Boutique Broker & Zen Teacher.
Two practices. One question: what does it take for a person to feel at home — in a house, and in themselves?
I work with a small number of clients across Greater Boston, from my base in Wakefield, MA — as the managing Broker of the McCaul & Mounsif Real Estate Group LLC, and as a Zen teacher.
I believe where you live shapes how you live. The light in a room, the walk from the car to the front door, the sound a house makes when it's empty at 6am — these things get into you. They change your nervous system before you've said a word about them.
Most people talk about a home in terms of square footage and school districts. Throughout the years, I changed how I look at homes. A home is a condition. It either helps you be at your maximum potential, or it quietly gets in the way.
I didn't set out to build a real estate career — I fell into it, and then discovered I was good at something most people don't associate with the job. Not selling houses. Reading people at the exact moment they're in transition — leaving a marriage, starting one, burying a parent, chasing a job across the country, finally admitting they've outgrown a life that used to fit.
I got good enough at holding that moment that Coldwell Banker Realty eventually asked me to oversee 120+ agents across three offices as Managing Broker. It was a real job, and I did it well, and it taught me almost everything I know about how people actually behave under pressure.
But somewhere in those years I noticed I'd traded depth for scale — I was managing outcomes for hundreds of people I'd never sit across a table from.
So I stepped back.
On purpose. I left the title to build it all from scratch. All over again. Now, I work with a small number of clients directly, the way I'd wanted to from the beginning. That's the whole ethos of being a Boutique Broker: fewer people, more presence, no exceptions.
Why Zen matters in Real Estate
Zen entered my life around the same time everything else got loud, and it gave me the one thing real estate never could — the ability to sit still inside a transition instead of managing my way through it. I teach now in the Zen Korean lineage, and most weeks you'll find me somewhere between a crystal bowl practice and a moving meditation one, recording sound journeys and guided meditations for Everyday Zen, my YouTube channel.
What I've come to understand is that real estate and Zen are not two different jobs I happen to hold. They're the same orientation, aimed at two different rooms.
Both ask: what has to be cleared away, for something real to emerge?
House of Alignment is what happened when I stopped pretending those two rooms needed separate houses. It isn't a new business but the umbrella and real estate lives under it. So does sound work, and the gemstones I'm studying as a gemologist in training, and a slower project called Vedic Gems of Wisdom, exploring stones as small sanctuaries you can carry. Different entry points. Same purpose.
If you're navigating a real move — buying, selling, or just standing at the edge of a decision you can't quite name yet — I'd like to hear about it. I work with people who want guidance and support, not just a transaction, and I only take on as many clients as I can actually show up for.
Let’s Talk
A closing and a meditation cushion ask the same question: what are you finally willing to let go of?
A first conversation is free, and there's no pressure attached to it — just a chance to talk about where you are and whether working together makes sense.