Forget Saint Patrick and focus on Saint Joseph to sell your home

St Joseph statues

With the approach of St Patrick’s Day, many Chicagoans are looking forward to slipping the surly bonds of civilization and settling in for a weekend-long drunk. It’s a tradition.

Many Chicago home sellers have lost sight of or never heard of another tradition, one that dates to the sixteenth century: burying a statue of Saint Joseph upside down in one’s yard guarantees a quick home sale. That’s The Straight Dope, and you can Google it. Saint Joseph’s Day is March 19, which might be an auspicious day for a burial.

Six years ago we bought out the entire inventory of Saint Joes of a religious store on the northwest side and put the statues up for adoption at the annual Illinois Association of Realtors convention. They were snapped up quickly – Realtors, after all, know how to sell homes and jump-start the spring sales market.

We held back the big guy in the above picture, and I gave him to Belgravia Group‘s Alan Lev following a mortgage-burning ceremony at 600 Lake Shore Drive. I’ve refrained from asking Alan whether the statue found its way into the ground outside Phase I of CA23, which Belgravia acquired and sold quickly last year.

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