Bury a Statue if You Must, But Also Follow These Tips to Sell Your Jacksonville Home

July 28, 2010 | carol | Comments 0

Dating back to 1979 in the U.S., some home buyers have claimed that burying a statue of St. Joseph in your yard will hasten the sale of your home. According to Snopes.com, a site dedicated to publishing facts about urban legends, rumors and myths, no conclusive evidence has been found to show that statues of the Patron Saint of Homes and Families helps sell homes.

Snopes.com says that “prudent” real estate agents advise their home sellers to accompany the burial with a combination of making home repairs, staging their home, and pricing it correctly for the market.

It’s not surprising that burying St. Joseph in the yard did not make the list of home selling tips that recently appeared in the Equifax Personal Finance Blog. Instead, real estate expert Ilyce Glink talks about a different modern-day phenomenon: reality TV.

Rather than helping to sell homes, TV shows that follow homeowners as they prepare homes for market or follow buyers as they make their selections could be making the process harder on the rest of us. According to Glink, buyers who’ve watched hours of programming showcasing homes staged for television have extremely high expectations for the homes they visit. So her first tip: “make your house look good enough to be on TV.”

The article, “Selling a House: 4 Tips to Get More Buyers through Your Door,” continues with several practical and proven ideas for selling your home. Glink starts by acknowledging the difficulty of selling in today’s climate, when the number of people looking for a home has fallen by as much as 40 percent since the passing of the tax credit deadline.

Her tips give recommendations for getting your house online, researching your competition and pricing. The pricing section discusses the effect of changing appraisal rules and why those rules could mean you need to price your house lower.

For Glink’s complete, sensible advice on this and other real estate topics, visit the Equifax Personal Finance Blog. And if you have had success using a statue of St. Joseph to sell a home, we’d like to hear about it right here!

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