Grand Designs house on Twitter

A entrepreneurial homeowner is to give his £800,000 house away on Twitter after failing to sell it.

Tim Bawtree's house in Cheltenham featured on the Channel 4 TV show Grand Designs in 2007.

Having failed to sell it in the economic downturn, he has reverted to Twitter in his bid to offload it.

Taking inspiration from the Million Dollar Homepage, Bawtree will give the house away if he can attract enough advertising to a website linked to the house's Twitter feed.

He hopes that the Twitter feed will generate interest and drive traffic to the site, encouraging advertisers to buy £200 ad spaces.

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"Similar things have been done, but there was no hook. The hook here is that people can win a house for free, which will drive traffic from Twitter to the homepage," said Bawtree, a software company boss.

Bawtree needs 90 per cent of the blocks to be filled in order for the "giveaway" offer to be activated.

If successful in raising £820,000, which includes a donation to the charity Help for Heroes, Bawtree will pick a winner at random from his Twitter followers.

Bawtree's Twitter account, @pixhome, launched this morning and has attracted nearly 200 followers.