Feng Shui is based on the premise that you are affected by your environment in both obvious and non-obvious ways. As an extension of that, people sometimes wonder if you can be affected by a property you do not dwell in, but own.
On a certain level we can say that everyone affects everyone else and that there has to be some kind of relationship between the owner and their physical property. But that relationship is usually a mere shadow of influence compared to the people who actually occupy the building or house. When people seeking to buy investment property call me to find out if they should be concerned about the Feng Shui for income property, I always have a few questions for them before answering.
First and foremost, I have to ask the investment property owner-to-be if there is even an iota of chance that they will live in the house themselves one day. If there is a chance that the person will live in the house sometime in the future, then it behooves them to follow through with a comprehensive evaluation. This is a service that many classically trained practitioners provide because not only can we calculate how the house will affect current occupants, but we can even predict how occupants may be affected decades into the future.
Some properties improve over time and others go through undesirable cycles that can last for as much as twenty years. If the person knows for sure that they will not ever live in the investment property, then we have to contemplate just how much, if anything, they can or should do on behalf of their prospective tenants.
Landlords cannot really dictate how a renter uses the rooms, such as a sleeping room compared to a home office. Landlords cannot ask a tenant to use one entry door over another. Landlords cannot mandate what colors an occupants uses, with the exception of pre-choosing wall colors or flooring. In a typical setting, practitioners will make recommendations to clients for colors and natural elements that can be incorporated into the rooms with furnishings and other décor items. A landlord cannot insist that a tenant adhere to any of these suggestions.
Some of the most powerful adjustments that can be made are on the outside, such as water features like a garden fountain. But you can’t insist that a renter use a fountain or maintain it. These are just a few examples of how limited the landlord is, even in a well-meaning situation where the landlord would like to help their tenants be healthy, happy and prosperous.
The property owner can in fact be indirectly affected by the Feng Shui of their rental spaces. One example is the house or apartment which can undermine financial luck. There is always the chance that this kind of energy could come back to the owner if their tenant sometimes struggling to pay the rent. There are so many variables to consider. If an owner has a rental where the Feng Shui indicates the occupants may be vulnerable to legal problems, crime, injuries, theft, marital strife or mental instabilities, these are some unpleasant situations which could affect the landlord in their legal relationship with the tenants and even safety issues.
As you can imagine, in a commercial environment, similar situations can apply. If the owner of a business does not work at the physical location of the business, he or she may be a lot more concerned about the employees since there would be a much more direct effect on the business owner than the landlord-tenant relationship in a residential situation. And in this setting, the owner would have much more control over how to arrange the interiors and exteriors.
Just as a foonote:Yin House Feng Shui is the divination of grave sites and the influence it can have on descendants. This is an instance where a person can be affected by someone’s good or bad feng shui and not have to be physically present themselves to experience it. What differentiates this from the typical landlord-renter relationship is that the there is a genetic-soul-DNA link with the deceased person’s remains and their children or grand children. This allows the energy of the grave to influence the living, even if they never visit the grave as well.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Income, Money Matters and Career Blog Series
