Moving is stressful.

There’s the packing and unpacking, the planning, the travel. The process is physically taxing. It can also be emotionally fraught, especially when buying or selling a house is involved.

I’ve recently put my beloved house on the market. It’s time to leave St. Louis. I’m moving to the mountains of North Carolina.

Putting a house on the market is not for the faint of heart. I will write more about these experiences in a later post, but here let me describe an apparently new practice in real estate marketing.

The house love letter.

The first offer I got on my house this summer came with a love letter from the potential buyer.

The letter sang the praises of my beautiful house and professed the buyer’s deepest desire to live in it. The house captivated him and represented all the values that he and his spouse hoped would guide them in the next chapter of there lives together: “ care, courtesy, curiosity, and community.”

I was smitten.

They understood the true spirit of the house.

And then—as often happens in love—the ardor ended. The deal fell through, and those passionate buyers faded into the “could have beens.”

I got more offers, and more love letters. Each one was different. One was from a first-time homebuyer. Another from an empty-nester who was downsizing.

One offer did not come with a love letter, and although it was financially strong—perhaps the strongest of the bunch—I did not find it attractive. Too many unknowns.

This flurry of letters reminded me of my own house love letter.

When I was searching for a house in North Carolina in the spring of 2018, I found one that I wanted. My realtor told me there was already an offer on the house.

She encouraged me to write a letter to the seller.

“Sometimes a letter can make all the difference,” she explained.

I thought it was weird, but I had nothing to lose.

If I could touch the seller’s heart, maybe my offer would win.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ball,

I thought that I would take a few minutes to write to you about your property and why I am so taken with it.  In order to do that, I think it may help to provide some background.

I was born in Japan to missionary parents, but I grew up in Wake Forest, North Carolina (and later Raleigh—Oak Park).

My father was from West Virginia—from a family of coal miners and timber men.  But he put himself through college by driving lumber trucks and eventually ended up earning a PhD from Yale University.

After he and my mother retired from the mission field, they settled in Wake Forest where he taught at the seminary there for many years.  On his rare holidays, he would take us to the mountains of western North Carolina.  It was as close as he could get to his “roots” without going all the way to West Virginia.

In the early 1970s he bought property in eastern Tennessee, which we still have, and built by hand a little log cabin there. (It still stands.)  I spent many weekends with my father there, walking the land and listening to him as he pointed out the different trees and plants.  He kept bees, he hid the wild ginseng that sprouted there, he dug a pond that failed to fill.  We had fun spending time together there in nature.

Fast forward to 2018.  I live in St. Louis, Missouri where I am a professor of Japanese literature at a local university.  My parents have passed away.  I am thinking about my own retirement and want to return to North Carolina, and specifically to the mountains, where I feel a deep connection.  It’s almost as if it is in my DNA.  I feel close to my parents there, and to their parents (who I never really knew.)  Settling in the mountains of Carolina is about “coming home.”  I love St. Louis.  But my home is in the mountains.

I have a brother who lives in Deep Gap.  He attended ASU and never left the mountains. He has two daughters and a grandchild on the way.  I want to spend my retirement near him and his children.  I also want to be near my parents’ land in Mountain City, Tennessee.  (Although it is an option, I don’t want to live in Mountain City.  I want to be closer to a town like West Jefferson where I can enjoy the bright ambiance, the eclectic art and music scene, and the proximity to ASU where I hope to be able to attend lectures and other academic events.)

Although I have gone on a bit about how I love the mountains, I am not particularly smitten with the vernacular architecture popular there.  I like contemporary houses with wide open spaces.

I found your house particularly appealing for that reason.  It is very modern.  But more than modern, it is different.  It stands out.  It’s one-of-a-kind.  I like the forethought that went into the house, the way it communes with its surroundings, and the attention to detail.  I appreciate the care that you have lavished on the house and the way it has been so well maintained.   I already feel at home there.

I suppose this is a supreme example of putting the cart before the horse, but I have been thinking of names for the house!  (I notice that some of the people on Buena Vista have names for their houses!)  In Japanese the word for umbrella is “kasa.”  If this beautiful “umbrella house” becomes mi casa, I will create a name for it that plays on the Japanese kasa as well as the Japanese prefix for beautiful, which is “mi.” How clever is that?

Having this house will allow me to live very close to my brother. He will only be a short drive away. We drove the route together last week.  He took me down Railroad Grade Road to Three Top Road and so forth. It was early evening and the frogs were singing madly along the river. As we glided through the twilight, I could feel the serenity of my surroundings and knew it was where I wanted to be.
If were fortunate enough to purchase your house, I will have enough room to babysit my brother’s future grandchildren—if needed—and to have my three older sisters come to visit for family gatherings.

Having this house will allow me to tend to my parents’ property. I want to protect the cabin my father built.  It is personal for me, as is being in the mountains, being close to the land where I spent precious time with my parents, being close to my brother’s family, being able to provide a base for our family gatherings. I guess you could say this is a way I can bring my life full circle—full circle under a beautiful umbrella top!

Thank you for your consideration.

Most sincerely,
Rebecca Copeland

I got the house!

I heard I beat out a higher offer—all cash—from a Floridian, whom everyone expected would turn the house into a rental. I guess the seller in my case also did not trust all the unknowns.

Love letters to houses truly can make a difference.