How and why do buyers of apartments in Hanoi's new urban areas consult feng shui?
A qualitative study by Truong Thi Thuy Ha published in the Journal of Religious Studies (now the Journal of Ethnology and Religious Studies) in 2016 describes buyers of apartments in new urban areas of Hanoi consulting feng shui when choosing and arranging a home as a way to seek spiritual security. The author places this phenomenon in a context of strong urbanization: limited land in the inner city, high land prices, and apartments becoming a common choice for people living and working in Hanoi.
The article names four groups of factors influencing the purchase decision: location, construction quality, services and amenities for daily life and schooling; feng shui is a group of factors that buyers, investors, and designers all care about. This is a qualitative study using interviews and observation at a number of apartment complexes, not a wide-scale survey, so it cannot be used to say what share of buyers care about feng shui. There is also no quantitative study in Vietnam measuring how common it is to consult feng shui when buying an apartment.
Kind of knowledge: SchoolSchool's interpretation. How one school or one book reads it; other schools may read it differently. The five labelsIn the feng shui system's own understanding, "phong" refers to energy currents flowing in nature, or the phenomenon of moving air, while "thuy" symbolizes terrain. Feng shui is not a single factor but a combination of factors concerning the topography and terrain around a home, wind direction, water flow, orientation, and the shape and layout of the built space.
How feng shui adapts to apartments: door direction, floor, room count
When there is no land left to build a private house on a plot, apartment buyers turn to reading feng shui through what can still be chosen inside a building: the direction of the apartment door, the floor, the number of rooms, and the placement of the altar, desk, bed, and kitchen. These are adaptations of traditional feng shui to the enclosed space of an apartment, not principles inherent to the system.
Truong Thi Thuy Ha's study records that feng shui factors enter into the decision to buy an apartment, and this in turn affects developers in planning projects and distributing apartments to the market. In other words, when buyers pay attention to direction and floor, the selling side must also take those criteria into account in advertising and unit allocation.
The list below separates two kinds of criteria that are often lumped together: criteria that overlap with architectural and amenity requirements, and criteria that are purely conventions of the feng shui system.
| Criteria buyers often mention | Type of criterion | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Natural light, open windows | Overlaps architectural requirements | Living conditions, no need for feng shui to justify |
| Ventilation, no stagnant air | Overlaps architectural requirements | Ventilation is a technical requirement of housing |
| Apartment door direction matching the owner's age | Convention of the feng shui system | Bat Trach, life trigram by age |
| Auspicious floor numbers, avoiding inauspicious ones | Convention and number beliefs | No architectural basis |
| Room count, altar and kitchen layout | Convention of the feng shui system | Interpretation varies by school |
| Location, construction quality, services, amenities | Market criteria | Listed in the same group by Truong Thi Thuy Ha |
This table shows that a significant part of the reasons buyers give are not specific to feng shui: light and ventilation are conditions of good housing that everyone wants, whether or not they call it feng shui. What truly belongs to feng shui is door direction by age, floor by number beliefs, and interior layout by school.
Why does that belief hold up when buying a major asset?
Kind of knowledge: UnprovenNot enough evidence. Someone has claimed it, but no source or study is strong enough to confirm it. The five labelsOne line of explanation is offered by Eric W. K. Tsang in "Toward a Scientific Inquiry into Superstitious Business Decision-Making" in Organization Studies in 2004: belief in feng shui and other forms of superstition helps decision-makers cope with uncertain situations. This result has not been replicated on a large independent sample, and Tsang is proposing an analytical framework, not a conclusion widely confirmed by researchers.
Buying an apartment is the largest financial decision in the life of many households, with many uncontrollable variables: market prices, handover schedules, construction quality, neighbors, policy. In that situation, feng shui provides a set of criteria that seem controllable, turning a vague decision into a to-do list. This is a psychological mechanism, not evidence that the feng shui system predicts destiny correctly.
Another group of researchers points out that belief can generate its own results through behavior change. Wiseman (2004), reviewing studies, found that superstitious belief tends to appear in people with a high need for control and high anxiety, as a way of coping with the uncertainty of their surroundings. When belief changes behavior, behavior changes results, and the effect is real, but it does not prove the content of the belief.
Two questions must be distinguished. First: do people believe and act on that belief? Truong Thi Thuy Ha's 2016 study answers yes, within the scope of those interviewed in a number of Hanoi new urban areas. Second: do those criteria actually predict anything about life after moving in? No Vietnamese study answers the second question, and this is where evidence is lacking, which should be stated clearly rather than filled with speculation.
When belief enters the price: house numbers, floors, and market data
Kind of knowledge: UnprovenNot enough evidence. Someone has claimed it, but no source or study is strong enough to confirm it. The five labelsIn foreign markets, the influence of number beliefs on house prices has been measured with actual transaction data. Nicole M. Fortin and colleagues published results in Economic Inquiry in 2014 showing that house numbers ending in 4 or 8 affect prices in areas with many ethnic Chinese residents. This is a result from that market's data, not Vietnamese data, and cannot be extrapolated to Vietnamese buyers without corresponding research.
Pokryshevskaya and Antipov (2015) studied number beliefs in the primary apartment market of Saint Petersburg, comparing the share of units sold on floor 7 with floors 6 and 8, and floor 13 with floors 12 and 14, using actual sales data rather than survey data. This approach is notable because floors within the same building contain identical apartments, so the effect of the number can be separated from the effect of design. The authors also note that number beliefs common in Russia are close to Western beliefs, where 7 is considered lucky and 13 unlucky, unlike original Chinese beliefs.
The results in Saint Petersburg and in areas with many ethnic Chinese residents show something important for Vietnamese readers: the same number can carry different, even opposite, meanings in different cultures. This reinforces the understanding that the conventional part of feng shui is a cultural product, not a physical property of a number or a floor.
In Vietnam, there is no data on apartment prices by floor number or room count. Any claim such as "floor 13 is harder to sell" or "floor 8 gets a better price" in today's Hanoi market has no data source to verify it, and this should be stated clearly as unavailable.
Apartment feng shui in the modern market: a packaged product
Kind of knowledge: UnprovenNot enough evidence. Someone has claimed it, but no source or study is strong enough to confirm it. The five labelsOle Bruun, in An Introduction to Feng Shui (Cambridge University Press, 2008), describes the process by which feng shui transforms into a modern interior product. When feng shui is packaged into consulting services, courses, and decorative objects, it operates by market logic alongside religious logic. Apartment buyers in new urban areas no longer encounter feng shui only through the village master as before, but through brokers, project advertisements, and interior design consulting packages.
This helps explain why feng shui factors in turn affect developers in planning projects and distributing apartments, as Truong Thi Thuy Ha records. When buyers ask about direction and floor, the selling side must have an answer, and that answer becomes part of the product. The boundary between "traditional feng shui" and "marketing feng shui" thus becomes increasingly hard to distinguish.
Kind of knowledge: Folk beliefFolk belief. What people believe, avoid or pass on by word of mouth, recorded as a belief, not as a checked fact. The five labelsHistorically, feng shui techniques entered our country quite early, tied to the Tang occupation, and in folk legend the governor Cao Bien is said to have been skilled in feng shui, often seeking dragon veins to suppress them. This legend has been retold by generations of Vietnamese geomancers, but modern research does not treat its details as proven events.
Nhat Nguyen's suggestion: separate the part overlapping with good-housing criteria from the conventional part
Nhat Nguyen's suggestion: when viewing an apartment, separate the two kinds of criteria and give them different weights. The first kind consists of what can be verified by the senses and by technique: natural light entering the living room and bedroom, whether afternoon sun heats the room, whether airflow is open or stuffy, soundproofing between units, whether the corridor has an escape route, whether elevators suffice for the number of households, noise from the road and from technical areas. These are criteria that traditional feng shui and modern architecture both care about, and they are also the criteria that most clearly affect daily quality of life.
Kind of knowledge: SchoolSchool's interpretation. How one school or one book reads it; other schools may read it differently. The five labelsThe second kind is the conventional part: door direction matching age according to some school, floor by number beliefs, placement of the altar, kitchen, and bed according to each school. This kind plays a spiritual role, and if it helps buyers feel more at ease in a major decision, that has real value for them. It should just be noted that this is convention, not a technical condition, and the schools do not agree with each other on many of these items. For the same apartment, two masters of different schools may give two different conclusions; this does not mean one is wrong, but that each is applying its own set of rules.
Nhat Nguyen's suggestion: if the budget forces a choice between a bright, airy, well-soundproofed apartment whose door direction does not match the owner's age, and a dark, stuffy apartment whose door direction does match, the daily quality of life of the first option is usually more clearly verifiable. This is a suggestion on how to weigh things, not investment advice, and each family has different priorities for the spiritual part.
What existing research cannot yet answer
Truong Thi Thuy Ha's 2016 study is an initial sketch of the phenomenon of applying feng shui in Hanoi's new urban areas, small in scale and qualitative in method. It does not measure the share of buyers who care about feng shui, does not compare levels of interest across income or age groups, and does not track whether those who chose homes by feng shui are more satisfied after moving in.
Studies on the influence of number beliefs on house prices were all done abroad, on data from specific markets, mainly in areas with many ethnic Chinese residents or in Russia. There is no corresponding study on Vietnamese apartment transaction data. Therefore, any indirect comparison from those results to the Hanoi market should be treated only as a hypothesis needing verification, not a conclusion.
Kind of knowledge: UnprovenNot enough evidence. Someone has claimed it, but no source or study is strong enough to confirm it. The five labelsTsang's (2004) explanatory framework on the role of belief in coping with uncertainty is a theoretical proposal, not yet replicated on a large independent sample. Psychological reviews of superstitious belief, such as Wiseman (2004), show a link between anxiety, need for control, and level of belief, but this is a statistical link at group level, not an explanation for any specific individual.
In that gap, the honest way to write is to state clearly what has been recorded and what is missing, rather than asserting that feng shui works or that it does not. Both assertions exceed the available data.
Why apartment feng shui meets a real need
Buying an apartment is a decision in which the buyer must commit a large sum, while most information about the future of that asset lies beyond their control. Apartment feng shui meets the need for reassurance in that situation: it turns a decision with many unknowns into a list of criteria that can be followed, and gives buyers the feeling that they have done everything possible before signing the contract.
A useful way to read it is to separate the part overlapping with good-housing criteria from the conventional part. The overlapping part includes light, ventilation, soundproofing, safety, and amenities, things that directly affect daily life and can be checked by eye and by instrument. The conventional part includes door direction by age, floor by number beliefs, and interior layout by school, things that carry spiritual meaning and help buyers feel at ease, but cannot replace checking the quality of the apartment. Keeping both parts, with weights suited to each family, is a way to respect belief while not ignoring verifiable factors.
FAQ
1. Why do apartment buyers in Hanoi consult feng shui?
According to Truong Thi Thuy Ha's 2016 qualitative study, they consult feng shui as a way to seek spiritual security when choosing and arranging a home. The study describes the phenomenon but does not measure what share of buyers do this.
2. Is there evidence that feng shui helps cope with uncertainty in business decision-making?
Eric W. K. Tsang (2004) proposed that belief in feng shui and other superstitions helps decision-makers cope with uncertain situations. This is a theoretical proposal that has not been replicated on a large independent sample, so it is not a widely confirmed conclusion.
3. Does Vietnam have data on apartment prices by floor number or room count?
No. There is no Vietnamese data on apartment prices by floor number or room count. Studies on number beliefs and house prices were done in foreign markets, mainly in areas with many ethnic Chinese residents or in Russia, and cannot be directly applied to Hanoi.
