Win a House Competitions Closing This Weekend: Elite, BOTB and 7 Days Odds

Three of the UK's biggest guaranteed house draws all close over the same weekend. Elite Competitions' £2.1 million Lytham St Annes home is drawn live at 9pm on Saturday 31 October, BOTB's £1.3 million Surrey house closes at 23:59 the same night, and 7 Days Performance's £675,000 Nottinghamshire home closes at 8:45pm on Sunday 1 November.

All three cap their entries, so unlike Omaze you can work out your real odds. On the same £10, the best of the three gives you nearly five times better odds than the worst, and the one with the cheapest ticket is not the one that wins.

The Three Draws at a Glance

	Elite	BOTB	7 Days
Prize	5-bed seafront home, Lytham St Annes, furnished, stamp duty and fees paid	5-bed home in the Surrey countryside	6-bed detached home in Nottinghamshire plus a VW Tiguan R
Headline value	£2,100,000	£1,300,000	£675,000 (house)
Cash alternative	£1,500,000	£900,000	£450,000
Ticket price	19p	£1	£1.99
Maximum entries	29,999,999	3,149,999	599,999
Sold so far (28 Oct)	69%	81%	65%
Closes	Sat 31 Oct, 9pm live draw	Sat 31 Oct, 23:59	Sun 1 Nov, 8:45pm (draw 9pm)

Prize details, entry caps and closing times come from each operator's own listing, which we track live. All three are guaranteed: the house is given away however many tickets sell. Elite caps each player at 7,895 tickets and 7 Days at 1,500.

Your Odds for £10

Ticket price on its own tells you very little. What matters is how many entries £10 buys against how many entries there are in total.

• 7 Days: £10 buys 5 tickets. At a sell-out of 599,999, that is 1 in 120,000.
• BOTB: £10 buys 10 tickets. At a sell-out of 3,149,999, that is 1 in 315,000.
• Elite: £10 buys 52 tickets. At a sell-out of 29,999,999, that is 1 in 576,923.

Elite's 19p ticket looks like the bargain, but the pool is ten times BOTB's and fifty times 7 Days'. If none of the three sold another ticket from today, your odds would be better: about 1 in 78,000 at 7 Days, 1 in 254,000 at BOTB and 1 in 396,000 at Elite. Sales always pick up in the final days, so treat those as the best case and the sell-out figures as the realistic one. You can run any other stake through our odds calculator.

Which Is the Best Value?

Our Value Ratio (VR) measures what an operator collects for every £1 of prize it gives away. Lower is better. Measured against the cash alternative, which is what most winners take and the only figure that is not an estimate, at a full sell-out:

	Max takings	VR vs cash	VR vs headline prize
7 Days	£1,194,000	2.65	1.68
BOTB	£3,150,000	3.50	2.42
Elite	£5,700,000	3.80	2.71

For context, the median VR across the 2,531 live draws from 110 operators we track today is 2.40, and the median for cash draws is 2.00. On the cash measure, all three house draws are poorer value than a typical comp, which is normal for houses: the operator is paying for marketing, legal work and a property it has to buy and hold. 7 Days comes closest to the market median, and its headline figure includes the Tiguan, which the operator values at around £34,000 on top of the house.

None of the three has sold out yet. If ticket sales stopped today, VR against the cash would fall to 1.72 at 7 Days, 2.61 at Elite and 2.82 at BOTB. Your odds improve in the same way: an unsold ticket is good for the entrant.

What About Raffle House and Omaze?

Two other big names are in the same window, but they work differently.

• Raffle House is listed by Loquax as closing on 31 October with a £2.3 million North West London home at £10 a ticket. Loquax reports that this draw is not guaranteed: if too few tickets sell, the winner receives 70% of the takings, net of costs, instead of the house. We could not confirm the terms on Raffle House's own site, so check them before you buy.
• Omaze's £4 million Yorkshire house closed to online entries on 25 October and is drawn on 29 October, with the winner notified on 30 October. Omaze has no cap on entries, so nobody can tell you the odds. We cover the key dates and the free entry route in our Yorkshire house draw guide, and why the odds cannot be calculated in Omaze house draw odds explained.

Before You Buy a Ticket

1. Look at the cap, not the price. Divide the maximum entries by how many tickets your budget buys. That one number tells you more than any headline.
2. Use the cash alternative to judge value. A £2.1 million bundle with a £1.5 million cash option is a £1.5 million prize to most winners.
3. Check whether the draw is guaranteed. Elite, BOTB and 7 Days all say the house goes regardless of sales. Draws that fall back to a share of takings can pay out far less than the advertised prize.
4. Remember the free route. Most UK prize draws offer a free entry route, usually by post. With these deadlines days away, a postcard sent today may not arrive in time.
5. Set a limit. Even at the best odds here, a £10 stake has well over a 99.99% chance of winning nothing.

If your aim is to win something rather than chase a house, smaller draws with low entry caps give much better odds for the same money. Our best odds competitions table ranks every live draw by your chance of winning, and you can see each operator's full list on its page: Elite, BOTB and 7 Days.