Recently, I received a forwarded email from a friend entitled “The $11.00 Houseâ€. I thought that maybe I would see a picture of some random homeless type with a cardboard box house. I clicked on it, expecting a cardboard structure, with a cardboard mailbox and a cardboard welcome mat. Instead, I see a beautifully renovated historic two-story house with an eleven-dollar price tag.
David Stockburger, a former lawyer, has decided to create a contest where a worthy recipient would get his recently restored house for the price tag of eleven dollars. In addition, the people who enter must also provide a reason why they should own the house. Based on a minimum of 25000 entries, the contest would net David and his wife Ester a reasonable market rate for the house. Here is the catch: David will close down the contest and refund all the entry fees unless the minimum of 25000 entries is reached by the December 31, 2008 closing date.
As of November 22, the contest has received a paltry 156 entries. I am not entirely sure why the contest has received so few submissions. The contest itself has also received good publicity with local coverage on radio and television new casts. I suspect the written submission may deter some people, as they deem themselves ‘unworthy’ of being given a home for such a low cost.
Sadly, I doubt that David and Ester will reach the minimum required entries. Personally, I love the idea of the contest and I think it shows a lot of innovation and nerve to have attempted it. I am somewhat reminded of another contest, where a man traded a paper clip for a house. I am not sure if you will see a new trend develop in this method of creatively selling property, but given the current housing market I wouldn’t be overly surprised.  Check out their website to find out more about the houses’ story.
Tags: $11 House, Smibs Inc.
I think the simple reason for the poor participation is that at first sight it looks too much like a scam. The relatively unappealing and text heavy site doesn’t help. Most people don’t want to read that much to figure out if this is for real or not. The pre-renovation pictures also don’t help to instill confidence at a first glance. I don’t doubt that the got a lot of traffic, given the local ‘hype’. Therefore I am pretty sure that a a nice site design that presents the idea in a concise and more appealing way would have probably helped a lot.
The Edmonton Journal ran an article today (December 15, 2008) regarding the $11 house:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/house+that+affordable/1076660/story.html
Damn Journal, always poaching the Smibs blog posts.