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Food

A Portland Family Sold Their Home in Exchange for Free Pizza for Life

In the competitive real estate market of Portland, sometimes the only way to stand out is to offer to buy a seller pizza for the rest of their lives.
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US
Photo via Flickr user Daremoshiranai

Suppose you could guarantee that for the rest of your life, you'll be showered in cardboard box after cardboard box, slice after slice of hot, cheesy pizza without any end in sight. Now suppose that this glorious, infinite stream of circular, edible perfection was offered to you in exchange for your home. Would you take it? Would you abandon all you hold dear in favor of a massive blanket of mozzarella and pepperoni?

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For one family in Portland, the answer is: Hell, yeah.

READ: Pizza's Lengthy History Has Been a Filthy Lie

The Portland real estate market is hotter than a slice of Margherita fresh out of a $25,000 wood-burning oven. So hot, in fact, that a well-priced house can rake in a heavy handful of offers after being on the market for just a few days. That's what Rob and Holly Marsh experienced when they tried to sell their home—and got four offers in just three days, according to Fox 12 Oregon. But when it came time to decide who to pick as the recipients of their beloved abode, the Marshes took a hard look at one that came from Donna DeNicola.

DeNicola, you see, is the owner of Southeast Portland Italian restaurant DeNicola's. And she knew that in order to get the attention of the owners of this coveted home, she would have to play hardball. Pizza would have to get involved.

In addition to offering an additional $26,000 over the asking price of the house, DeNicola decided to throw in one of her family's namesake pizzas every month for life.

"I felt like I was in a poker game … I just kind of added, I'll throw in one pizza a month for life," DeNicola told Fox 12. "I'm willing to do anything because I know this market is crazy."

DeNicola argues that the creative, carby gesture was necessary as competition for home sales in Portland have skyrocketed—climbing 7 percent in 2014 alone—and resulted in ever-crazier offers as buyers aim to one-up each other in a market where demand outweighs supply. But the whole thing started out in jest—and ended up well in her favor.

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"It was a joke as part of my sarcastic personality," she tells MUNCHIES over the phone. DeNicola went to see the house because it was on the way to her son's house, which is just eight blocks away, and the realtors were doing a showing over Memorial Day weekend. Although the price of the home was over what she was looking for and the visit was "kind of an afterthought," DeNicola found that it was "one of these homes that you go into and you feel like, this is the one." They loved it. It had everything they wanted. And the only move left to make was to ensure that they got it—even if it meant going above and beyond the asking price.

"It was $249k, and we offered $275k. There was a young family living there, and they wanted to stay in the house for 60 days after it closes," DeNicola explains. The realtor suggested giving the family free rent during that time, and she obliged. Then she suggested throwing in a free pizza every month for life, and had a good laugh over it—not realizing it would make it into the final paperwork.

But the following day, she got an email: "Congratulations, you got the house! I think it was the pizza."

DeNicola isn't worried about the stipulation at all. In fact, she's looking forward to "watching the [young family's] kids grow up."

"I'm going to buy them a pizza for life, so I will know them very well," she says.

Fox 12 estimates that if the family collects a pizza every month for the next 40 years, the value of the pizza clause will amount to nearly $10,000. But for this deal, maybe that's a small price for DeNicola to pay.

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