A commercial builder and his wife, an interior designer, purchased a nondescript spec house while it was still under construction. They had fallen in love with its wooded lot overlooking Maynadier Creek, a tranquil tributary of the Severn River near...

Good old-fashioned snail mail can still get the job done. When Christopher Schriever, owner of a boutique marketing company, and Edward Palmieri, a director at Facebook, were having trouble finding a property in DC?s trendy Shaw neighborhood, they...