Desperate homeowners seeking to move house are resorting to a novel way of bucking the becalmed property market: sale by prize draw.

For £25 ticket, a winner could “buy” a home outright in some of the online competitions that have sprung up in the climate of rapidly falling house prices. Questions are being raised, though, about the legality of the schemes and whether they comply with the spirit of new gambling laws that came into force last September.

Lawyers and politicians fear that the regulation of the competitions is so lax that unscrupulous people will invent scam schemes to make easy money. It is illegal to operate a private lottery for profit, but running a prize competition that involves an exercise or skill is legal.

Competitions are still open to “win” the £850,000 Cheltenham House, an underground eco-home that featured on the Channel 4 programme Grand Designs, and a £5 million villa and entertainment business near Benidorm, with a £35,000 Harley-Davidson.

It is too late to try for The Old Borough Retreat, a five-bedroom home in Devon with 11.5 acres and four timber lodges that could be used as a holiday business. Brian and Wendy Wilshaw closed the competition last week after achieving 46,000 ticket sales. This was the amount they needed to give them the £1.15 million they wanted for their home and to cover stamp duty and legal costs for the winner. The draw is being organised by their legal adviser, Steve Kuncewicz, of the solicitors Ralli in Manchester, and is expected to take place in public within a month. Mr Kuncewicz has received some 300 calls in two weeks from other homeowners keen to run similar competitions to dispose of a property.

The schemes do not have to be licensed as a lottery because they are not strictly a game of chance. Under the Gambling Act 2005 they qualify as a prize competition. Entrants have to show a degree of skill, knowledge or judgment. In the case of the Devon property, players were asked the cost of a coarse river fishing permit to qualify for entry.

Anyone wishing to own the Cheltenham home being offered by Tim and Zoe Bawtree has to name the horse that won the Cheltenham Gold Cup this year.

Antoinette Jucker, of the law firm Pinsent Masons, who advises on gaming issues, is not certain that a question that can be so easily answered by a search on the internet meets the skills test and has asked the Gambling Commission for clarification. “They should take an interest in this,” she said. “If they don’t do anything others will do the same thing, raffling houses or cars or anything else they’re struggling to sell. This should not be a free market, this should be regulated or it will be an encouragement for abuse.”

Guidance from the commission suggests that a prize competition must ask a degree of knowledge or skill that will deter a significant number of people and that the question must be sufficiently challenging to ensure that there are clear winners.

Some prize competitions give people unlimited chances to enter because they accept all entries with the correct answer. Ms Jucker is particularly concerned that the competitions would not be allowed under lottery rules. The maximum prize for a lottery — except for the National Lottery — is £200,000 and at least 20 per cent of the proceeds must be for charity. Mr Kuncewicz said that he had followed the Gambling Commission guidance in advising the Wilshaws and Bawtrees.

He admitted that the laws were new and that there were some “grey areas”. He said: “I also accept that anyone could do this and they might not be so honourable. Some kind of regulation would be useful. But until there is a test case the Gambling Commission has said these competitions are within the remit of the Gaming Act.” A spokesman for the Gambling Commission said that it was monitoring the prize competitions case by case.

There just 5,323 entries yesterday to win the Cheltenham house valued at £850,000 and offered by the Bawtrees. They need 46,000 entries at £25 each to cover their costs. Tim, 37, and Zoe, 35, hoped that the eco-home would become their family home, but sales of their former home in Cheltenham fell through and they need to sell one of the houses to repay a bank loan.

Mr Bawtree said: “We have appointed a lawyer and accountant to oversee the whole process and the cash is being held in a special account we can’t touch.”