I never had heard of Keats until I read the column, but I like his concept of creating universes with "God wanted" signs posted out front. I also liked the music at
garageband.com
Speaking of things new to me that involve signs posted out front:
Posted on Mon, Nov. 12, 2007
Some homeowners selling on faith
By BARRY SHLACHTER
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Jacque Oley is a believer.
A month after trying to sell her Fort Worth house without getting a nibble, Oley decided to try what her mother-in-law and friends had suggested.
She bought a 5-inch plastic St. Joseph statue from her church -- part of an under-$10, St. Joseph-house selling kit, complete with prayer -- and buried it headfirst three feet from her house in the back yard.
Four days later, a prospective buyer stopped by and settled on the price the next day.
"We did it, and it worked," she said.
Now Oley and her retirement-planner husband are hoping for house-finding intercession from St. Joseph, who was dug up and cleaned off after a three-hour search with a three-pronged gardening tool. "We had forgotten where we had buried him," she explained.
Desperate house sellers have been employing likenesses of St. Joseph long before the current real estate and mortgage downturn.
It's hard to gauge how much the housing slump has helped sales because some buyers pick up the statues for purely religious reasons, said Richard Myers, owner of St. Anthony's, a Catholic gift shop on McCart Avenue near West Berry Street in Fort Worth.
"All I know is that I sell hundreds, and I haven't had anyone come back and complain," said Myers, 63.
Kits for sale
Aside from religious gift shops and specialized online merchants, stores selling supplies to real estate agents also stock them. At the one run by the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors, boxed St. Joseph home-selling kits -- $6.95 for members, $8.95 to the general public -- are sold next to magnetized signs that say: "Special Financing" and "Water Frontage."
"When I took the job two years ago, I discussed doing away with them, but the Realtors absolutely had a fit," said Dawn Marie Brown, director of customer service and store manager at the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors. The kits sell briskly -- both in the English- and Spanish-language versions -- she said.
Some sellers, though, have reservations.
"It just smacks of paganism -- to think a little plastic statue will allow you to sell your home," said Gail Schatzman, director of the Catholic Renewal Center & Bookstore near Fort Worth's Nolan High School, which sells about 10 of the small plastic statues a month.
The local diocese itself uses more diplomatic language.
"This is not a sanctioned practice of the Catholic Church or the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth," the Rev. James Hart said by e-mail. "It is a practice that apparently has its roots in folklore. The statue of St. Joseph, like all religious statues in the Catholic Church, is a religious object that deserves reverence and respect."
So, does the church condone marketing St. Joseph as part of home-selling kits?
"These organizations are private businesses, which are free to engage in commerce of their choice. Praying to St. Joseph, the patron saint of home and family, without burying his statue, we think, would accomplish the same results for families who are wishing to successfully sell their home," Hart replied.
'A quaint custom'
According to legend spread by online sellers, not church sources, the practice may have started with St. Teresa of Avila (patron saint of headaches; 1515-1582), who came into land desired for her Order of Discalced, or Barefoot, Carmelites after she and other nuns buried medals of St. Joseph, the patron saint of family and household needs.
Over the years, medals were replaced by statues, buried headfirst, three feet from a house. When the house sells, it should be washed of dirt and put in a place of honor in the new home.
The Carmelite convent in Arlington declined to comment. But Sister Maria Walsh, spokeswoman for the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, said: "The church has not promoted it but doesn't condemn it either. It's just a quaint custom."
All sorts of people are trying to cash in.
Banking on statuary
Phil Cates, a Lutheran who sells $9.95 kits over the Internet, said he racked up 565 orders at lunchtime on a recent weekday.
Cates, 56, a Modesto, Calif.-based mortgage broker, says kit sales now represent half his income. The side business began in 1990 when a friend was unable to sell his home until the woman's Methodist mother in Wisconsin asked, "Well, Nancy have you planted a Joe? Everyone in the Midwest does it."
By mistake, the friend buried St. Christopher. When the right figure was interred, the house sold, he said.
It was an entrepreneurial epiphany for Cates. "This is crazy but I like this idea," said the statuary merchant, who has been quoted by newspapers across the country.
Whatever works
"I don't claim to be a biblical scholar," said Maureen Propp, a Catholic in Colleyville. "All I know is that we used it twice, and it worked."
The first time was 20 years ago -- long before the proliferation of home-selling kits. Her Aurora, Colo., home with views of a freeway and a shopping mall was getting little attention.
"It wasn't easy finding statues of St. Joseph in those days," said Propp, who has been a book researcher, cake decorator, dog walker and testing analyst while raising three children with her sales-executive husband.
"We had to recycle a plaster St. Joseph from a child's nativity scene. I think we put him a plastic bag before we buried him. I also did a novena to St. Joseph," she said, of a series of prayers.
Propp, who used the same St. Joseph to sell another home in 1995 before moving to Fort Worth, added: "Whether you believe it in or not, it can't hurt."
Beware of dog
That's the belief among those in the industry.
"This St. Joseph thing happens across the country," says Clay Brants of Brants Realtors. "It's not like it's a voodoo practice and the only practitioners are in North Texas. I've had some of my agents do it. You can never tell where the buyer is coming from -- someone a block away wanting a larger house or somebody coming in from Omaha, Neb."
Kelly Jordan, a Realtor with Mays Realty Group of Fort Worth who had been told about the statue decades ago by her sister, has suggested that clients employ St. Joseph when they have problems selling their home.
"I say, 'Do you mind if I get a statue of St. Joseph and bury him in your yard?' And they say, 'What?' After I explain, they say, 'Go get him!'"
The track record has been good, Jordan insists, except for the property where the owner's dog excavated St. Joseph and chewed him up.
"The house is still on the market," she said. "But they're talking about getting another St. Joe."
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