Click Your Way To A New House

A new website, Play4Property.com, is one of the few sources of good news to recently hit a beleaguered real estate industry.

[Business News]

A new website is giving away dream homes.

What you need to get one: an Internet connection and a good eye.

Play an online game, win a house. Really? It may sound too good to be true, but it’s not.

A new website, Play4Property.com, is one of the few sources of good news to recently hit a beleaguered real estate industry.

Here’s how it works: you register at the site, pay a small entry fee and play a game of skill called Spot the Ball.
In the game, you’re presented with a picture of people playing a sport—like soccer, for example—but the ball has been digitally, and seamlessly, removed. The players in the photo are looking at where the ball used to be and you have to click where it is.

Sound super-easy? It’s not. See, you’re aiming for the exact center of the ball so it requires good reasoning skills and perhaps a simple understanding of high school geometry to do well.

To make it even more legitimate, a lawyer, in the presence of a sports expert, analyzes the original photographs to determine the precise center of the ball. Overkill? Not really. After all, great houses are on the line.

There are two types of competitions you can enter in, the main competition, where The person who clicks closest to the absolute center will win a house, or you can play the instant win competition, where if you pick the exact co-ordinates of the ball, you instantly win a prize, like a laptop.

And, no, the houses are not rickety outhouses in the middle of the Yukon worth only $50. The value of the available house depends on the amount collected in entry fees. The value of the property you get as your winning prize is based upon the number of players you have competed with. Properties range in value up to $5 million.

Anthony Davis, Play4Property.com’s managing director, says that the odds of winning at his site are as low as 1 in 15,000. That’s much better than your chances of wining the lottery—about 1 in 120 million.

And unlike the lottery, this game actually requires the player to think. It’s not all about luck, which, Davis says, makes it much more fun to play. If you are the best at playing, you will win.

But the game isn’t only for those hoping to win a new house. Sellers, too, can use the site to market their home. And for some people, this could be a viable, carefree option. Instead of wondering about buyers’ financing or dealing with annoying open houses, sellers simply upload a description of the house and some photos, and wait for players to start clicking.

And there’s a third way to get involved: the site is looking to partner with affiliates who can earn money by securing properties for marketing in the property pool, and getting players involved.

Traditional? Far from it. A clever idea? Definitely. 

Perhaps new innovative channels like Play4Property.com are exactly what this limping industry needs.

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