A potential buyer arrived at an apartment with a Feng Shui book in hand and checked the direction of the front door. A couple seeking an apartment in Haifa's Carmel neighborhood made their purchase conditional on there not being pine trees in the surrounding area. Stories of these and other principles guiding the buyers' choices abound in the real estate sector - some of them logical and based on real defects in an apartment, while others are simply personal caprices.

"Everyone wants to live on the higher floors, with a view of the sea, sunshine and a breeze from all sides, no neighbors and a perfect interior layout," says Aliza Cohen, owner and CEO of Reshef Properties.

Although some apartments do have imperfections, many agents say the buyer's perceptions are often not perfect either. One of the most common whimsies concerns the building's address or apartment number. Many buyers are negatively disposed toward building or apartment number 13, but the numbers game does not end there.

	Advertisement

"There are some buyers whom I call numerologists," says Chaim Kaufman of Kaufman Properties in Tel Aviv. "They come to an apartment, write down its number and start making all sorts of calculations. Then they finally say they like the apartment, but its number will bring them bad luck. We don't have this type of customer every day, but they are certainly not a rarity."

Other pre-conditions concern the interior layout. Small bedrooms and kitchens naturally do not appeal to buyers. Some buyers also do not like apartments whose rooms are based on geometric shapes other than rectangles.

"People like 90-degree corners," notes one marketer. "This is what they're used to and these corners are easiest for arranging furniture. Therefore, most people want this, on principle. I have marketed a few projects that had rooms of different shapes but they sold much slower than adjacent projects with apartments of standard shapes."

Purely rectangular apartments are also not popular. "I have brought buyers to such apartments," recalls Avi Yaffe of Yaffe Properties in Holon, "and they complain that the corridor takes up too much space in the apartment, that the apartment is narrow and feels stifling."

Another matter that bothers buyers is proximity to the adjacent building. Most residential buildings are spaced about 8 meters apart, although some are only 6 meters apart. "People feel that their apartment is directly opposite the neighbor's window and claim they can't leave the curtains open in their bedroom," says Yaffe.

One complaint noted by agents at Anglo-Saxon Realty is that buyers do not like apartments whose front door has a direct view of the bathroom door. A bathroom door visible from the living room is also considered a planning defect by many and can become a cause for rejection, or at least a reduction in the apartment's price, so the buyers will have money left for remodeling the bathroom with the door hidden from view.

The discrete location of a bathroom is a legitimate demand, but what about the couple who refused to live near pine trees?

"Our last apartment was surrounded by pine trees," they explained, "and we suffered from the mess they caused and the yellow powder they spread." This posed a real problem for the real estate agents, as most of the good neighborhoods in Haifa have beautiful pine trees all around. The couple finally found an apartment in a neighborhood with fewer of the troublesome trees.

Many buyers do not like apartments that have an external drainpipe running down one outside wall, either due to their aesthetic sensitivities or for fear of leaks or the noise of the water running through the pipe. Others recoil from apartments located on a building's first floor, above the garbage room, because of the noise made when closing the dumpster or the door to the room every time one of the building's residents takes out the garbage. The noise is also a problem when the garbage truck comes to empty the dumpster, often early in the morning.

Sometimes buyers withdraw an offer after gaining a negative impression of the neighbors. "We've had buyers who look at an apartment and then go downstairs to check the names on the mailboxes," relates Kaufman. "If they discover that most of the residents are tenants, they might be deterred, since people who are renting feel less responsibility toward their building than apartment owners."

In the same vein, there are some people who visit an apartment in the evening and check the cars parked outside. Buildings whose tenants drive cars with high-tech company logos are particularly favored by many buyers.

In general, most buyers do not like the words "building rights" or "potential," which sellers use to try to jack up apartment prices. This is due to the uncertainty regarding the real possibility of fulfilling that "potential" and the costs involved in doing so. Realtors say one neighbor who suffers from asthma is enough to delay renovations on a building, and even make them more costly.

"When an apartment owner comes to me with tales of potential building rights, based on which he wants to raise the asking price, I ask him if he has approved plans and if the neighbors consent to the changes," says one agent. "If he says yes, his higher price deserves serious consideration. If there are no plans, however, and there is no consent form signed by the neighbors, he will not be able to add much to the apartment's market price. The sums a buyer will have to spend on plans and permits, and perhaps even on compensating the neighbors, offset the value of an apartment's future potential. Most buyers also do not want to be contractors or developers. They want to buy a finished product."

Often, the guiding principles concern the surroundings, such as proximity to - or distance from - schools, synagogues or pre-schools. Depending on the buyer, these can be either a convenience or a noisy nuisance. Many buyers are also deterred from purchasing apartments set above commercial space due to the noise and the mess. Another environmental element that has come to the fore in recent years is the cellular antenna, which can lower the demand for apartments in the immediate area. In town centers, people do not like to live near pubs or nightclubs, whose late night noise can disturb their sleep.

Ofer Tzucker, regional sales manager for Africa Israel, is aware of some of these guiding principles among buyers and tries to accommodate them whenever possible. "We are quite familiar with the numerological problems," says Tzucker, "but cannot always solve them. There will always be someone who will tell y ou that some number or other is bad for him. I can tell you, however, that at our Savyoney Netzer Sireni project we numbered the buildings without 13 - they jump from 12 to 14.

"We also have problems selling first floor apartments, and not only due to the proximity to the garbage room and the parking area. People don't like the thought of the whole building 'sitting' on top of them."

Another question that divides buyers is the correct location of the service balcony. Some people believe it should be off the kitchen, while others want it to be accessible from the main bathroom. "We have found that most buyers want the service balcony to be located next to the bathroom," says Tzucker, "as the washer and drier are usually installed on that balcony. We have therefore decided on that location in most of our projects."

One last point is that most people do not want an apartment that faces north and east, because they are afraid the place will be cold and dark. "To combat this," says Tzucker, "we have 'rotated' our buildings a bit, so that all the apartments face more directions."