How a Dying Man Helped Me Buy My House

I helped individuals and families buy and sell homes for six years prior to becoming a homeowner myself. For those of you who don’t know, qualifying for a home loan looks a bit different as a self-employed person, and to make matters worse, I’m that millennial who pursued an art degree that, at the time, cost more annually than Harvard. Crawling my way up and out of six figures in student loan debt, I was building my credit back, and I needed to file one more year of solid earnings in order to be eligible to borrow.

It was the spring of 2021, and I’d received a referral for a listing on the East Side of Providence. My excitement was uncontainable. The East Side was notoriously difficult to break into as an agent, and there were only two brokerages that transacted in the area. For literal decades, these agencies had a stronghold on the market, and only a handful of agents were doing the bulk of the business.

Given the aura of prestige and the illusion of exclusivity, it was hard not to feel like an underdog. But for a little context, in 2021 alone, I’d represented 27 sides for a total volume of $10M. The top-dog East Side agents were doing five to eight times the volume, while the average agent in the industry was lucky to sell four homes a year.

After the referral email came through, I stalked the property on Google Street View at lightning speed. It figured… the potential for my first East Side listing was a crusty and dusty, haunted house-looking property. While most homes in this neighborhood sit up against the sidewalk, this one was set far back from the street and cloaked in trees. She was dark and mysterious-looking and clearly hadn’t had one iota of maintenance in decades.

It didn’t matter, though. I loved her from the moment I set eyes on her. What she lacked in upkeep, she made up for in uniqueness and charm. Her best feature was a big wraparound front porch and a lot four times the typical size for the neighborhood. Whoever buys this house has their work cut out for them, I thought. But the market was on fire, and less charming homes in the area were being bought sight unseen by out-of-state buyers for $100,000 over asking or more. She was crusty and dusty, but she’d sell fast, and someone would overhaul her without batting an eye. I set up a meeting with the owner to see the house in person.

Louise was a sweet woman. She told me she’d bought the house twenty-seven years ago, the day OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder, to be exact. And while she was excited at the time, it was quickly revealed that the house needed a lot more than she’d had to give. Around every twist and turn was a tradesperson who had done her wrong or didn’t serve her best interest, and a mountain of repairs piling up. I felt for her. And if you’re a woman who has ever had to price out work or repair your car, you know the plight well. Some, not all, will fear monger and take advantage of a person with little reference point to the problem at hand.

So Louise sort of gave up. One of her parents had fallen ill, and she became the primary caregiver. Spending less and less time at the property, the house was broken into, and the copper pipes were stolen. To prevent future break ins, she had the windows on the front porch boarded up and came and went just to check that the Tupperware under the radiators didn’t need emptying. She placed a light on a timer in a second-story window. The room had heavy red drapes that when backlit only added to the creepiness. Years passed, and neighbors couldn’t help but tell themselves stories about the neighborhood “haunted house.”

This was a difficult property to perform a broker price opinion on. In recent history, nothing quite like it had sold in similar condition, so I did what I do best and went full-on valuation nerd. I was sitting in a common area of our office, making upward and downward adjustments for what the home had or lacked, when Gil came over to say hello. A real character, quick with a joke, I fondly refer to him as Silly Gilly.

“Silly Gilly! I’m working on my first East Side listing! It needs a ton of work, but it has this incredible wraparound porch. I wish I were in the position to buy it, but I’m just not ready yet…” Silly Gilly has a great sense of humor, but he’s old school and all business when it comes to real estate.

“How much?”

“$399,900,” I said.

“Any off-street pahkin’?”

“It’s a quarter-acre lot. You could park a whole football field’s worth of cars on it,” I responded.

Gil looked me square in the eye, a finger in my face, and said, “You lock that house up. If you don’t lock that house up, you call Uncle Louie and me, and we’ll lock that house up.”

I laughed him off and went about my day. Even if I’d had a way to buy the house, the moral implications of placing an offer on a home I’d been working with the seller to prepare for listing felt untenable. Probably too much residual Catholic school guilt… If Louise sold the house to me, she’d never know what it could have commanded on the market. How could that be fair? What would the person who’d referred me think?

Louise was thrilled to hear where my research landed on price, sharing that she’d thought $300,000 would be a stretch. By then, we’d been in touch for a few months, working with landscapers, junk removers, and more, preparing the property to list.

I was about to leave the office when my mom, also an agent at my brokerage, said she had a taillight out. She’d planned to head to Massachusetts General Hospital after work that day to visit her best friend, Lou, but didn’t feel comfortable risking a ticket on the hour-long journey. Seeing how bummed she was, I offered to take her. Lou was the president of our brokerage, and Mom and he had befriended one another through work. Because of this, Lou took a shine to me. Our relationship was a respectful push-and-pull mentorship, opposing political ideologies, and a shared love of my mom. A self-made man, extremely successful and sometimes misunderstood by those who didn’t know him, Lou was known to have a tough shell.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Lou was battling cancer in private.

When we arrived on Lou’s floor, I noted which room he was in and made a beeline for the restroom. The moment I stepped over the threshold, in a deep voice I heard:

“So, when are we going to have the conversation?”

My mom was due for a promotion into leadership at work, and that’s what I thought he was talking about.

“About Mom’s promotion?”

“No,” he responded. “We can talk about that anytime. About the house on the East Side.”

I looked at my mom, frustrated. “What did you say to him?”

In the iconic screech of a New England mother with a thick accent, my mom said, “I didn’t say anythin’!”

“A little bird told me,” Lou said.

“How much do you need?”

I was confused, amazed and in disbelief.

“I was going to list the house for $399,900, and I’d like to give her at least $5,000 more than she would net after commissions if we’d listed it.”

“Okay, so $385,000. What do you want to do for interest? Five percent? Six percent?”

I couldn’t do mental math the way Lou could, and without understanding any aspect of the way hard-money, interest-only loans were written, I said, “Well, five percent sounds better than six percent…”

“Okay. Five percent. Write it up.”

While I sat at Lou’s bedside, Louise called. I let it go to voicemail. Was I in the twilight zone? What was happening? How was this possible?

I know now that right after Gil and I spoke earlier that day, he called Lou and told him about the house on the East Side. Gil and Lou had been friends for decades. They were neighbors and sometimes business partners. If anyone at our office knew about the barrier to entry in the neighborhood it was them, because Lou had lived in that part of Providence years ago. To everyone else at my office and in my world, the nuances of Providence’s neighborhoods were lost.

I thanked him, and in a very Lou way, harshly, he said, “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for your mother.” Fair enough. Thanks, Mom.

We said our goodbyes, and after dropping my mom off at her house that night, I called Louise back. I think it was around 9 p.m., and I apologized for the late call.

“The craziest thing that has ever happened in my entire life happened tonight. My boss has offered to provide me a cash mortgage to purchase your house. You don’t have to answer right now. You can let me know on Monday. Talk to your sister, your financial advisor, whoever you need to.”

“Wow,” was all she could say.

It was a Thursday. I told her I’d put the offer in writing and deliver the paperwork to her the next day so that it was tangible and legitimate.

The next day, I called her, ready to deliver on my promise. Right then and there, she told me she didn’t need the weekend to think about it. She’d chatted with her sister, and while she understood that she’d make more money if we listed the house, she didn’t care. She knew that I would love it and fix it up in ways she was never able to. She wanted the house to go to me, and it did.

I closed on the house in September of 2021, and heartbreakingly, Lou passed in December. Knowing Lou, I probably wasn’t his final act of kindness and generosity. His passing revealed handfuls of stories throughout the course of his life where he’d helped someone in need, taken them under his wing, and given them their start.

Most days I still can’t believe it. The cast of characters it took: Silly Gilly, Uncle Louie, Louise, and my mom. Without each of them and the part they played, four years later, I still might not be a homeowner.