MOUNT KISCO, N.Y.

Lord knows it’s rough out there in the housing market. Still, you had to feel bad for Patty Bonadies, digging with a spoon in the rocky soil in front of the new three-story colonial for sale at 7 Old Roaring Brook Road in search of the tiny statue of St. Joseph she had buried in hopes of helping the house sell.

“I should have brought a bigger spoon,” she said. She wanted to move the statue, which she had planted near the front door in May, to a perhaps more propitious spot. Her late mother-in-law’s house in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., is for sale, and she plans to plant a statue there, too. “You have to believe,” she said. “In this market, you’re looking for any help you can get.”

Mrs. Bonadies, a real estate agent for three years, is Roman Catholic, but St. Joseph, who is said to look after homes, families and carpenters, among many other things, isn’t just for Catholics anymore. With the housing market still dismal, the Catholic tradition of planting a statue of him as a way to help a house sell is going like gangbusters online, in stores selling religious goods and elsewhere  even if home sales are not.

“In the past, we’ve seen some upticks in sales of the kits whenever there’s a sign that the housing market is on the skids,” said Nicholas Cole, director of marketing for the Catholic Company, based in Charlotte, N.C., which sells religious items online and through catalogs. “But the sales of the product have been really strong for the last two years. We saw a really big spike last year, and they’re still really selling. I don’t want to say ‘desperate’ is the right word, but I think it’s selling to people across the board, not just Catholics.”