When it comes to selling a property, anything that can speed the process along is usually most welcome.

As prospective buyers tramp around your premises, wouldn’t it be good to know that all the energies in it are helping to make them feel at home and keen to purchase? Feng Shui can do just that, and we asked some experts for their pointers for vendors. 

Helping clients through the buying and selling of houses is a constant component of a feng shui practitioner’s work. Many times the person selling a house is driven to seeking our help in desperation. Their house is sitting on the market with barely a nibble and the strain is starting to show. There are energetic locks that can block a sale, but they are easily opened if you know the key.

Three steps

There are three steps in getting a house sold. First, clearing clutter is one of the most important things you can do to prepare your house for sale.  When you see stagnant accumulations of junk appearing in a room, it can represent trapped fear or pain in the person’s life. These feelings tend to immobilise a person and make them resist change.

When we resist change we enter the dreaded land of procrastination! Clutter is a way of dragging your heals to slow down the arrival of the future. When you clean out your closets and corners, you’re free to embrace new opportunities. See our two previous articles Top 10 Tips for de cluttering Your Life and 16 Great Ideas for Clearing Clutter.

Here’s the second step. Utilizing the services of a professional Feng Shui consultant, locate the wealth sectors of your home according to the Flying Star method and activate them.  This should also include the annual prosperous energies, particularly if they coincide with the permanent ones according to the Birth Chart of the home.  This can be done by placing a candle, ticking clock or water feature in these areas of your home to activate the timely influences and promote a successful sale.

Third make sure the owners are ready to sell. The process of getting the house sold is much easier when the people are truly ready to move. Sometimes one member of the family doesn’t want to let go. Other times they are intellectually ready for moving home, but emotionally and physically they are still tied to that house. They have painted their energy on that space daily, and it dutifully reinforces who they are, and who they’ve been. Their mind wants to leap into the future, but their emotional body is afraid of change. They may resist. Even if everyone else in the house is ready to move one foot dragger can prevent the sale. A part of the purpose for the adjustments is to facilitate a change in their attitude.

Garden Matters

Spring is well known as a great time of year for re-location. As the season of growth and renewal, it is the most appropriate time to put into action new plans and projects. It is also the freshest and prettiest time in the garden.

The outside of your house is just waiting to be enhanced and exploited. It need not be a large area; it need not even be garden – a yard, balcony or deck can still be an asset to any property. But to enhance the feng shui of your home and endear the house to potential buyers, it needs to be made the best of. While most people understand the need for tending the front of the house and any garden that precedes it, the back is often a neglected pet run or kiddie-blighted no-man’s-land. It’s never too late however, to prove your garden has potential by:

• Clearing it out in the first instance. Include building materials that have been sitting there since they were salvaged from the man down the road, punctured paddling pools, faded plastic toys and rusty furniture.
• Tend to the boundaries. These may not be important to you; you and your neighbour may have the best relationship in the world but other people may not have been so lucky. Save them the worry about where your property ends and the neighbours’ begins by establishing it with sound fencing, walls etc before you begin showing anyone around.
• Also, patch lawn, weed borders, clean patio, retouch rust, deadhead shrubs and flowers.
• Ensure water features are in working order so they will be perceived as an asset as opposed to a responsibility. Please note that these should also be placed according to the recommendations of a Feng Shui consultant to ensure that they are activating auspicious energies.
• Paint or re-stain faded wooden furniture, outbuildings etc.
• Remove thoroughly any pet mess. Tidy up doghouses to look cute rather than intimidating.
• Site a solid-looking park bench outside the back of the house or under a shady nook, or think about a hefty picnic table.
• Coil hose and stash away neatly.
• Fill tubs with flowering plants and foliage or herbs. Group tubs in threes and position on either side of door area. Remove or fill wall-mounted and hanging baskets. Leave no container empty or forlorn.
• Consider window boxes; wooden, terracotta or aluminum. Avoid plastic if possible.
• Put up retractable washing lines and remove anything unsightly.
• Surrounded by junk that has nowhere to go? Viewers will notice the same thing when they come round. Consider investing in a small shed, it has to be worth the relatively minor amount it’s going to cost.
• You have a gazebo in the garden? Lucky you. Whole properties have sold on the charm of the summer house alone. Let viewers slip into the age of romance by filling the interior with a couple of chairs and a small table. Soften the chairs with some faded chintz or simple striped cushions. Or an antique quilt. A plain linen cloth over the table. A bushel of peonies or sweet peas in a glass jug on the cloth. Some old gardening books and the Sunday papers. Cover the floor with a jute rug or sun bleached runner. Polish the windows, inside and out, spread open the doors (weather permitting) and try to resist moving into it yourself!
• A pergola is nearly as effective and can be relatively easy and inexpensive to erect. Again, these can seduce even the most jaded house hunter.
• Do box in garbage bins. They are such an eyesore. Trellis is quick and cheap. Group together tidily. Deodorize bins and bleach the area they stand on if it’s at all odoriferous. Keep clean and free from extraneous bags of trash. Let nothing touch the ground where bugs may congregate and breed.
• Finally – don’t forget the sides of the house. Out of sight will not mean out of mind to viewers as they have to side step all the old rubbish stored around there. Clutter means stagnation. Ch’i cannot circulate. Once cleared, clean and if necessary, repair path.

Garage and Outhouses

These may well be places you only use for storing the potatoes, but that’s no reason to neglect them in terms of preparation. They should be an asset to the property along with the house and garden. Your viewers will certainly be looking at them in these terms so here are some tips to spruce up these often forgotten or neglected gems.

• Begin, naturally, by clutter clearing. Then clean; sweep, wash, degrease etc. Then tidy and repair. Hang bikes, tools, large garden equipment etc.
• Whitewash the (internal) garage walls.
• Ensure the door/s are in good working order and that the area is well lit. Fix locks and catches.
• If the garage is used for storage, set all boxes etc tidily to show how much can be fitted in. If it’s used as a utility room get it shipshape. Clear all draws and cupboards. Make it a serviceable if not attractive area to work.
• Sort out your workbench. Rack tools and shelve materials. Bin rags
• If you enter the house via the garage ensure the threshold is inviting and tidy, not dismal and messy.

So now you have cleared clutter, repaired and mended, cleaned, decorated and re-vitalised. The outside of your house will now be thriving. Friends will be asking why you’re leaving – or putting an offer in themselves. Family will be exhausted but probably a little excited too.

Now all you need are some viewers and if you‘ve fixed up the front and inside of the house the way you should have done, they’ll be on their way.