Feng Shui Makes Closings More Difficult, Lawyer Says
In New York’s Chinatown, office condos on the eighth floor of one building are a hot property, sometimes selling for a $100,000 premium.
The reason: In Chinese, the number eight has the same pronunciation as the word for getting rich, the New York Times reports. The number four, on the other hand, has the same sound as the word for death in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and Asian buyers of office condos often shun the fourth floor.
According the Times, numbers are part of feng shui, and it’s affecting the New York real estate market as Asian-based buyers snap up office condos and undervalued property in the city. Some deals have died because of bad feng shui, while the terms of others have been altered to satisfy buyers who, for example, want to pay $448 a square foot instead of $450 a square foot.
Even closings are affected, as some buyers want to close on a date ending in eight and at certain times of the day. Luigi Rosabianca told the Times that the closing demands can be a challenge.
“Scheduling a closing in our system is like having a dinner party with eight of your closest friends,” Rosabianca told the newspaper. “It’s so difficult, and then when you start to insert cultural requirements, it becomes very challenging.”
