Div 08 · Feng Shui Advisory
If your buyers screen for it, your drawings should answer it.
A unit number chosen at plat stage is free. The same problem found at listing is priced in escrows that quietly never open.
This is the one line of our schedule that starts from a market fact rather than a contract: in buyer pools with meaningful Chinese, Vietnamese, and broader Asian-American demand, feng shui principles decide which properties get shortlisted — and which get quietly passed over at the price the pro forma assumed. You don't need to share the beliefs; you need your project not to lose escrows to them. We review sites and drawings the way a feng shui-aware buyer will — early, while the fixes are still lines on paper — and put the findings in writing beside the rest of your design decisions. As everywhere else at Aldermont: we advise, you decide, your licensed A/E designs.
Written recommendations within two business days · Nothing to prepare · Mutual NDA from the first conversation
Division
Div 08
Phase
Planning → Design
Issued for
Owner review
Sheet
FS-101
The record behind the judgment
$280M+
In capital projects delivered
20 yrs
Design and construction, both sides of the table
Zero
Unplanned outages, live data-center upgrade
Secret
Active U.S. DoD clearance
What feng shui advisory covers
The service runs where the leverage is. Before purchase, a site selection screen alongside your technical feasibility work: road alignment, orientation and slope, lot shape, adjacency, and land history — the checks that are plat geometry and public record, free to run in the due-diligence window. The same screen runs at commercial scale: choosing a tenant space, suite, or pad from the candidates a center offers, option by option, in writing. At drawing stage, a floor plan review — entry alignments, stair placement, kitchen and bath positions, bedroom locations, door-to-door sightlines — delivered as written recommendations your architect can act on while a fix is a meeting instead of a change order. At subdivision scale, the plat-level decisions: lot layout that avoids creating discounted lots, and address and unit numbering, where the documented 8-premium and 4-discount effects cost nothing to respect.
Where an engagement calls for compass work, it's done in-house and done properly: we draft floor plans to true north ourselves and chart Xuan Kong flying stars on the actual drawing, not an approximation — and where timing matters, dates for groundbreaking, move-in, or opening are selected from the classical calendar. Where a constraint can't move, we lay out the recognized remediation options with their costs — and we're honest about the sites and plans that can't be remediated, only priced. Every finding comes with its reasoning and its market logic attached, never as decree.
Where it pays, and where it doesn't
The economics are the same as every other drawing-stage discipline: a unit number chosen at plat stage is free; a stair relocated at schematic design is a conversation; the same stair moved after framing is a change order with a schedule attached. In feng shui-sensitive markets the upside runs further — clean-screening units become listing points, and in some submarkets the screen is the difference between forty showings and four. And the honest boundary: if your buyer pool has no feng shui sensitivity, this service isn't worth your money, and we'll say so before you spend it. An advisor with nothing to sell but the review can afford that answer.
What we deliberately don't do
We don't practice authority-by-mystery — every recommendation arrives with the principle behind it and the market behavior that makes it matter, so you can weigh it like any other design input. We don't overrule your architect: feng shui input enters the project as owner's criteria, the same as your program and your budget, and the licensed A/E owns the design that answers it. Where a project calls for ceremonial work — blessings, rites, religious observance — we help you brief and vet the right officiant rather than perform it ourselves. And the building code outranks everything — where code and feng shui conflict, code wins, and we put the workaround options in writing. The owner decides. We advise.
Asked about this service
Does feng shui really affect property value?
In the right market, measurably. Peer-reviewed hedonic pricing studies in markets with significant Chinese-buyer demand have found price premiums for addresses containing 8 and discounts for addresses containing 4, and practitioners in those markets treat T-intersection lots and poor orientation as showings-killers because buyers treat them that way. The effect size depends entirely on your buyer pool — which is the first question we ask, and if the honest answer is that your buyers don't screen for this, we'll tell you the service isn't worth buying.
Can you review my floor plan for feng shui?
Yes — the drawing-stage review is the core of the service. We check entry alignments (front door to back door being the best known), stair placement relative to the entry, kitchen, bath, and bedroom positions, and door-to-door sightlines, then deliver written recommendations your architect can act on directly. Because we draft to true north in-house, compass analysis lands on the actual plan rather than an approximation. At drawing stage nearly everything is fixable for the cost of a revision; the same list after framing is a change-order negotiation.
What school of feng shui do you follow?
Classical feng shui, applied to modern projects. The principal holds a Graduate Diploma in Feng Shui from Joey Yap's Feng Shui Mastery program (Class of 2025), and the method is the traditional one: San He form analysis leads every engagement — landform, road and water alignment, lot shape, external sha — read today from the plat, the survey, and the aerial as fluently as from the land itself. Where compass and timing work is called for, Xuan Kong flying star, 8 Mansions, and Tong Shu date selection are applied in-house on plans drafted to true north, with BaZi analysis where a client wants the work personalized. The discipline is centuries old; the deliverable is contemporary — written recommendations your design team can act on. What we don't practice is ornament feng shui: classical method corrects through siting, orientation, layout, and timing, and no recommendation of ours will ever be a trinket.
What if feng shui conflicts with the building code or my architect's design?
Code wins — always, and we put that in writing before anyone asks. Conflicts with the design are just design inputs colliding, which is normal: we lay out the conflict, the recognized remediation options, and what each costs, and you decide what the market you're building for justifies. Caught at schematic design, most of these conflicts dissolve for nothing. The $350 project review is a working way to find out where your plans stand — credited in full against your first invoice if you engage us.
Two ways in
Start where the risk is lowest.
Orientation call · 20 minutes · no fee
Find out whether you need us at all.
Fifteen minutes on your project, five on a straight answer: whether an advisor is worth your money at this stage, what it would take, and what it would cost. No documents, no preparation. If the answer is that you don't need one yet, you'll get that answer too — it's the cheapest thing we can tell you.
Project review · 60 minutes · $350, credited if you engage
Bring the project. Leave with recommendations.
A working session on your actual documents — the parcel you're weighing, the drawing set, the budget, the permit path you can't see through. Written recommendations land within two business days, in your hands to act on with or without us. If you engage us, the fee comes off your first invoice in full.
What to prepare: nothing.
Send whatever is already on your desk — a site address, a PDF set, a bid, a change order, a letter you don't like the tone of. Or send nothing and just talk. Working out which of it actually matters is the job you're hiring, not homework you owe us first.
Related field notes