Photograph by Sam Fentress
Scientific Method
For Mike Heintz, the quest for his dream home was a long waking nightmare.
Heintz, a pharmaceutical salesman, is enchanted by the work of the late noted St. Louis architect Harris Armstrong. Armstrong, a friend of architectural giant Frank Lloyd Wright’s, designed modern residential and commercial structures across St. Louis in the mid-1900s. His spare, sleek spaces were perfect for Heintz and his wife, Lisa.
Heintz challenged several real-estate agents to find the house of his dreams. They took him to one house after another—but none was an Armstrong home and most were simply dreadful. Heintz estimates that he visited more than 100 homes.
Fall became winter; winter warmed into spring—still no dream home. The couple despaired of finding the right place.
They began looking at land in Utah.
Meanwhile, one of St. Louis’ top-selling agents, Mary Michael “Mike” Voges of Prudential Advantage Realtors, had taken up the Heintz challenge.
“Most people are not looking for that specific a dream house,” she says, “but he’s a pretty determined character.”
Because few people realize that they have an Armstrong home and those who do aren’t likely to sell, Voges began to research the handful of locations in which the debonair architect with the movie-star good looks had planted his works. That meant a trip to the library—not a usual haunt for an agent.
After hours of searching books and records, Voges was able to pin down several homes in areas that Heintz might like. Then came the letter-writing and calls. Few of the homes were on the market, and those whose owners said they’d consider selling didn’t thrill Heintz. By this time, eight months had passed. The Heintzes had just about settled on a beautiful parcel of land in Park City, Utah, when Voges called one afternoon. One of the homes Heintz liked had suddenly gone on the market.
“She left a message at 3:30 p.m. and said we had to be there at 5:30,” Heintz says. “I called my wife and said, ‘Let’s cancel our commitments and get over there.’ There were already two bids.”
The couple had half an hour to look over the house and make an offer. Because it was dark, they couldn’t see what condition the outside of the home was in. The interior needed work, including a new furnace and cooling system. And the asking price was steep, about $400,000—considerably more than the Heintzes had budgeted.
“It was nerve-racking,” says Heintz, “because it was all happening so fast.”
Built in 1935, the structure was known as the Cori house, after the original owners, Carl and Gerty Cori, who won a Nobel Prize in 1947 for their work explaining the cycle of carbohydrates in the human body. The redwood-and-brick home had both historical and architectural value. The other bidders were developers who planned to tear down the home and build new houses.
“It’s one of a kind,” Heintz told himself. He made the offer. It was instantly accepted.
“We have no regrets at all,” he says now. “When you find the house of your dreams, you don’t have to worry about
moving again.”
The Palace of the Dairy Queen King
Interior designer Joanna Temperato’s home wasn’t so much her dream as it was her husband’s. Known as the Dairy Queen King because of the 80-odd restaurant franchises he owned—and because he invented the Blizzard—Sam Temperato loved the home he bought on a handshake.
The couple had been living in Ladue when Joanna’s manicurist mentioned her brother-in-law was getting ready to put his house on the market. The brother-in-law was Cardinal great Ozzie Smith. Joanna repeated the news to Sam, who remembered the house on Litzsinger Road from 1970, when Diversified Industries owner Ben Fixman built it.
“Ben only cared about one thing: quality,” Joanna says.
Sam was delighted with that promise of quality, as well as the symmetry and simplicity of the 17,000-square-foot residence. He contacted Smith, and they met at the home for a tour. Afterward, they agreed on a price “instantly, right there, on the spot,” Joanna recalls.
The Dairy Queen King and the Wizard of Oz shook on the deal, and it was done—no agents, no haggling, no inspections.
Although the Temperatos had intended to scale back with their next move, this house did anything but. The house, which greets visitors with sweeping curved twin stairways in the white-marble foyer, now encompasses a pool, a solarium, an indoor racquetball and basketball court, tennis courts, an elevator, a Dairy Queen soda fountain in the basement, 14-karat gold-plated door handles and 15 bathrooms.
Joanna says she might have chosen a different house but loved pleasing her husband of nearly three decades. A woman of imagination and audacity, she once greeted her husband at the airport in nothing but a fur coat. She also happens to be an interior decorator—so she knew she could make over the space into whatever she wanted.
Today every room is a showplace, from the dining room with black silk–covered walls to the massage room with graceful white lace netting over the table.
“It’s a fun house,” she says.
Its biggest fan, though, died on July 14, 2006, at the age of 82.
“Here I am, living here alone,” Joanna says, struck by the irony. Still, her 29 children and grandchildren visit and sleep over frequently. “I think the greatest thing I did was buy this home and give Sam a big family. This was what he wanted. It was his dream home.”
Going Home Again
What happens when you leave a neighborhood and then realize it was a bad move? Sharon Tucci knows.
About 10 years ago, the owner of talent and modeling agency TalentPlus lived with her husband, Pasta House titan Kim Tucci, in gracious Hampton Park. One of the county’s best-kept secrets, the neighborhood lies just beyond the intersection of Clayton and Hanley roads. But the Tuccis owned an older house that required so much work, they felt shackled to hearth and home. So they stuck a “For Sale” sign in the front yard, sold the home and moved to a tidy townhouse in nearby Clayton.
A few years after they moved, Kim had knee-replacement surgery. The stairs in the four-story townhouse became a form of torture, and he had to stay at the Chase Park Plaza for a month to recuperate.
Shortly thereafter, Sharon was visiting her mother’s grave, placing flowers, pulling weeds and thinking about her mother’s death, seven years earlier on Christmas Day.
“My mother really loved Hampton Park, too,” Sharon recalls. “She had spent a lot of time at our house. It was then and there that I wrote the note.”
“The note” was a letter to a neighbor a few doors away from the Tuccis’ old home, in the 1100 block of Hampton Park. Sharon had heard that her former neighbor might be interested in moving.
The homeowner called in response. “Eventually I’ll move,” she said, “but not now.”
Two weeks later, she called back. “Her husband had died two years ago, and she said she wanted more activity in her life,” Sharon says. “She was ready to move.”
Sharon made Pasta House partner and real-estate expert Joe Fresta her accomplice, bringing him with her to check over the house. The owner named her selling price. Sharon wasn’t sure, but Fresta told her, “If you don’t want it, I do.”
That was all Sharon needed to hear. She bought the home as a surprise to Kim—but there was a hitch: They had to wait a year for the homeowner to get precisely the right apartment she wanted at Park Tower, across from Shaw Park, with the sun shining in the windows just so.
The move finally complete, the Tuccis spent six months remodeling the home, and it has been a joy to them ever since. The 28-year-old house has three bedrooms, 20-foot ceilings, fireplaces, a pool, gardens and a spa with Sharon’s espresso maker tucked into a corner.
“It’s very cozy and not huge,” she said. “This was our fourth move in 20 years of marriage, and now we are never moving. It is perfect for us.”
Rude Awakening
When Jim Human was 18, he was invited to a ball at 51 Westmoreland Place.
“I was then living on my parents’ farm in Chesterfield, out on Wild Horse Creek Road, and I didn’t really know the city existed,” he recalls. “I walked in and—well, suffice it to say, I left that ball saying, ‘One day I’m going to own this house.’”
He eventually moved to the Central West End and went into real estate (he now works at Edward L. Bakewell Realtors). “Every time that house went on the market, I would go to see it and take my wife, and she would say, ‘I don’t want this house. I don’t like it.’”
In 1979, they divorced. In 1981, Human bought 51 Westmoreland Place. He says it was the first house in the city to sell for more than $1 million. He lived there for more than 17 years, eventually remarrying.
Then he moved.
His new wife didn’t like the house.
If You Visualize It, It Will Come
Business consultant Karen S. Hoffman and her husband, Ricky, searched for two years. They yearned for that perfect piece of land in St. Charles County where they could build Karen’s Victorian dream home—but few parcels were appealing or affordable. Those that were, ended up being snatched from their hands before they could get a bid in. The couple began to doubt they’d ever find the right spot—a tough situation for Karen, who is known for her relentlessly positive attitude.
Then she attended a workshop at which the leader urged attendees to write down what they really wanted most—and include every detail of their desire. Karen went home and, a few days later, scribbled her heart’s desires on an index card.
She was specific: The site had to be within two-and-a-half miles of their current home, and it had to have a view of water, additional land that could be sold and enough acreage to accommodate both the dream home and their existing home, which Ricky had built himself and wanted to move their daughter into.
The land also had to be available in the very near future.
That very evening, Karen got a call from a real-estate agent: There was a piece of land the Hoffmans had to see. In the dark, they drove to a cul-de-sac about three miles away that hadn’t appeared on any agent’s listings. Despite the weeds and brambles, the couple could see the lovely slope of the land. There was plenty of room to move their current house and build the Victorian. Then Karen spotted it, glinting in the moonlight: a pond. All of her desires were met in that one rambling bit of ground.
Still, Karen hesitated. It was dark, and she couldn’t see the parcel fully.
“Ricky was sure, but I wasn’t,” she says. “The next day, when I got to see it in the daylight, I fell in love.”
The land had been on the market for some time. Several people had tried to buy it, but the utility installation had become problematic. All the potential buyers gave up, and the land sat for months.
For the Hoffman family, though, every aspect of the move went smoothly. Utilities went in without a hitch. Ricky moved their rock-solid family home to the site, and their daughter and son-in-law followed. Next door, the Hoffmans built a gingerbread-adorned yellow Victorian. They were able to add on more land in an easement deal, and the construction of a nearby Lowe’s store helped level the sloping parcel. (Affable, resourceful Ricky persuaded the construction-site manager to send 600 dump-truck loads of free fill dirt to his land rather than truck it miles away at greater expense.)
“It’s kind of a woo-woo weird story,” admits Karen. But she’s convinced her dream was meant to come true.
Dear Homeowner,
Stafford Manion, owner of Gladys Manion Inc., has helped many a determined buyer acquire an unlisted property. He says winning strategies typically start, prosaically enough, with a letter, written by either the agent or the prospective buyer.
If the client hasn’t fastened on a particular house, just a neighborhood, Manion will often send out a few hundred letters, blanketing the area.
“It works,” he says. “But the price goes up by 10 to 30 percent.”
When it comes to a house, personal letters can be even more effective.
“I’ve had clients write love letters, send pictures of their children, have their children write to the seller and say how much their children love the house ...” Manion says.
But he urges buyers to be crafty.
“Look at it this way: As a seller do you want to get a letter that says, ‘I’m going to buy your house and tear it down’ or a letter that says, ‘I love the pink wallpaper in the bathroom and the purple commode’?”
Even a personal visit without a letter of introduction can work—if the offer is right. “We recently had a client knock on a door of a listing of ours and offer to trade two condos in Destin for the house he wanted. It didn’t work.”
