Feng-shui advice may put sellers in better position

CHICAGO — Tammy Winfield made every effort to depersonalize her home and keep it free of clutter. She even baked cookies before prospective buyers came in for a look, hoping the homey scents would help persuade them to make an offer.

Still, the Truckee, Calif., home that she and her husband, Bill, put on the market last September sat for months without any takers.

"We were getting a lot of showings but not many offers," she said.

Then, in February, they took some home-selling advice — and a leap of faith.

At the suggestion of their real-estate agent, Brandi Benson, they brought in a stager who refocused the home using the concepts of feng shui. The couple closed on the sale of their home in March.

When Benson suggested using feng shui to stage the Winfield home, there wasn't immediate acceptance of the idea.

"I was somewhat skeptical. My husband was more so," Tammy Winfield said.

At its heart, feng shui involves adjusting a place's energy and enhancing the perception of space, often done by reconsidering furniture placement, said Christine Ayres, who staged the Winfields' home and also co-wrote the book "Sell Your Home with Feng Shui."

It's a technique that has been around for hundreds — some say thousands — of years, she said. While the concept has long thrived in China, it's only recently been embraced in the United States.

A home with a good flow of energy is one that makes someone feel comfortable immediately; a home without it, on some level, makes a person want to leave, Ayers said.

Feng shui also can be used to create a clear path to a home's "room of first impression," the room that will make the biggest impact on a buyer, Ayres added.

"Most Realtors are very open to it. They're going to use any tool possible to help market the property," Ayres said. There's also little cost involved, she added.

Some tips to consider for those who want to try feng shui to sell their home:

Furniture shouldn't be in the direct path of the entrance of the room, said Cynthia Chomos, a feng shui consultant, speaker, teacher and founder of the Feng Shui School for Real Estate Sales in Seattle.

For example, if the back of a couch faces a room's entrance, the piece of furniture can cause a person to "pingpong" back to the door, Ayres said.

Chomos also advised having a solid wall of support behind a key piece of furniture — a rule that makes it a bad idea to place a bed under a bedroom window.

The front door, "the mouth of the house" should get special attention because "it's where the house inhales its vitality and brings in the buyer," Ayres said.

Spruce it up with a fresh coat of paint, replace scratched hardware or frame the door with matching pots, which has the visual effect of widening it, she said.

If potted plants flank the house, they shouldn't have sharp, pointed leaves, Chomos said. A plant such as a palm can appear aggressive; "the last thing we want are sharp points pointing at [a buyer's] stomach," she said.

Ayres also suggests hanging a wind chime at the front, right corner of the home. That area is the buyer's area, she said, where decisions regarding the sale might be made.