A majority of the time I am helping people house hunt, working on behalf of the buyer. Occasionally I work with a seller and there are several ways of going about that, depending on whether the seller is still living in the house when trying to sell, or if the seller has already moved out.

Sometimes a house is easier to sell, and looks better when it is completely emptied out. Other times, the house for sale presents better when it is furnished or “staged.” How can I help you sell a house remotely? What inspired this article was a local client asking me if I could assist her boyfriend in selling his house in a foreign country. What I need in order to help someone sell a house that I have not physically visited in person is the following:

I need the address so I can verify the compass reading over the internet. It’s also helpful for me to see aerial views of the house and if there is anything going on in the immediate neighborhood or with the street alignments, which could undermine the sale of the home. This is especially important if you are selling a house in an area with a high Chinese population. Sometimes, the Asian buyer has the rudiments of Feng Shui principles in mind and they might not even consider a house that is at the end of a cul-de-sac or facing a certain direction. That criteria is actually too simplistic to make a decision on, but I can always anticipate in advance what might be an easy-to-fix solution, for those kinds of environmental circumstances.

I need the year built as well as any information about remodeling and additions to the original house. Sometimes that information is readily available on the internet through the Tax Assessor or Department of Building and Safety websites.

It is increasingly more common to find ample photos of a property on-line, once it has been officially put on the market. Before that, a prospective buyer may send me their own photos after touring the house.

I need a reasonably to-scale floor plan sketch of the house so that I can corroborate the photos with the floor plan and also chart out the “Flying Star” chart for the house, based on when it was built and its compass alignment. The accurate floor plan allows me to know what kinds of energy exist in each part or room of the house. Having the floor plan, even a rough sketch, helps take the guess-work out of the equation.

With these tools, I can do a quick assessment and see if there are areas where the “prosperity luck” of the house can be amplified for the seller, especially if they are still living there. That way the seller can directly benefit from any adjustments made to the physical space. An example of an adjustment might be a strategically placed water feature. If the seller has already moved out, there still may be a way to stage the home inconspicuously, with Feng Shui remedies in place. This helps the prospective buyers feel more at ease when touring the property. If they like what they feel, in addition to what they see, they are more likely to place an offer on the house.

Do I really need to be there in person? While that might be the ideal, it is actually both time and cost prohibitive for me to physically go to every home that a seller wants Feng Shui input on. And honestly, we still don’t have a large number of highly-trained and experienced Feng Shui practitioners who are available world-wide. But by using the criteria described in this article, I have been able to help people remotely all over the world. With enough information, it is both accurate and economical.

Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Frequently Asked Questions Blog Series