Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
That’s the story from the Wall Street Journal. And lo and behold, a commenter from Asheville says it worked for him!
Here’s a bit of the story:
With housing woes in the headlines daily, more people are asking for help from a higher power to sell their homes.
StJosephStatue.com, a Modesto, Calif., company that creates plastic statues that many believers in the powers of saints bury upside down in their back yards to help sell their homes, has released a new quarterly index comparing the company’s sales to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, published by Standard & Poors. The index (click chart below to enlarge index) shows the correlation between sales of the statues and sales of homes in the country’s top 20 housing markets, from late 2005, when the housing market began to unwind, until spring 2008.
Not surprisingly, statue sales are doing best in places where housing prices have done the worst, and are on the rise in 17 of the 20 markets. (For more about St. Joe see our post St. Joseph’s to Work, Home Sellers Have to ‘Have Faith’)
Phil Cates, a mortgage broker who founded the statue company 17 years ago, won’t release annual revenue figures. But he says buyers of statues aren’t necessarily religious, even though St. Joseph is a Catholic saint.
In fact, statue sales are best in the south Atlantic region, which isn’t particularly a Catholic enclave — but is an area with sagging sales.
And here’s the comment from Bob in Asheville:
I was a skeptic, but after I had a house for sale, in the Asheville NC area, for about 1.5 yrs,
a friend in FL, gave me the St. Joseph statue that had just sold their house in FL,
I planted St Joseph right side up, facing the front door, had an offer in 3 weeks, that I closed on in fall 06.
I passed the statue on to my parents, who had been trying to sell a lake house for 3 + yrs, they planted St Joseph in late spring 07, a buyer looked at the house around the 4th of July, initially said they were going to pass, and then came back in the fall, to buy.
So, who’s to say . . .
Comment by Bob – July 18, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Thanks to loyal reader Kathi for the tip!
Wow! That was a brilliant idea about the statues that helps sell the house in time. I am much thanks fr this post for sharing their beliefs about the statues of Saint Joseph.
I sold my house using a magic rainbow unicorn.
Seriously, this stuff is such bullshit. of course it seems like it works…you only buy one when your desperate after your house sits on the market for a year or so.
And since every day your house sits on the market, the chances it gets sold go up slightly (the law of averages/big numbers) it seems like the Joseph statue has worked, even though it was just simple math.