In order to help a home sell, people have been burying St.Joseph statues in their yards for ages. Some say the practice will help a home sell faster, and of course others say it won’t do anything.

The practice is said to date back to at least to the great St. Teresa of Avila (A.D. 1515 – 1582). St. Teresa founded an Order that needed a new convent built. The nuns found a perfect piece of land, but didn’t have the money they needed. So they asked St. Joseph to intercede, burying medals with his likeness. Over time, the folk custom developed into burying small statues of St. Joseph in order to help homes be sold,

I find it interesting how customs like these develop. I don’t know if there is anything to the St. Joseph’s statues, but this site sells over two million of them a year so apparently someone thinks it works…

Here’s an act comedian Ron Culberson does regarding the power of St. Joseph statues:

I don’t think I’ll be ordering cases of these things, but if one of our clients wants to try it, I’ll loan them a shovel.

While meandering through a Twitter stream, I took an unmarked left-turn and wound up on CrappyGraphs.com. It’s a very different blog run by Brian Shaler, a Phoenix area “web developer, marketing specialist, writer,
speaker, social media aficionado, visual statistician, photographer,
and exceptional jumper”. 

CrappyGraphs has nothing to do with real estate (though it could have real estate statistics applications. . .)

If however, you’ve got a little geek and/or engineer in you, there are some hilarious graphs to be found. I spent way too many years in Corporate America viewing umpteen thousand line graphs and really bad Venn Diagrams. I wish CrappyGraphs had been around then.

You can even make your own CrappyGraph! (warning: it is addicting, so be careful!)

Here’s one I just created, moments after deleting the daily hundred or so spam comments that this blog seems to collect:

Go ahead, give it a whirl!

Hat tip Phil Hoover via Joe at Sellsius.

Apparently real estate in Britain isn’t a whole lot different than real estate here…

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I don’t even know what to say.

Immediate thoughts were:

“Oh Dear God”

“What the heck?!”

“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit”

Francy said posting this might offend someone (incidentally, she took the photo. We’ll try to get a better one, but you get the idea.).

I said, “As a Realtor and an American, *I* am offended.”

Good marketing, or Realtor marketing gone bad? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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Someone named “Bob” (curiously with an email address of bob@bob.com, which of course bounced as undeliverable) just sent me this from the blog contact form:

FYI your last post of sex offenders……search your name in public data base and your name comes up with numberous criminal records under Jay Thompson

JAY ELLIOTT THOMPSON
M-0751-CR-2007042936

JAY GRANT THOMPSON
S-0700-CR-1996001182

JAY J THOMPSON
M-1041-CR-86036639

JAY JEFF THOMPSON
M-1041-CR-93044552

You need to clean up your act. (my emphasis)

“Bob” -

Let’s be real. How many “Jay Thompson’s” do you think exist out there? I don’t know the exact number, but it’s a whole lot. “Jay” is a pretty common name, and “Thompson” is a very common surname. For the record, my legal first name is James, which makes it even more common.

How common? Well, suffice it to say that there is a James/Jay Thompson on the Federal terrorist watch list. Trust me, I deal with it every time I fly. Yet they still let me on planes.

There are enough bankrupt Jay / James Thompson’s out there to make life difficult every time I apply for a mortgage or credit card.

According to this source, Thompson is the 17^th most common surname in the US, and James is the most common male name. According to this site, around 672,500 people in the US have a last name of Thompson. Among first names only, 144,550 have the first name Jay and  4,064,550 have the first name James. Now I don’t know how many are named James or Jay Thompson, but I feel pretty safe saying it is “a big ol’ pile”.

I suspect there are tens of thousands of people named Jay / James Thompson out there. (Incidentally, none of those you listed are me. Not even close). And yes, some of those Jay Thompson’s are not good folk.

I don’t know whether to laugh or be afraid that you took the time to do a public record search on my name. If you are so inclined, please repeat the search using the name James Graham Thompson, Jr. While I can’t promise you that nothing will come up, I can assure you that this James Graham Thompson, Jr won’t.

I’ve been fingerprinted multiple times (not for those reasons people! For employment and licensing purposes – real estate sales, broker and substitute teacher), and passed numerous employment background checks. If any client is concerned that I might be some felon, terrorist or sex offender, I’ll be happy to provide evidence otherwise.

So, Bob, I really don’t feel compelled — in the least — to “clean up my act”.

But thanks for caring.

PS: I’m not complaining about my common name. It’s my Dad’s name, and my son’s name, and it means a lot to me to be named after my Dad and have my son named for both of us.

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I get things like this every so often:

—–Original Message—–
from: REDACTED
date: 19 Mar 2008 12:41:20
To:Phoenixrealestateguy@gmail.com
Cc: REDACTED
subject: Your Domain, www.phoenixrealestateguy.com

I would like to purchase the domain www.phoenixrealestateguy.com. I would be willing to pay $2,000.00 for it. I have my own website (redacted) and make money by improving sites and getting advertising for them. Please let me know if you would be willing to let me buy your site by emailing me at xxxxxx or call me at xxxxxx.

I will forward a purchase agreement to you immediately. We have already deposited the funds for the purchase of your domain with SafeFunds.com.

Please visit their website for details regarding receipt of payment and transfer of ownership of the domain.

$2,000?

I think not. Add a couple of zero’s to that and I’ll give it some thought. (Hey, everything has a price.)

What is even more funny is this came not long after I responded to a comment on “The Case Against Blogging” on HomeGain blog that said (in part):

Michael Maher writes: “It’s time to call blogging what it is – a fun hobby. Businesses make money and hobbies cost money. In this case, time is money and this hobby is costing time. It’s okay. Some people mow their lawn. Some people do scrapbooking. Some people build model cars. And some people blog. Great! Have fun with it, but don’t substitute it for genuine assertive prospecting methods like handwriting notes, phone calls, and one-on-one meetings with potential clients and referral partners.”

Yeah, whatever.
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For some reason, this video reminds me of my email inbox….

[tags]Monty Python, Spam sucks[/tags]

Today someone visited the blog by searching Google for…

real estate agents with no life

We’re at #5. Huh.

If you are looking for a real estate agent with no life to help you buy or sell property, by all means, contact me!

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[tags]Strange Search Terms, apparently I have no life[/tags]

Today’s Dilbert. Ironic timing…

Inside joke. Some will get it, most probably not. But it’s sorta funny either way.

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