She bought a house at 10, and got started living the American dream

Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes

MILLCREEK — Stop me if you've heard this one before.

No, wait, there's no way you've heard anything quite like this: it's the story of a 9-year-old Chinese girl who 34 years ago arrived at the Salt Lake Airport malnourished, weighing no more than 50 pounds, counting the coat on her back, didn't know a word of English, had zero money and, now, at 43, is ranked among the top-10 female investment managers in the country, in addition to owning and managing dozens of houses and apartments, lives with her husband and their four children in a beautiful new home situated just below Mount Olympus with a panoramic view of the Salt Lake Valley.

All of it dating back to when she bought a house when she was 10.

Technically, she didn't buy the house. Her father signed the papers, but Yijiang "John" Hu knew hardly a word of English, let alone American finances, and it was his daughter who orchestrated the entire transaction.

Her name was Fang Hu when she came from China, but she soon anglicized her first name to Amy, after a friend's daughter — the first indication that this was a person adept at assimilating into her new culture.

She'd come from Hunan, an impoverished mountainous province in southeastern China that was the birthplace of Chairman Mao, sent to America by her mother ostensibly on vacation to visit her father, who had only recently made his way to the U.S. But the ticket was one-way. Unbeknownst to Amy Hu, her parents, each trying to eke out an existence after China's cultural revolution had reduced their lives to rubble, had conspired to "give her the best chance they could" by settling her in America.

Her father worked three jobs — dishwasher, busboy, food handler at the airport — just to pay utilities, buy rice, and pay the rent, which in 1990 was $200 a month.

Then, one day, the landlord knocked on the door and informed Hu, who handled all her dad's finances, that the rent was going up to $250.

"But we don't have it," responded the now 10-year-old. To which the landlord replied, "Then you'll have to move out."

Hu was flummoxed. How could this be? She asked her father, who informed her they didn't own the house, they were only paying rent, and the landlord could charge whatever he wanted.

A few months later, during summer vacation, Hu was watching her daytime soap operas — that's how she learned English — when an ad came on between "General Hospital" and "All My Children" featuring Dan the Realtor, who was showing a house he said you could buy for $200 a month.

Hu called the 800 number, talked to Dan and told him, "I saw your commercial. I want that house on TV."

"I don't have that house," he said, "but I can get you a house. When can I talk to your parents?"

When Dan the Realtor met Hu and her dad, he quickly realized who would be putting this deal together. Amy Hu explained to him all she wanted was assurances that the payments would never go above $200. Not only was that true, Dan promised, but the Hu's would own the house outright in 30 years.

Hu, now Amy Sunderland, who was delivering the Salt Lake Tribune every morning along with helping her dad at his restaurant job, somehow managed to cobble together enough of a down payment that a few months later she took her father to the real estate closing and after signing a wad of papers an inch thick they emerged — the dishwasher and the Wasatch Elementary fourth grader — as the proud owners of a house in downtown Salt Lake City across from the library, for which they paid $22,000.

Ignorance, Sunderland says, looking back, was bliss.

"I didn't know what interest rate was, thank goodness, because it was 12%."

But they had their house, and if their poverty was still crippling, and would be for a while longer, things were nonetheless moving in the right direction.

The rest of Sunderland's story is worthy of a book and movie: how during her sophomore year at West High School she returned to China to care for her ailing mother and arranged to transport her to Utah, at considerable expense (with thanks to last-minute help from then Sen. Orrin Hatch); how she used the equity from that first house purchase, and subsequent real estate purchases, to pay back in full all the friends and family who had loaned her money to help her mom; how she graduated magna cum laude from the Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and was hired by Goldman Sachs even before she graduated; how she met her husband, Seth Sunderland, a Utah native (he's from Lehi) and fellow financial analyst, and they merged their talents and started their family; how she was hired by the prestigious Wasatch Advisors and then the even more prestigious Grandeur Peak Global Advisors and in 2021 was ranked No. 8 on a Citywire listing of the top 20 women portfolio managers in the country; how to this day she still personally helps fix up her real estate properties (including that first house she and her dad bought across from the library) and knows the names of each of her more than 200 tenants.

All of it tracing back to the day she called Dan the Realtor and he said, "I can get you a house."

"I'd like to find that Dan guy," Sunderland said during a recent visit as she relaxed on the deck of her home-with-a-view in Olympus Cove. "Thanks to angels like him, and others like him, I have lived the American dream."

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Lee Benson

Lee Benson has written slice-of-life columns for the Deseret News since 1998. Prior to that he was a sports columnist. A native Utahn, he grew up in Sandy and lives in the mountains with his family.