Pair raffle home for £25 a ticket

The detached house in Wisbech has been valued at £270,000

A couple are selling £25 raffle tickets for their £270,000 five-bedroom home to help finance a dream.

Punters entering the draw could win the Cambridgeshire home of Niall and Karen Hughes in Wisbech.

The pair moved there from Florida, where Mr Hughes was a butler and estate manager, but have not managed to find suitable employment.

They now want to sell their home fully furnished to finance their dream of running a hotel on the Norfolk coast.

Mr Hughes said he got the idea after watching a home being given away in a competition on Channel 4.

"I just thought this is something we could do and someone gets the chance of owning this great house for a mere £25.

"We make a profit, the winner gets the house, everyone is happy," he said.

The raffle has to be run as a competition. Anyone buying a ticket will have to answer the question "What grows on apple trees?".

Niall and Karen Hughes want to sell up to run a hotel in Norfolk

Tree Tops, with five bedrooms, two hot tubs and a full-sized pool room, has been valued by estate agents at £270,000.

Mr Hughes added that he had taken advice from a gaming association, solicitor and an accountant on how to run the competition.

The couple said money raised from ticket sales would be kept in a separate account until a local dignitary or celebrity drew the winning name out of a tumbler.

If they failed to raise enough money then they would return the cash to everyone who had entered the competition, Mr Hughes said.