For £5, up to 150,000 entrants can enter for a chance to win the flat mortgage-free with all their legal and tax costs paid for, as well as £10,000 in cash to help move in.
If the winner of the raffle decides against taking the flat, they can accept an alternative £300,000 cash prize and Sapsted will contribute 5pc of the raffle earnings to a first-time buyer who is interested in the property instead.
Having seen the popularity of raffles for multimillion-pound mansions take off in the past few years, she says she saw a gap in the market for the sort of prize that might appeal to a typical first-time buyer.
“Most properties you can win are entire massive mansions. But young people are the ones that need homes. So why aren’t we giving them a chance to just win a normal London home?” she says.
However, while one lucky winner stands to inherit a property of their own, Sapsted’s response reflects a growing crisis gripping the capital’s flat market.
Soaring service charges, sky-high taxes and rising mortgages have battered buyer demand in recent years, leaving many owners struggling to sell and facing significant losses when they do.
Across London, 28pc of flats that have been built and bought since 2010 have been sold at a loss in the last five years, according to analysis by The Telegraph.
Since peaking at around £492,000 in July 2017, average flat prices in the London Borough of Haringey, where Sapsted’s flat is located, have dropped by £10,000.
Even those who have spent money improving their properties have seen little return on their investment. Sapsted, for example, poured £25,000 into a bespoke kitchen with handmade tiles, yet the value of her flat has scarcely budged in 10 years.
Bradley Duhy, sales director at Haringey estate agency Philip Alexander, says rising running costs for new-build blocks in the area have acted as a brake on the market.
This is compared with the stamp duty holiday and relatively low-interest-rate environment during Covid, when buyers were less concerned about monthly payments of a few hundred pounds.
“There’s an awful lot of discussion around service charges,” he says. “Haringey as a whole has been massively developed in the last 10 to 15 years.
“But apartments are more difficult to sell than houses or conversions because buyers are factoring in the amount they will pay in service charges on top of mortgages and ground rent.”
