House for sale - pool, aircon, also wife

Anyone desperately trying to sell a house might take a cue from Wina Lina, the owner of a beauty salon in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She put her house for sale online with an unusual but potentially dealsealing bonus: The 40yearold has offered to marry the buyer. The Jakarta Post reports that Wina is flogging “the bid of the century!” It’s enough to get a mention in Time magazine, at least.
“Buy a house and marry the owner,” Wina’s ad says, listing the usual realestate terms and conditions. “For serious prospective buyers only. No negotiations.”
She’s kidding, right? No, apparently not. News outlet Kompas.com sent a reporter to interview her in person at the very house that’s up for sale and discovered she’s quite serious.
A widowed mother, Wina told Kompas she needs to sell the house because that cash will save her family from destitution. Her only nonnegotiable condition is that the buyer must be a devout Muslim who can serve as the imam to her family and “teach her how to wear a hijab properly”.
Dian Purna Dirgantara, a friend who’s a realtor, gave her the idea for the wacky pitch. “He took the pictures of the house and even suggested the wording for the ad he then placed online himself – ‘Buy a house and marry the owner’. I liked the idea because I’m actually looking for a husband!”
Wina had expected a trickle of interest from Dian’s Facebook page or his BlackBerry Messenger service. She didn’t know the ad was going on a big property website. The response has been impressive, but unfortunately not so far in terms of genuine offers. She and Dian are coy about revealing how many series replies they’ve had, but most of the reaction has been either facetious or suspicious about her true motives. Nevertheless, Dian told Time, “There are continuous calls – I haven’t counted how many, but there must be dozens or even hundreds.”
The 523squaremetre house is up for bids starting at 999 million rupiah (Bt2.5 million) – and no, you don’t have to actually marry Wina if you only want the property. In that case she’ll just take your cash and look elsewhere for a new husband. (Maybe online.)
Meanwhile there are a lot of people watching the story carefully to see if this is in fact a clever way to sell a house fast and whether the owner will end up married to the buyer. In Thailand, where females outnumber males by 1.27 million – and a lot of the ladies own property – this could be very interesting indeed.