New York, Aug. 25: In July, Mr Michael Rudder, a broker at Time Equities, was nearing completion of a deal with a Chinese client to buy two floors of office condominiums at 131 West 33rd Street when the client made some last-minute requests that struck Mr Rudder as peculiar.
Adjacent floors were available, but the company, Om-Ah-Hum Realty LLC, chose the 9th and 15th for its offices, then switched to the 9th and 14th upon learning that there was no 13th floor.
And although the price had been set at $450 a square foot, the company asked for $448 — and offered to make up the difference in another way. In addition, Om-Ah-Hum requested that the deal be signed on a day with a date ending in 8. Om-Ah-Hum’s requests were based on feng shui, the Chinese system of beliefs that governs building design, the calendar and numbers, among other things, and which is followed by many people in other cultures, particularly in East Asia.
Mr Rudder said the number of Asian buyers and lessees in New York had surged this year; he and other brokers are quickly learning just how pervasive feng shui can be.
As the deal at 131 West 33rd progressed, the principal of the business was spotted outside the building, taking measurements with a feng shui kit, Mr Rudder said. “It looks like a very elaborate compass,” said Mr Rudder, who said he first encountered feng shui in a deal in 2007. “I joke that I can tell how much space my Asian clients are going to buy by how elaborate their feng shui kit is. And this buyer had the most beautiful feng shui kit I’ve ever seen.”
With the commercial market in New York still soft (prices for some of the buildings Mr Rudder sells have declined 40 per cent in the last few years), he said almost all of his recent sales of office condominiums had been to foreign buyers.