November 28, 2006

Patron Saint of the Bidding War?

We are experiencing some unseasonably cold weather in Seattle this week. Good for winter sports, bad for driving. During my rally-cross drive home, I caught tonight’s episode of Marketplace on NPR. They had a really entertaining segment about burying a statue of Saint Joseph to speed the sale of your house. Long story short, wherever you bury a statue of Saint Joseph the property is bound to sell. I am willing to bet this will be a question on Bluff the Listener on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me this weekend.

The Marketplace story followed Mike Hickson, a skeptic turned believer after reading a testimonial about a “man who, while trying to sell his home, was given a St. Joseph statue, but scoffing at the notion, threw it in the trash. It went to the dump. Wasn’t he surprised a couple of weeks later when he saw in the paper that — lo and behold — the dump had been sold.”

Mike promptly ordered a statue and “dropped St. Joe into his basement sales office next to the For Sale sign on a Saturday morning anyway. Lo and behold, people viewed the house on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, we got an offer.”

We would like to conduct a more scientific study of the effect burying a statue of Saint Joseph has on selling a home. If you are selling your home and would like to be part of our study post a comment or send me an e-mail. Or if you’ve buried St. Joe to aid in the sale of your home, let us know the outcome.