Are you a feng shui freak property investor? :)

Hi guys,
I'm just wondering whether you would buy a property based on feng-shui, either for residential or investment?
Let's say you found a perfect property in a prime location within your budget, and the only drawback was that the property's at the end of a cul-de-sac. Would you buy it?

Well, these are some of the feng shui things that I know from a japanese feng shui article:
It says that you shouldn't buy from anyone who has "problems", e.g. someone passed away/ill in the house before, selling because of bankruptcy (e.g.mortgagee sale) or separation/divorce... etc
Locations, e.g. near church, temple, cemetery, funeral director, hospital, near T-intersection or around the end of a cul-de-sac are not good.
Structures, e.g the upstairs stairway shouldn't be near the front entrance door. And window positions, kitchen are also important - not sure whether this's gonna cause any problem with the '5 star energy rating' thing :)
etc etc... There are a lot more...

What do you guys think? Would you consider any of the above? Do Australians believe in feng shui? :)
 
We have never been influenced by any of this (but would NOT buy next to a funeral home EVER).

I believe there is something to this "stuff" and have at times thought about getting someone in to check out our house, generally when things are going badly, but have never done it.

It also seems like no matter how dire the problem, there is always a simple solution like hanging crystals in a particular corner, placing a mirror somewhere, or doing something simple :rolleyes:.

There is a battle inside me about it "all being rubbish" as opposed to "maybe there is something in it after all".
 
Isn't feng shui Chinese?

If I was buying in an area where lots of Chinese lived, I would take notice of it because it could affect my ability to get tenants and resell.

Years ago I worked near Sydney's Chinatown. The local St George branch (which many Chinese used) did a reno. They moved the position of the doors and did some other stuff. When they reopened the branch, the Chinese wouldn't bank there. It was something to do with the fact that the branch had two entrances - front and rear. The reno made the front and rear doors align i.e. you could see straight through the branch from one street to the other. This was apparently a bad thing. So they had to close it up again and make some changes.
 
(but would NOT buy next to a funeral home EVER).
I own an ex-funeral parlour :cool:

Some of the feng shui stuff is there for good reason. Screw energy flow, T-junctions and cul-de-sacs end up with a house that gets glare through the windows all the time from approaching cars, and if the intersection is busy enough you might wind up with the house that also gets cars through the window.

Flow in the front door and out the back, like practically every stone symmetrical cottage within 400km of my house may be bad feng shui but it is excellent for airflow. Not the best if you pop out of the bathroom naked in the evening with the lights on inside and someone is at the front door though.
 
Let's say you found a perfect property in a prime location within your budget, and the only drawback was that the property's at the end of a cul-de-sac. Would you buy it?

If it had the wrong fengshui, it wouldn't be a perfect property would it? :)

Depends - high side at end of cul-de-sac (we call them "courts" here) - ie the thing runs up hill and the property is literally at the top of the court - is fine. It's just to stop runaway car(t)s rolling into your living room (hey don't laugh, it has happened!)

The Y-man
 
I own an ex-funeral parlour :cool:

I was hoping not to offend you with this comment, but for me, I could never live in one, or next to one. It is my problem though, not saying I am normal :p.

Some of the feng shui stuff is there for good reason. Screw energy flow, T-junctions and cul-de-sacs end up with a house that gets glare through the windows all the time from approaching cars, and if the intersection is busy enough you might wind up with the house that also gets cars through the window.

Flow in the front door and out the back, like practically every stone symmetrical cottage within 400km of my house may be bad feng shui but it is excellent for airflow. Not the best if you pop out of the bathroom naked in the evening with the lights on inside and someone is at the front door though.

I think you said what I was trying to say, but much better. A lot of feng shui seems to be "common sense" and I suppose I am rather cynical that Mum had at least one sale where the chinese buyers applied to council to have the number changed from 4 to 2a. Nothing else changed - same house, same position in the street between number 2 and number 6, but changing it to 2a means they will buy it.

I don't mean to ridicule it, but I don't understand the power it has. I have heard that your feet should not face the door because it means something bad (something to do with death from memory). There is really nowhere in our bedroom where our feet will not face the door except one wall, and if we put the bed there everyone who uses our bathroom would see our messy bed :eek:

I know I should place a crystal somewhere to counteract it, but I have too much else to worry about :p.
 
Thanks for the response guys! :)

Feng shui is very much alive in Japan too. It's called fuu shui - same thing 'Wind and Water'. Some differences might be japanese dont like no. 9 coz 9 is pronounced "ku" which has the same pronunciation as agony or torture.

Hmm. I think I agree w/ u guys that depending on the community/location we're buying, then we might need to consider this feng shui thing :)
 
I think that two ancient cultures that have pretty nice architecture have been guided by Feng Shui principles so it must have something going for it.
Depends on whether you think that there are 'invisible' energies which guide existence - if so then it may be something to consider.
Personally I find that instinct usually identifies 'bad feng shui'.
 
I was hoping not to offend you with this comment, but for me, I could never live in one, or next to one. It is my problem though, not saying I am normal .
I think it is kind of cool. It means noone died in the house - they died largely in the hospital across the paddock. Its in a ghost town so it hasn't been a funeral parlour for decades. The house itself actually has very good feng shui (or it did after some moving of walls around) and was lovely to live in.

Its not just you, the house was advertised as the "doctor's house" and that's how it is described in the local history brochure too. It has the coachman's cottage next door, with the stables for the hearse out back. Ex-hospitals, despite what actually went on in an 1870s era hospital, are apparently socially quite acceptable to be advertised as such but not other kinds of buildings :)
 
When I said I am not "normal" it really meant it. When I met hubby, he used to laugh that I held my breath when we drove past a funeral home. Once he was quote amused that we were stuck in traffic right outside one, so I had to keep breathing :D. My head knows I cannot catch "death" by breathing in the air around a funeral home, but I think by being shielded from death and funerals as a child, I had such a fear of anything to do with funerals.

I am quite sure we all have our little "odd" ways, and that is mine.... oh.. and I try to eat lollies in groups of three or five. Apart from those two things, I am quite normal :p:eek:
 
Isn't feng shui Chinese?

If I was buying in an area where lots of Chinese lived, I would take notice of it because it could affect my ability to get tenants and resell.

Years ago I worked near Sydney's Chinatown. The local St George branch (which many Chinese used) did a reno. They moved the position of the doors and did some other stuff. When they reopened the branch, the Chinese wouldn't bank there. It was something to do with the fact that the branch had two entrances - front and rear. The reno made the front and rear doors align i.e. you could see straight through the branch from one street to the other. This was apparently a bad thing. So they had to close it up again and make some changes.

My relos did a reno to fix an identical 'issue' with the back door being aligned to the front door. Something to do with money flowing in being able to flow directly out. I'd have to say it seems to have fixed their financial issues as their business is booming now :D
 
If you are familiar with feng shui, you can use it as part of your negotiation tactics...

eg.

"Well, I'm going to need to put a new wall in there to break the front-back door flow"

"Look, you can see the edge (or other pointed object) of the neighbours house from here, so I'll need to get a crystal to deflect the evil"

"Great house, but I really need a water feature and some fruit trees"

"This front path is too straight. I'm happy to pay the asking, but I need to adjust it down for redoing the path...."

etc

:D

Cheers,

The Y-man

p.s. gee the cul de sac example will be a ripper - great house but - I need to move it...
 
feng phooey works around superstition and whimsical beliefs about money.

bugger it.

gimme airflow and seasonal passivity anyday.

i don't care if a staircase that points to the door is bad for money - it funnels the incoming air upstairs to where it's hotter.

anyone that asks me to compromise design for anything other than a prayer room or religious altars/artefacts can choose another designer.
 
Some of it is superstitious but a lot of feng shui is just common sense. e.g. A house with a staircase going straight up near the front door is pretty indicative of a bad design. It just doesn't look good or feel good and I've walked out of those houses without a further glance.

I don't go for all the crystal ball nonsense but some of the designs of Chinese houses, like siheyuan (courtyard) homes have a very appealing feel to them. Same with the Japanese garden - tsubo niwa. My best sale was to a family who fell in love with my courtyard garden which was designed after much investigation into feng shui. They were so smitten that they almost forgot to ask the price of the house.

It's a bit odd though that people in Aust/NZ go by the books on feng shui which are written for the northern hemisphere north/south axis. Unless the design is reversed so that you get the northern light instead of southern light, it makes no sense at all.

We all have our own quirks. I would never buy a property which is below the level of the road or near the bottom of a hill.
 
I don't know much about feng shui, but I'd say the Australian equivalent is 'liking the feel of the place'. On that basis, yes, it does matter to me ;)
 
Our position is we respect many Feng Shui's principles as we can relate many of these principles to good building design principles i.e. air flow, solar access, acoustic and visual privacy etc...

My wife is more supertitious to the extend that she would avoid some "bad" numbers and consequently we have to factor those in as well when choosing a property. On top of that, I find that it is hard for us to totally ignore Feng Shui once we have learnt it as what are considerred bad Feng Shui stick in our mind and they pop up from time to time especially when things go bad...

Coupled with our other common sense selection criteria, I'd say we are among the fussiest buyers when it comes to selecting property.

We used to live in an old house with a street number 4 and a big tree right in front of the lounge's window (we purchased the house before we learnt much about Feng Shui). We planned to have a knock-down and rebuild later, by the way. During the time we lived there for 2 years, bad things happened one after another but I was not sure whether that was due to the house was too old to live comfortably and the neighborhood was not that friendly, or because the street number was 4. Anyway, due to circumstances, we moved house. All aspects of life started to improve from that point. We dropped the idea of building and living there. That property is now an IP. It is not an excellent one due to the buidling being old, but we do have low vacancy rate and good tenants.

Before that house, we used to live in another house and by now, we know the previous house had good Feng Shui i.e. on the high side of street, good "chi" flow path, plenty of natural light, good street number, good privacy etc...We sold it to move into the number 4 house. That was about 8 years ago. Today we still remember the house with "good Feng Shui" and it was only an old 70's house, nothing special about it. Today we are in the process of building a house and we are taking many of the good Feng Shui features of the "good Feng Shui" house in choosing the current land and selecting a building design.

In brief, in our case, we could not really say we beleive it or not but we respect and do consider Feng Shui, among other common sense design criteria and the philosophy of "avoiding bad Feng Shui" if possible for example, we now would not live in a house with number 4. Not because it sounds like "death" in Chinese, but for peace of mind, and peace of mind do effect the well being of the family.

That's us anyway I thought I'd share.
 
probably more psychosematic, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

no offence - but a hous ebeing bad because it has a "number 4" out the front is ludicrous.

change it to 5 and watch gold fall from the heavens.
 
i went to an auction not too long ago and was told by the agent that a murder had happenned in an apartment.

Apparently no bidders and the place went cheap.

Are agents obliged to tell what has happenned in the property? for e.g. murder case?
 
probably more psychosematic, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

no offence - but a hous ebeing bad because it has a "number 4" out the front is ludicrous.

change it to 5 and watch gold fall from the heavens.

Only if you hang a crystal in the corner as well :D.
 
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