Dear Mr. and Mrs. Brown,

I’m writing because my wife and I are interested in buying a house that currently belongs to you, located at XXX South and 600 West in Orem, Utah. In fact, we want to live in that house, and by “live” I mean work and reap and sow and suffer and raise children and wineglasses in gratitude to the joy of living. But living presents certain boundaries, one of them financial, and that raises a question: What’s a house worth?

In 2002 I married the woman I met in college and together we moved into a newly constructed house in Lindon, Utah. That house is an all-brick rambler with nine-foot ceilings downstairs, vaulted ceilings upstairs, a mother-in-law apartment, alder cabinets and flooring, and toilets that flush like commercial units while sounding quaint. It sits on half an acre at the foot of Mount Timpanogos, adjacent to a large horse pasture, and offers sweeping views of Utah Lake, the Lake Mountains, and the serrated range of peaks extending to Mount Nebo.

My wife and I designed the place in part. She chose the lot, and together we sat with builders to customize the plans. Shortly after moving in, we planted a globe willow in the backyard, and then a red maple. In the front we planted Japanese maple, purple ash, and fruitless pear and crabapple. I have pictures of us in the dirt. A garden and children came. Then a swing set. And despite the flooding problems those first few years, the countless nights between October and April that we bailed water at two in the morning as rain came down and snow melted (good memories, by the way), we love that house. For it we paid $278,000.

That was eighteen years ago.

Eight years ago, we lost that house. I’d like to say it was because of credit default swaps and real estate bubbles and all that’s outside of our control, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I think I could have kept that house. We could have kept it—my wife and three daughters and I—had I made better choices. For as that house appreciated in value, I borrowed against it, and that put us in a precarious position. There’s no point in exhuming the reasons for my actions. I’m sure they were valid; I’m sure they weren’t good. The point is in the short span of roughly fifteen years I’ve watched that house shift in value from $278,000 to $495,000, back down to $250,000, and then back up to $600,000. Somewhere in the middle things went wrong.

I don’t fully understand market fundamentals and I don’t want to disparage those who claim to, but I struggle to see things the way some economists do. They speak of “principles,” yet the price tag of a house appears to be far less solid than the foundation it rests on. Money moves according to the moods of men, economic tides may turn tomorrow, and the wind also is a kind of principle. Speaking of, losing that house in Lindon taught me a valuable lesson: avoid debt. I’ve done so for eight years now, not because nobody will lend to me, but because of, well, principles.

But there’s another principle that’s important to me, and it raises another question: What’s a home worth?

After losing our home in Lindon, my wife and I were compelled to scramble for our survival. For months we had raided coin jars to get by, so when the bank finally mailed us the coup de grâce, we were penniless. They took the cars, too. I don’t remember how we paid first month’s rent on a townhouse in Orem, but I’m sure it involved divine providence and kind relatives.

Always in our minds, though, it was temporary. We didn’t hang pictures on the wall, we didn’t plant a garden, we at first didn’t take pride in our place. We ran errands in unreliable cars, cut coupons, worked fifty-hour weeks, and bussed our kids across town to their old schools so they wouldn’t have to tread the unknown of foreign faces, foreign grounds. But time ran on and feeling displaced became normal. Our landlords sold and we had to move again. Faith in recovering, in regrowing roots, turned to doubt. It has been a kind of purgatory. A place between places. A long waiting.

It has also been wonderful. Our daughters thrive at school and swim and track. We have a dog named Rosco, and a small peach tree in our backyard of 80 square feet. (That’s no exaggeration. The HOA is threatening to chop it down because it covers the entire lawn.) And we have our health. In fact, the joys we have discovered while living in a way we never intended are untold, unbounded. I pinned on our refrigerator the other week a quote that said something to the effect of “You don’t choose a life, you discover one.”

Ours has been one of discovery.

Some say, “Where you lay your head is home.” I’ve walked a peripatetic path in life and have laid myself to sleep against mountain slopes, desert washes, car seats, bus windows, basement couches, and summertime lawns, only to be awakened by the sprinklers. And while I’m relatively comfortable in my own skin, I think “home” involves more than just where I happen to lay my head.

Some men—few, very few—find home in their own solipsistic wanderings. This is not possible, however, for the husband and father. He needs roots. And he recognizes that having the opportunity to put them down is priceless. It’s a kind of principle.

So, is a house worth three-hundred, four-hundred, five-hundred thousand dollars? Is a home worth the burden of debt?

I believe that in order to achieve our highest values, we must forgo our highest values. An ancient story of two people in a garden expresses this paradox. So here I am offering all that I can, nearly all that we have, in hopes of achieving one value, though it compromise another, so that my family might put down roots in a home with a garden. My wife, my daughters, and I feel your former home is a match for us made in heaven. We beamed when we saw it, and the thought of inhabiting it has left us beaming.

Thank you for considering our sincerest offer. I hope it doesn’t feel like some sappy slap in the face. It represents the generosity of several humble folks, some deep but subtle intuitions, and the faith to act on them.

Sincerely,

Ryan