This week's real estate articles on MarketWatch.com included Countrywide to cut up to 12,000 jobs. New foreclosures set record in latest MBA survey, and How to get a mortgage today. Yawn...
Then I scrolled back to an August post by Amy Hoak, Keeping the faith, which inspired me take a look at the home-selling strategy of burying St. Joseph in the yard.
I'm a little sensitive about St. Joseph, having been born on his feast day, March 19. My mother often said she wish it occurred to her to name me "Josephine" in his honor - Thank goodness, she didn't! (Please, no offense intended to all the Josephines or people who love Josephines who may be reading this.) But I still feel duty-bound to honor St. Joseph, given the coincidence of my birthday and his feast day. I just don't feel treating him as a superstition does that.
Whenever my home sellers mention burying a St. Joseph statue, I just tell them they have something even better - an agent with a special connection to St. Joseph - and they seem fine with that. (The properties always seem to sell, so maybe that is the secret - not my 30+ years of experience, superior marketing plan, etc.)
These are desperate times for home sellers, however, and they call for desperate measures. St. Joseph could be in for a comeback!
A google search for St. Joseph Statue yields several pages of links, including one to Amazon.com for Stephen J Binz's book on the topic and several places to buy an entire kit - statue, instructions about where (front yard) and how (upside down) to bury it, and even a burial bag. In case you haven't noticed yet, we even have ST. JOSEPH STATUE "THE UNDERGROUND REAL ESTATE AGENT" Your Sales Assistant as an ActiveRain Sponsor.
According to a description of Binz's book, "hundreds of thousands of people, including the author, have sold their homes under the patronage of St. Joseph, whose intercession they sought after burying his statue in their yard. The author takes a personal, humorous, light, and loving look at Joseph, depicting his life as a husband and father, homebuilder, and carpenter. He shows that the popular statue-burying practice is not a superstition, but part of a prayerful devotion. He also provides prayer services for selling a house and blessing a new home."
Personally, I kinda suspect that burying the statue was one of several steps taken by a frustrated seller at about the same time - lowering the price, staging the property, raising the selling agent's co-op fee or offering a buy-down.
I'm always eager to learn, though, so I'm going to put aside my indignation and cynicism about this practice long enough to be open-minded to testimonials. If you have a story about a St. Joseph's statue, please share!
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