of-nine have opted for a unconventional way of selling their home.
The couple did a bit of research online and realised they could auction off 300,000 tickets for £3-a-pop to raise the funds for a new home.
‘It was just proving impossible to go down the conventional route and the current volatility around interest rates and the economy really concerns us,’ teacher Declan said.
Leoni Webb, 35, from Weston-super-Mare, north Somerset, and her husband Declan Garrett, 38, are auctioning off their four-bedroom family home for just £3 a ticket
After repeatedly being turned down for a mortgage due to the size of their brood, the blended family-of-nine have opted for a unconventional way of selling their home
The couple did a bit of research online and realised they could auction off 300,000 tickets for £3-a-pop to raise the funds for a new home (pictured, the garden of the property)
The property features a large living room, which has been decorated with soft grey and pops of baby pink
‘In a few years most of our kids will be teenagers so we need as much space as we can get.
‘Our fixed rate runs out next year so it compounds our concerns and takes us even further away from being able to use the conventional route.
‘The main problem with mortgages is that affordability checks suggest that no one with seven kids could afford any reasonable mortgage.
‘But they fail to take into account we are already paying one and could afford more.
Meanwhile the large kitchen is flooded with light from a window looking out onto the property’s driveway
The property has a large white kitchen with windows allowing light to flood into the space (left and right)
Meanwhile the four-bedroom home also has a utility room space, where there is a washer and dryer
‘Plus, even if we got one with the current volatility quite a few houses on our street have taken a really long time to sell in the past few years.’
Mortgage rates, which have been rising since the Bank of England started to increase interest in December, shot up sharply after the government’s mini-budget last month.
Kwasi Kwarteng’s promise of huge, unfunded tax cuts led to expectations the Bank will have to raise interest rates more aggressively than previously thought — leading to mortgage providers rising their loans accordingly.
With millions of Brits facing hundreds of extra pounds in repayments each month, one lucky family could be in with the chance of being mortgage free.