It's a new year in real estate, and a landmark for Philip Cates, a Modesto mortgage banker. He just sold his 100,000th statue of St. Joseph, helper of home sellers and a patron saint of patience.

Cates started selling his little statues as a sideline in 1990. Now, he mans a definitive Web site on this slice of real estate culture: www. stjosephstatue. com.

The lore of St. Joseph holds that burying a statue of him – sometimes upside down – will help a home seller find a buyer.

It's been labeled both goofy superstition and divine aid. But thousands have tried it in this downturn, just as in busts of the 1980s and 1990s.

Surprisingly, Cates acknowledged Thursday that "sales are a little bit flat. We're wondering if people aren't talking about it anymore, or if people are light with the $10."

Home Front noted one possibility: banks, dumping repossessed properties, now account for three-fourths of home sales in Sacramento. Presumably, St. Joseph isn't part of their corporate tool kits.

Cates said he plans next month to start going after national builders and banks.

It may not be far-fetched, considering that home builders might try almost anything, and that even respectable Consumer Reports has written about the statues. (Consider pricing right, CR says.)

Cates, who sells kits made by an eastern U.S. supplier for $9.95, provides a free online listing of his statue buyers' houses. Nearly 500 are in California, with four in Sacramento, three in Roseville, two in Fair Oaks and one in Rocklin.

"A thousand of those homes sold last year," he said Thursday. One among them, in Folsom, brought $674,900.

Coincidence?

Bad year for predictions

Home Front's Jan. 2 compilation of missed-by-a-mile predictions prompted a reminder from Sacramento real estate broker Matthew Corsaut about this column's January 2008 "Educated Guesses" feature for the year that was just starting.

We asked you then to clip out the guesses and save them to "see how they did."

The results are in now. It was an extremely volatile year that many pros say they could never have predicted. And so Home Front's featured real estate trackers also fell short. Here's how they did:

• Sacramento research firm TrendGraphix said in November 2007 that sales of existing homes in Sacramento County would rise about 2 percent in 2008 as prices went down.

What happened: Sales of existing homes rose anywhere from 65 percent to 126 percent some months in Sacramento County as banks slashed repo prices and buyers responded.

• The California Association of Realtors guessed sales would fall 9 percent statewide.

What happened: Sales rose approximately 12 percent for the same reason: bank repos.

• Folsom's Gregory Group estimated in November 2007 that builders would sell about 7,710 homes in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties in 2008.

What happened: They sold 4,695, the firm said last week.

• The California Building Industry Association, a statewide home builder trade group, predicted a "modest turnaround" for 2008. It guessed that builders would start about 127,600 homes, condos and apartments.

What happened: Three days before Christmas, the CBIA said it was expecting less than 64,000 construction starts for 2008, lowest since records began being kept in 1954.

Better luck, all, this year.

Mortgage rates still falling

We're sounding like a broken record, but mortgage rates before points fell still lower this week, to 4.96 percent for a 30-year fixed-rate loan, reported mortgage giant Freddie Mac on Thursday. That's down from last week's 5.01 percent and the 11th straight week of decline. Bankrate.com reported an overnight average Thursday of 5.09 percent.

What's behind it: lousy economic prospects and Federal Reserve action to buy mortgage debt, said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac's chief economist.

The 12 deals of Christmas

The holidays are long gone, but the gifts will keep coming for beneficiaries of one builder's Christmas promotion.

To move inventory, William Lyon Homes of Newport Beach did a take on that song about three French hens and two turtledoves called "12 Days of Christmas."

Seventeen buyers in December – seven during the slowest week of the year, Christmas to New Year's – learned new lyrics: "12 deals of Christmas."

Corny? Maybe. But the deals included $500 in gas money, $500 for grocery money, a year's free cleaning services, a year's free HOA dues, a refrigerator and backyard landscaping. Who says incentives are so 2006?

Lyon, like most builders, has had a really tough year. But in December locally, it beat out everybody but Los Angeles-based KB Home, according to statistics from the North State Building Industry Association.

Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.