You could call it a $150,000 letter.
For an Oakville couple, that turned out to be the value of the heartfelt plea they attached to a bid on a four-bedroom house last week.
The letter explained how a recent missionary trip to Uganda prompted the couple to reevaluate their own lives and led them to a decision to downsize their home, so they could use more of their money to help “the poor and needy.”
The sellers liked the letter so much that they decided to choose the couple’s bid over 13 others, including one that was for $150,000 more.
It should be noted that the couple’s bid was still $200,000 over the asking price on the home.
“We wrote a letter and explained that we went on a mission trip last year in Uganda. We visited widows, went into orphanages and slum areas and when we came back our lives were changed and we said we have too much here. We don’t need this much,” Joo-Meng Soh told CP24 on Thursday.
Soh and his wife Rosanna previously lived in a 3,600 square-foot home with their four young children. The home they will now be moving into is just under 2,000 square feet.
“We are downsizing for a reason,” Rosanna Soh told CP24. “We felt that in a world where it is all about want we didn’t want to teach that to our children when it really is about what you need. This house is perfect.”
According to the listing agent on the Oakville home, there were three bids that included personal letters but the sellers were “really touched” by the one attached to the Soh’s bid.
She said the letter prompted the sellers to take the relatively unusual step of accepting less money for the home than they could have received.
