RealEstate

Real Estate Matters!

If you’re thinking about purchasing or selling a piece of property you owe it to yourself to have it evaluated before you either make an offer or put it on the market. You wouldn’t think of buying a house without a Home Inspection to determine it’s structural strengths and weaknesses and get a “heads-up” for issues that may be on the horizon.

In the same way a Home Inspection can save you a lot of grief and expense in the future, a Feng Shui analysis can do the same, but from a different perspective. The floor plan, placement of doors, adjacent properties, and the energy of the space impact what life will be like in the space. An analysis will help you plan for the future; know what types of issues you might be predisposed to and what adjustments to make – if any.

If you’re selling a home, a Pre-Market Analysis will make it possible to present your home or business in the most favorable light, thereby positioning it for the shortest time on the market and sale at the highest price. Buyers make their emotional decision about the property with about 30 seconds of walking through the front door. It’s visceral and immediate and little can be done to change that first opinion. Make sure your property engages the prospective buyer emotionally the minute they get out of the car and begin the walk to the front door.

You’ll be given very specific information with point-by-point details about what needs to be done to ready the. Help also available for making the suggested changes – removing the guess work and leaving you free to live your life. An added benefit is your own comfort while the property is on the market. The same changes that make the space appealing to a potential buyer, make it a joy to live in while it’s on the market!

More than a left-brain process

Buying or selling a home is about far more than the left brained process involving square footage, appraisals, inspections, asking price and price negotiations. At the heart of all of these logical, analytical processes is the emotional life of the seller, the buyer and yes, even the agent.

Our homes and to some degree our businesses are a reflection of all that we have hoped for, dreamed about and accomplished. Homes are the metaphor for what our lives have been about. If we are selling or buying we are in some state of flux – of transition. Transitions, while guided by finance many times, are essentially soul issues and those people who direct traffic and help us with the process are purveyors of dreams lived, lost and those to come.

To engage in this process of buying or selling without recognizing that truth is a little like Dr. Frankenstein creating a body out of disparate parts without recognizing or giving thought to the emotional life he’s about to create or how all the “parts” affect the finished product.

Balance or Chaos?

Just as each seller or buyer has pieces of life that are working well or not at all, each property has a sense of balance or chaos that is present as a silent partner at every showing. This balance or chaos has both physical and non-physical components. The physical is more easily recognized. But the non-physical is just as important, if not more so, because it can sabotage the process without anyone being able to verbalize on the cause.

When I first began the process of buying properties – beginning with my first home, I knew instantly upon walking through the front door – nay, many times just by driving by, that the home was or wasn’t for me. I couldn’t always put it into words - I just felt it. When forced to verbalize on what didn’t work, I could always come up with something: not big enough, too cavernous, too dark, wrong arrangement – something. But the fact underlying it all – was “It didn’t feel right.”

Now I know there are other formats in place that relate to this feeling of “just perfect” or “not right.” I mentioned the concepts of balance, which might sound a bit ethereal, but actually has observable and modifiable components.

Identifiable components

The good news is that many of these elements are discrete, identifiable and modifiable - many times without buying a thing and without renovating or re-decorating. Most of the time, the bare elements for balance are present; they just need to be re-formatted. It’s a matter of using what you have on hand in a different way. Further, no amount of painting, re-decorating or re-designing will make a difference without adhering to or at least tipping your hat to some basic guidelines. Those are addressed in detail in my Real Estate Feng Shui Seminars. At this point it’s sufficient to know that they exist and that you don’t have to be a guru to work within their framework.

Physical properties to consider include:

The footprint (floor plan and shape) of the property
Connection of the property with the street (sidewalk layout and physical orientation)
Entrance: open & safe vs. overgrown and “Hansel & Gretel” feeling
Natural and artificial lighting: dark corners or entries/ yellow or blue overtones or fluorescent flickers
Potential for furniture arrangement: ergonomic flow and sense of welcome and functionality
Color: harsh whites/ pigments with grays or somber undertones
can feel depressing without conscious recognition that it is color at work
Privacy: beds exposed to doorways, presence or lack of private spaces in the structure

You can feel it, but you can’t see it (or “non-identifiable” components):

Sometimes the imbalance or chaos is not physical and not so logically dealt with. You can feel something is right or amiss, but you can’t SEE it with the physical eye. I know there may be those who would like to deny that such a thing exists, and even if it does – think it’s outside the purview of a real estate discussion. Well, it shouldn’t be – because it can negatively impact the sale of a home more severely that other aspects for the simple reason that it cannot be seen – only felt. On occasions when there has been a catastrophic event (death, an especially contentious divorce, long illness) you might need to call in an expert to help clear the energy out of the space. Those too are circumstances that will be discussed. I would guess any agent, investor, or homeowner with many transactions under his/her belt has experienced dealing with a property with a difficult history.

Non-physical properties include:

The “feel” of the space: cold/spooky/unwelcoming without accompanying physical factors
A sense of unseen presence
Heavy/sad feeling: in the absence of obvious neglect of the physical property
Smells: some times physical, all can be removed with remediation
Joyful feeling in the property even though not physically “perfect”
Sense of history of the space when not consciously known
A sense that we are intruders: when the owner is not emotionally ready to let go of the property, it can feel as though we are intruders. (Link to releasing the space)

If you have recently moved into a property or are about to, I recommend that you have it energetically cleansed and blessed to create a “clean canvas” upon which to create the masterpiece of your own life.

Upcoming Real Estate Seminars: