Condo sellers are getting more desperate. As the real-estate market dips, condos on Capitol Hill have depreciated in value by an average of 1.2 percent since last year. On north Beacon Hill, they’ve dropped by 20 percent. So an open house yesterday for an art-themed condo building on Federal Avenue East lured buyers with more than the requisite granite countertops, more than $5000 discounts for artists and teachers, and more than the Rutles jamming "I Must Be In Love" from a boom box. Art Haus, a condo with art hanging in the halls, offered free readings from an honest-to-Goddess “master psychic and clairvoyant.”

The sign-up list to see clairvoyant Judith Ballard was over half a page when I arrived. Waiting for my turn, I chatted with developer Alyce Conti, who bought the 81-year old brick building in October 2007 with Clay Laidig, her co-developer and husband. They put it on the market five months ago, but only four of the nine units have sold so far. And among the gimmicks to get people to into open houses, the couple has even offered massages from a licensed masseuse. “We always try to do something that is—I don’t know if it is out there, per se—but something a little out of the box,” she says.

But what is Ballard going to predict for would-be buyers… your future holds a walk-in closet? “No that’s not her deal,” says Conti. “More like she says you should have finished your degree. Maybe you should go ahead with that degree now.”

But after 30 minutes waiting in the penthouse, this high-school drop out still hadn’t been called. Some clairvoyant. Didn’t she foresee I was coming? I left to gaze into a crystal ball of pho down the street.