MELTING POT

When entering a Korean-owned house, don’t forget to remove your shoes. And in Filipino families, the wife usually holds the purse strings.

Such bits of ethnic trivia may seems innocuous, but to some real estate agents in Southern California they could be the key to selling a home.

In recent years, the Rancho Los Cerritos Board of Realtors, which operates in Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Compton, Gardena and Lynwood, has seen a large increase in the numbers of new immigrants pursuing the traditional American dream of owning their own house. Realizing that sensitivity to a client’s cultural background--including learning a few phrases in his or her language--would make it that much easier to clinch a deal, the board sponsored a two-hour discussion on “The Multicultural World of Real Estate.” Business people representing the Chinese, Korean, Thai and Filipino communities informed local agents, among other things, that:

--Many Filipinos count stairs using a gold-silver-death sequence. If the last stair is death, they will probably not purchase the house.

--Some Chinese believe that if the front and back doors of a house face each other, any luck that comes through the front will immediately exit through the back.

--Indians prefer that the front door face east, where the sun rises. And Indian Buddhists, like their Korean, Chinese and Thai counterparts, prefer that visitors, including real estate agents, remove their shoes.

Of course, good local schools and a sound roof help too.