Vastu When You Cannot Change the Building

A good share of the people who write to me are renting, and they open with an apology: they cannot make structural changes, so is there any point in a consultation. There is, and usually more than they expect.

You are not correcting the building

This is the reframe that makes the rest possible. A consultation is not principally about the walls. It is about how the people inside are using what the walls have given them, and that is entirely yours to change whether you own the place or not.

Two families in identical flats in the same block will often have very different reports, because they have furnished and inhabited them differently.

Four things a tenant can always move

The bed, and which way the head points. The desk, and which way you face when you work. Where the drinking water and any other water sits. And weight: the almirah, the trunks, the boxes nobody has opened since the last move.

Those four cover the majority of what I would recommend to an owner as well. None of them require permission, a mason, or a deposit you will never see again.

Light and air cost nothing

A bulb that has been out for months on the landing. A window that is never opened because the frame sticks. A curtain kept drawn on the one side of the flat that gets morning sun. These come up in nearly every rented property I look at, and every one of them is a tenant's decision rather than a landlord's.

What genuinely needs an owner

Some things I cannot help with in a rental, and it is only fair to name them. A main door in a difficult direction cannot be relocated. A kitchen slab built into the wrong corner stays where it is. A toilet in the north-east is a real problem and not one a tenant can solve.

Where that is the case I will say so, suggest what can be done to offset it, and be honest that offsetting is not the same as fixing. If a place is badly enough set up, the most useful advice I can give is to remember this at the end of the lease.