This story was published in partnership with Texas Monthly.
In 2016, when Gisella Olivo and her husband walked into a four-bedroom house in downtown McKinney, about thirty miles north of Dallas, it immediately felt like home. Just past the front door was a baby grand piano; her husband, a local musician, saw it as a sign. Olivo, who works as a real estate agent selling houses across the metroplex, went home and wrote a handwritten letter to the sellers. She described how her family would take care of the historic house, how involved they were in the community, and how they could imagine their grandchildren visiting them there one day. “I just wrote what was in my heart,” she says.
After their offer was accepted and they closed on the house, Olivo asked the seller’s listing agent why the sellers had chosen them over the other family who had submitted an offer. “She told us that they were enamored with us from the day they got the letter.”
