They dreamed of buying this house as teenagers. Twenty years later, a handwritten note made it theirs.

Amy Fletcher and her husband were 15 and 16 when they started saying it to each other. They passed the same rundown house on the way to the bus stop, and one of them would say some version of, “That house could be so beautiful.” She admits it’s an odd thing for teenagers to say about a derelict property, but they kept saying it anyway. Then they grew up, got married, had two kids, bought and renovated houses of their own, and forgot about it. Until Fletcher got restless and brought up moving again. Her husband, she said, wasn’t interested in moving anywhere. “The only house I’d ever move for is the one we used to walk past.” Fletcher told the rest of the story in a series of Instagram videos posted in August on the account where she’s been documenting the renovation, @ourlittlewelshview. The first one has been viewed more than 846,000 times. They drove over to look. The house was still there, still empty, apparently untouched for years. They wrote a handwritten note saying they loved the place and would like to hear from the owner if it ever went up for sale, then pushed it through the door. They weren’t expecting anything. Their phone rang the next day. It was the nephew of the man who had owned the house. His uncle had died, and the family had wanted to sell, but the estate had been stuck in probate for two years. According to Fletcher, probate had finished the day before their note appeared on the mat. He asked if they wanted to see inside. It was worse than they’d pictured, which is saying something, since they’d pictured a wreck. She said it looked like nobody had properly lived there since the 1970s. But the location meant a developer would take it immediately, and she said the nephew told them he wanted it to go to someone who would love it the way his uncle had. Then came the part that nearly ended it. They looked at a bridge loan, and the interest made it impossible. The only way to buy the house was to sell their own, but it wasn’t listed, wasn’t ready, and wasn’t going anywhere fast. “So now, we had to somehow sell our house,” Fletcher said. “Before someone else bought our dream.” They listed it. In the first 24 hours, she says, they had 10 viewings and three offers. They took one. They got the keys in October 2024. They’ve spent most of their free time on it since.