Back garden enhanced with potted flowers

Feng Shui teaches us how to enhance our environments to reach our goals – in this case, the goal is to sell your home.  So what kind of enhancements can you make to your home to get that “just right” feeling in your buyers?  Of course, you start by pricing your home correctly for the market – that’s something only you and your Realtor® can do together after reviewing the comparable sales in your neighborhood and reviewing the competition of what’s for sale now.  Assuming your home is priced correctly for the market, you will be achieving your goal of getting calls for showings.  You want to be ready when buyers show up.  This workshop will give you practical advice you can take with you to change your energy and that of your home to invite buyers in and help them to stay by buying it!  This is not about tricking buyers or making changes so that you can overprice your home – this workshop is for people who understand the integrity of the process and want to invite positive energy into shaping the experience for everyone involved.

 Feng Shui for Home Sellers will teach you how to:

• Prepare your home and your family — energetically – for the transition.
• Welcome buyers and invite them to linger.
• Use Feng Shui tools to energize the spaces in your home. 

This 2-hour workshop will be given four Saturdays this spring and summer through the Colorado Free University at the CFU campus in Lowry @ 1^st & Quebec Streets.  Teacher Lorrie Webb Grillo is a Certified Practitioner of Essential Feng Shui™ and owner of Thriving Spaces, a Feng Shui consulting and product development company.  In addition, through her work with a local real estate company she calculates that she has walked through at least 1000 homes for sale to date!  Sign up for the classes at www.freeu.com and click on Real Estate or follow these links:

 Saturday, May 22^nd 9.30 a.m. – 11.30 a.m.

  https://www.colofreeu-registrar.com/sdc/regclass.html?class=255769

Saturday, June 26^th, 9.30 a.m. – 11.30 a.m.

https://www.colofreeu-registrar.com/sdc/regclass.html?class=255770

Saturday, July 31^st 9.30 a.m. – 11.30 a.m.

  https://www.colofreeu-registrar.com/sdc/regclass.html?class=255771

De-personalize.  It sounds so . . . surgical:  removing the unwanted items to make the house more desirable to someone else.  Forget “de-personalize” – nobody wants to live in a house that’s not personal.  There’s nothing so personal as one’s own home.  Certainly, the new owners will want a very personal space.    So let’s call this process of preparing a home for sale what it really is:  it’s a makeover – because the house needs to be ready for its close up.  Every showing will be a close-up viewing.  How do you start your house’s “makeover”?  Ironically, it’s by projecting yourselves into your next home. 

Ask your Realtor to help you prioritize your next “dream” home list and start thinking about where you’re going and why.   With this intention in place, when you remove family photos from the walls of the house, it’s not about putting them out of sight; it’s about packing them up for the move and allowing potential buyers the opportunity to see the walls and the rooms without scrutinizing the faces in the photos.   Leave some pictures of you enjoying the house!   Your Realtor can help you identify the things that are red flags to potential buyers; sometimes those items are sacred objects to your and your family.  Share the story of the objects before they are packed away.  Your Realtor will probably take pictures after the “makeover” for the brochure and marketing materials.  You can be proud of your contribution to making your home shine for its next owners. 

Ask your Realtor to bring a Sold rider (the small signs that affix to the top or bottom of the For Sale sign) to put in your garage or storage during the listing process so you can see it every time you come and go.  Write SOLD across your marketing flyer or brochure and post it on your refrigerator between showings.  Seeing leads to believing! 

It goes without saying that a clean, de-cluttered house is much more appealing to a potential buyer.  Open windows, sweep the porch, clap in the corners, lightly spray the baseboards with water and essential oils (easily purchased at a bath and body store) and clean the furniture with lemon oil before a showing.  A house that smells clean is a house that’s ready to move into. 

What if you have to move before your house sells and it is left empty?  That’s next in Part 3.

If not, your home may linger in the market.

There are a lot of determining factors involved in putting your home on the market.     One such factor you may not have thought of is a Feng Shui analysis.  Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practice of object placement in an environment to change the energy of the space and ultimately of the people using the space; in this case, a Feng Shui analysis’ purpose is to create positive energy which could lead to a faster home sale.  Feng Shui is not used in lieu of all your Realtor’s tools to market and sell your home.

The first step in this kind of analysis is for the Feng Shui practitioner to ask you some questions about your goals for selling your home.  Are you looking for a quick sale so you can move before the start of the school year?  Will one person have to move first and settle somewhere else while other members of the family stay put until the house sells?  Are you downsizing or upsizing due to family circumstances?  All of the answers will help the Feng Shui practitioner make recommendations that will help you reach your specific goals.

A most important aspect of a Feng Shui analysis is to ascertain your connectedness to the space and your willingness to say good-bye to the house as a whole, and/or to each room specifically.  This process – whether formal and vocal or informal and silent – is very personal and can be deeply moving for owners.  Its purpose is to help you to begin to see yourself  in a new way:  as sellers of the home instead of its owners.  New owners will be invited and welcomed in as the space is cleared; the process begins with this good-bye.  It can be a very powerful experience for all family members.

A Feng Shui practitioner can give you some guidelines for detaching from a home, but there aren’t any right ways of saying good-bye.  The process should feel natural and comfortable.  Some ideas include:

• having each family member write a poem, sing a song or make a drawing about an experience of being in the home and sharing that with other family members
• lighting candles and saying a blessing
• inviting friends over for a farewell party, announcing your intention of leaving the space but maintaining your circle of friends.

Once you’ve said your good-byes, there are space-clearing measures and Feng Shui practices that will help potential buyers to feel welcomed into the space.  See Part 2 of the Real Estate Feng Shui Analysis in next week’s blog for more.

(This blog post was has been modified from its original version written for Perry & Co. Real Estate Professionals by the author.)