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Tom Kelly
Tom Kelly
The Real Estate Adviser

September 11, 1998

How to get help from the 'Big Agent in the Sky'

By TOM KELLY
The Real Estate Advisor

While trying to sort out the controversy over who actually owns your listing -- online or otherwise -- when your home is "listed" for sale by an agent, I rediscovered one of the more interesting and curi ous "agents" I have ever known. Do you remember "St. Joseph: Underground Real Estate Agent?" It was marketed by a Modesto, Calif., woman who catered to folks who believed that a little divine intervention could not hurt the chances of homes selling.

Well, Karin Reenstierna, the mother of two youngsters, runs the aptly named "Inner Circle Marketing" from her home's basement. She has gone on-line with her idea (the web site is http://www.stjosephstatue.com) and folks are definitely checking out the home page.

"If you're a believer, you're a believer," said Phil Cates, Karin's husband who helped launch the website. "We've got some people requesting them because they half-heartedly think something might be there. We've got Realtors who give them as gifts and we've got others who flat-out know it's going to work."

Nearly a decade ago, when home prices plummeted along with the hopes of many would-be sellers, I wrote about a Federal Way couple who buried palm leaves in the four corners of their lot to help speed its sale.

The couple not only got a full-price offer, but they heard from other folks who had buried religious articles in their yards -- statues, medals, holy cards -- in the hope of divine intervention. One message contained information about the St. Joseph statues and Reenstierna's venture.

"I'm not Catholic, so I was really new to all this," Reenstierna said. "But I had a friend buy a statue of St. Joseph from a religious supply house and the salesperson said it was the very last one. The salesperson said 'People bury these in their yards and we can't keep them in stock."'

Reenstierna did some checking and found other stores had similar stories. She invested in some statues, came up with a logo and explanation sheet, and gave the business a whirl.

"My husband is a mortgage broker and he decided to give a statue to some of the Realtors that he does business with," Reenstierna said. "Well, you would have thought he was giving out gold bullion! Everybody wanted one and the word quickly spread."

One legend has it that some European nuns, desperate for additional land in the 1700s, buried statues on their property in order to get the attention of the Big Agent in the Sky.

Reenstierna and Cates have gotten the attention of consumers. More than 7,000 "St. Joseph: Underground Real Estate Agent" kits have sold at $8 a pop, plus $1.95 for shipping and handling.

If you don't travel on-line you can get yours by calling 1-(800)-326-9183.

Instructions, statue and the proper words to be said while placing the saint in the ground are included. In exchange for the saint's intercession, the seller is supposed to promise to put the statue in a prominent place once the transaction closes.

The web site is fun and useful. Not only will you find "20 Great Ways St. Joseph Can Help You Sell Your Home" but there is also a "Mortgage Calculator," "Home Price Comparison" and a "Directory of Realtors." The site also includes "Great Books for Sellers" and "Great Books about Saints." In the environmental section, consumers can obtain information on radon tests.

St. Joseph is the patron saint of the family and household needs yet he was not the saint used by my wife's family for a domestic request nearly 70 years ago.

My mother-in-law said her mother once buried St. Anthony upside down in the mud so that he could "think about that new house" she wanted to buy in 1931. When everything worked out, she replaced the statue that had done the dirty work with a more expensive one from Italy and housed him in a beautiful garden grotto.

Maybe I should construct a web page for St. Anthony.



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