Spanish property developer said Tuesday it will hold a raffle to unload 31 apartments near Barcelona

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Spanish property developer said Tuesday it will hold a raffle to unload 31 apartments near Spanish property developer said Tuesday it will hold a raffle to unload 31 apartments near Barcelona which have been difficult to sell amid a collapse in the real estate market.Tickets for the raffle cost 50 euros (63 dollars) and they will go on sale on Wednesday, a spokesman for developer Grupo de Empresas Rob told AFP.The company hopes to sell 7,000 raffle tickets for each apartment which will be awarded, meaning it would raise 350,000 euros per dwelling.If the developer does not sell at least 6,500 tickets for a particular apartment, the raffle will not go ahead for that property and participants will receive a refund.The raffle, which will be supervised by a notary, will be held in the coming months, the spokesman said.
All of the apartments -- which are between 50 and 90-square metres (970-square feet) -- are all located on the same street in the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma de Gramenet.After a decade-long boom, Spain's property market began to slump last year due to rising interest rates, oversupply and tougher lending conditions introduced in the wake of the global credit crunch.Property sales declined 28.2 percent during the first nine months of this year compared with the same period of 2007, national statistics institute INE said last week.The drop in sales has led developers to come up with innovative promotions to try to sell properties.In October another Spanish developer, Salsa Immobiliaria, offered a one bedroom apartment to anyone who bought one of its four-bedroom townhouses near the beach in Terrazas de Miraflores on the Costa del Sol.In May a man who could not meet mortgage payments on his apartment near Madrid tried to organise a raffle to unload it but he had to call off the contest because he failed to get the proper authorisation.