Developers Trying to Make Asian Buyers Feel at Home in Southland
To the untutored eye, these are simply nice new homes perched on a ridge.
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Walk through the models, with their comfy decor and gleaming kitchens, and you still might not see anything unusual.
But wait. That bin near the kitchen sink? That’s to store up to 50 pounds of rice. The flame on the gas range is four times as powerful as on most stoves--the better to stir-fry in a wok. Floor plans offer up to eight bedrooms for extended families. And the low cabinet in the foyer is to stash shoes as you enter the house.
The subtle message: Welcome, Asian home buyer.
With the Pacific Rim booming and overseas money pouring into Southern California, big home-development companies are building some of their newest tracts with Asian traditions in mind.
“Builders recognize that a white, two-child, two-parent family is not the only market anymore. At Walnut Estates, we are targeting an affluent Asian executive family,” says Terence Hanna, president of the Los Angeles division of J.M. Peters. The Orange County-based firm is constructing 4,000-square-foot homes on up to a half-acre lots in Walnut. The 16 homes will run about $500,000 each.
The list of cultural touches goes on and on. Some are a matter of spiritual belief, such as a disproportionate number of homes whose addresses include an eight--a lucky number according to some Chinese beliefs.
Others are pragmatic, such as the shoe cabinets for a culture that does not track shoes into the house. Or large bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms on the ground level for elderly relatives who might have trouble climbing the stairs.
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One key to targeting the Asian American housing market is understanding an ancient Chinese metaphysical art called feng shui. Feng shui-- which means simply the wind and the water in Chinese--began three millennia ago in China as a codifying of common sense rules to avoid flood and bad air circulation. Over the centuries, it became interwoven with superstition, astrology and Chinese philosophical concepts.
While real estate agents in Southern California have long been aware of feng shui principles in marketing resale homes, major American builders are now developing that knowledge in their attempt to build en masse homes that are attractive to Asian customers.
According to feng shui practitioners, the direction of a building, street locations and birth dates all play key roles in channeling cosmic forces that allow good luck and wealth to flow into a building.
While many Asians dismiss it as silly superstition, followers cut across all lines, from poor immigrants in rural China to wealthy, college-educated business people.
“If it’s a predominantly Asian market and people believe in it, it’s very important, and we will plot houses in particular directions, change interior parts, the landscaping and where you put it,” says Mark Beiswanger, president of the Coastal Valleys division of Kaufman & Broad, which is building 79 homes in West Covina. Newport Beach-based California Pacific Homes repositioned several trees to appease a buyer in its Montecito project in Tustin Ranch. Realtors and developers say about half their Asian clients consult a feng shui adviser when buying a home. Sometimes the advice comes too late.
Valerie Yu, project manager for the 250-home Belgate Estates in Walnut, which is built by Bramalea California Inc., says clients will walk away from a deal--forgoing a big, non-refundable deposit--if their feng shui consultant nixes it.
“I had one that just lost $15,000; the master said it was a bad-luck house,” Yu says.
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Up to 80% of the buyers at City Lights, a Shea Homes tract with 200 houses in Rowland Heights, are of Asian heritage. So it helps that Susana Wang, a sales agent at the tract, speaks fluent English, Mandarin, Tagalog, Taiwanese, Cantonese and Fukienese and practices feng shui in her own life, preferring to keep a small office on the east side of the sales office instead of a larger one elsewhere, because east is good luck for her personal numerology.
She knows that it’s important to design the house so that the qi , or life force, flows without blockage. Trees and lamp posts should not block the front entrance or good energy will get caught.
“It makes them feel more at ease that I understand why they don’t want a lamppost in front of the entryway,” Wang says.
Stairways should not face front doors because all the money will flow down the steps and out the house.
Hanna, of J.M. Peters, says his firm has modified building plans in midstream to ensure the front door won’t go by the staircase.
“There is an added cost to making these homes harmonious, but the benefits are greater sales and happier buyers,” Hanna says.
Kevin Lawrence, a sales manager for the Panomara Tract in Shea Homes’ Rowland Heights development, has also applied for address changes on properties where the number 4--which represents death--pops up too readily. California Pacific Homes recently changed one buyer’s address at its San Cerre project on the Newport Coast, eliminating the number 4.
Cultural considerations can start even before a builder purchases property. Two years ago, building company Kaufman & Broad invited Angi Ma Wong, a feng shui consultant, to hike with company executives up a woodsy hill and give her nod of approval before they purchased the land.
One concern was that the property stood within sight of the Forest Lawn Cemetery off the San Bernardino Freeway. That was bad feng shui, with the potential to scare off Asians who didn’t want to live so close to spirits of the dead.
But Wong explained how to solve the problem according to feng shui principles: Plant red flowers on the south hill. This will ward off the spirits, because red is considered a powerful and lucky color.
Wong also persuaded Shea to build its sales office and model homes out of sight of the cemetery and to do extensive landscaping around the rim. And she put the kibosh on plans to haul dirt fill from the cemetery to smooth out ridges on the residential properties.
“I’ve worn out more pairs of shoes in my job,” says Wong, who consults for 50 builders from Hawaii to Connecticut and calls herself a cross-cultural entrepreneur. Her 1993 book, “Target the U.S. Asian Market,” is in its second printing.
Wong says Taylor Woodrow Homes California Ltd., a builder with headquarters in Laguna Hills, brought in a group of Buddhist nuns to bless a site before they broke ground.
Many clients send her blueprints, which she scrutinizes for good feng shui.
“I mark up those architectural plans with Post-It notes,” Wong says with enthusiasm. “I tell them, ‘The southeast corner is wealth, so don’t put your toilet there.’ ”
She explains that many Chinese prefer new homes, where they can start with a clean slate--no one has died in the house, no marriages have gone without children, no fortunes have been lost.
At the entrance of one house she is examining for a builder, Wong stops. Something is amiss. From the front door, she can see a sliding glass door that opens into the back yard. She clucks in disapproval. Bad feng shui, because the energy will flow right through the house.
Five years ago, El Toro architect Phillip Pekarek had never heard of feng shui. Today, about two-thirds of his designs take it into account.
“Now if we design four model homes, at least two of them will be in accordance with feng shui, “ Pekarek says.
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Billy Leung is house hunting at the Shea Homes project in Rowland Heights. Leung, a 31-year-old engineer from Cerritos, heard about the homes from a friend who lives at another Shea property.
Leung checks to make sure the staircase doesn’t face the front door. Feng shui isn’t a part of his life, but it will be important for his parents to know their son’s house has good energy flow.
The engineer is pleased that the Shea homes offer so many bedrooms. He is also keenly interested in the high-power gas range.
“Chinese want a big fire to do the cooking,” he says.
At one development, an industrial-strength gas range with a built-in wok holder for stir-frying is a popular $850 option.
For many home buyers, practical issues guide house deals just as much as spiritual factors.
Even the decorative flourishes count: Kitchen counters in model homes are scattered with Asian cookbooks, wooden steamers and strategically arranged chopsticks.
Wong helps builders with these practical touches as well as with feng shui.
In one house she is inspecting for a builder, she examines the kitchen chopsticks with their red-painted Chinese characters.
“They bring me in to make sure the chopsticks don’t say ‘Golden Dragon Restaurant.’ Hmmm. This says ‘good luck, prosperity.’ That’s OK.”
Wong appreciates the wok and Chinese cookbook opened to a recipe for Szechwan meatballs. However, she points out that the book is in English and that most Chinese don’t use recipes or bottled American hot sauce such as the brand on the counter.
Designers who provide the interiors to model homes in heavily Asian markets concede they, too, want to strike the right tone.
“If you drive it home too strongly, with the mah-jongg sets, the karaoke, the woks, those themes get too strong, and they feel it’s almost stereotyping,” says Lana Canova, a vice president of Design Techniques, a Costa Mesa firm that did the interiors for some of the Shea Homes in Rowland Heights.
At Kaufman & Broad’s West Covina project California Chateau, where 45% of the buyers in the tract are of Asian descent, sales agent Joanne Haberman says she and other agents exchange tips about all aspects of Asian culture.
“The more I can learn about my buyer the better off I am,” she says. “And feng shui is as important as knowing about the schools in the community.”
