Some home flippers seek aid by flipping St. Joseph on his head
Never mind that plastic Jesus on your dashboard.
If you're trying to sell your home in today's grim market, what you need is a statue of St. Joseph. The foster father of Jesus can sell your home standing on his head.
Call it an urban legend, a superstition, or an act of sincere devotion to the patron saint of homes and families. According to folklore, upending a statue of St. Joseph and burying it on the property you're trying to sell will bring a buyer to your door.
Even non-Catholics and skeptics have resorted to the practice, which dates back to medieval Europe. When they needed land for a convent, nuns might have buried their St. Joseph medals as an act of prayer. Over time, the ritual came to include a statue. Two years ago, Ann and Charles Culleiton put their Tarentum home on the market. Ann Culleiton buried a small plastic statue of St. Joseph in the yard of the home where she and her husband had lived for 43 years.
"I knew we were going to move. I thought, I'll bury this in the backyard by a rose bush so I can remember where I put it," Culleiton says. "We raised four sons there."
Within a week, they had an offer on the house, she says -- from their next-door neighbors. In accordance with the prescribed etiquette, Culleiton dug up St. Joseph and gave him a place of honor on her mantel in their new home in Lower Burrell.
"I just have a lot of faith in God," Culleiton says. "I pray to the saints to intercede for me."
The practice has moved into the secular realm. A statue of St. Joseph stands sentry in the offices of Northwood Realty in Penn Hills. Should a client who is selling a home mention the St. Joseph superstition, associate broker Staci Rullo says they will supply one.
"Do we have them⢠We have a gross of them," she says.
Actually, they have about 30 St. Joseph statues, she says. They purchased them at a close-out sale at the Dollar Store.
"There are a lot of superstitions when it comes to selling a home," she says. "What's lucky and what's not lucky."
Rullo, who was raised Jewish, says she's known about the practice since she entered the real estate business in 1988.
"It's something that some of the sellers believe in, but we don't advocate that," Rullo says.
Business in St. Joseph statues is brisk at Merhaut A.T. Religious Goods in Hampton. They also sell "home sale kits," which include the statue, a prayer card and suggestions for burial.
"They're selling very well," says John Merhaut, owner of the store. "We buy them by the gross. They're hard to keep in stock."
While some take the what-do-I-have-to-lose approach, Catholics treat it as an act of devotion.
"If you're looking at it as the statue doing the work, that's borderline voodoo," says Merhaut, a Catholic. "We stress the prayers and the faith and the intercession of St. Joseph."
Internet sales of the home sale kits have increased nearly 30 percent since last month, says Phil Cates, founder and CEO of StJosephstatue.com. Their St. Joseph Home Sale kit sells for $9.95. Another version with an 8-inch statue sells for $13.95.
"It's great for us, not so great for a lot of sad home sellers," he says.
Cates, a mortgage banker, launched the Web site in 1996. He says he devised the home-seller kits in 1990 as a way to attract business from real estate brokers. Those who buy a kit also can use a code that allows them to list their homes online. Pennsylvania has 170 properties listed, including those in Sewickley, Pittsburgh and Sarver.
"You can't trademark St. Joseph," Cates says. "We've trademarked the phrase 'St. Joseph: The Underground Real Estate Agent.'"
The Rev. Ron Lengwin, spokesman for Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, says the practice has been around since long before the home-foreclosure crisis.
"I don't think it's ever ended," he says. "It's certainly not a church-approved devotion. It really is a form of superstition. If you want to pray to St. Joseph to help you sell your home, fine. But to bury a statue upside down, we certainly don't encourage that."
Still, other members of the church see nothing wrong with soliciting a little divine intervention.
"It's not always fast and it's not always very straightforward, but ultimately, it works," says Sister Karen Stoila, director of development for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Baden, Beaver County. Her own sister made a special trip from Erie to Greensburg to bury a St. Joseph statue on the property of their late mother's condominium.
The property had languished for a year, with 14 offers but nothing substantial.
"Within a couple of months, we had a firm offer," Stoila says.
Catholic biblical scholar Stephen Binz is the author of "St. Joseph, My Real Estate Agent" (Servant Publications; $6.99). He discusses the life of the saint behind the superstition. Binz says that the ritual of burying a statue is a way of asking St. Joseph to look after one's family, the way he himself provided for Jesus and Mary.
"When people buy and sell homes, they are at a critical point in their life, a time of great joy -- a marriage, moving to some new place, a new job -- or sadness, losing a job or a spouse dying," he says. "All those kinds of things are related to buying and selling houses. People are in need of heavenly help."
Bonnie Veraldi wanted to wait before she and her husband put their South Park home on the market in 2003, because her attention was focused on her daughter's wedding. Her husband insisted it wouldn't sell that quickly, so they buried a statue of St. Joseph in the yard. The home sold within three weeks. The Veraldis had six weeks to vacate their home, and they hadn't begun to look for a new home.
"I could have killed my husband," Veraldi says. "I remember sitting at the reception with a glass of wine and thinking, 'We're homeless!' St. Joseph works -- at least for us -- whether you want him to or not!"
When a home seller buries a statue of St. Joseph on his or her property, it's important to consider the real estate mantra: location, location, location.
It matters where you inter the patron saint of carpenters, home and family.
The most common method is to bury the statue upside down with the feet pointing heavenward. Some bury him facing toward the home, while others have him facing their new home. Favorite locations for interment include the backyard or a few inches from the "For Sale" sign in the front.
Apartment dwellers have been known to bury the statue in a potted plant.
After the home is sold, the supplicant should unearth St. Joseph and give him a place of honor in their new home.
Burial suggestions are included in most "home sale kits," which also include a statue of St. Joseph and a prayer card. They're available on the Internet and at area religious supply stores.
But Linda Roche of Bethel Park says buying a statue is against the rules.
"Somebody has to give it to you," she says. "You can't go out and buy it yourself."
Her godmother gave her a 3-inch St. Joseph figurine in 2002 when they put their home in Overbrook on the market.
"She told us to put it in a plastic bag and bury it upside down by the 'for sale' sign," Roche says.
When four days went by without a firm offer, Roche dug him up, removed the plastic bag and reburied him near the front door, with his head and shoulders sticking out of the ground.
"I figured his head should be sticking out to look at the person as they entered the front door," she says.
They sold their home the same day.
"I know they say to put it in the backyard," says Debbie Morgan, who buried a statue of St. Joseph at the home she and her husband sold in Schaumburg, Ill., before they moved back to her native New Kensington. "My house didn't have a very big backyard, so I decided to put it in the front. It was easier for me to mark it in my flower bed where he was, so I'd know."
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