Not Even Molten Lava Can Cool This Hot Housing Market

[Wao nahele wahine]

WSJ article about the housing market in Puna.


https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/not-even...t-471c6212

[terracore]

WSJ article about the housing market in Puna.


https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/not-even...t-471c6212

Is there a Cliff's Notes version for those who can't get past the paywall?

[TomK]

I tried "view source" but I don't recommend it. The audio link at the top of the page is the best you'll get - two minutes of saying people are buying properties that are subject to lava flows.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

It’s a long article, with photos, charts, etc.  I’ll post more when I can

PUNA, Hawaii—In 2018, a large volcanic eruption spewed lava, rock and ash into the middle of a subdivision here, gobbling up more than 700 homes and displacing thousands of residents in a slow-motion disaster. Today, it is Hawaii’s fastest-growing region. 

Land in an active lava zone, it turns out, is relatively cheap. Lured by a shot at attainable homeownership in paradise, island dwellers and mainland transplants alike have been flocking to this area in the shadow of Kilauea, driving up prices in the Puna District. Still, the area remains one of the last affordable refuges on the cheapest island in Hawaii, America’s most expensive state.
“In terms of the last bastion of affordability, Puna is it,” said Jared C. Gates, a Realtor who was raised on Oahu and came to the Big Island for college in the 1990s. He purchased his first home in 2005, a modest fixer-upper in Puna, on his salary as a waiter.

Over the past few years, he has been getting more business in Leilani Estates, the neighborhood where the 2018 eruption began. 
None of the homes that were inundated by lava have been rebuilt. Many homeowners have sold their properties to neighbors or the county in a federally funded buyback program, but that land remains vacant for now. The land has been so transformed that it is hard for remaining owners to know even where their property begins and ends.



Among Gates’s listings that day was a three-bedroom, two-bath home with lush landscaping, two blocks from the mile-wide lava field where heat and steam still radiate from vents in the petrified landscape. “It’s a beaut,” he said. “It will sell.”
Three weeks later it did, for $325,000, cash.
The story of how serene-looking slices of suburbia came to inhabit an active volcanic rift zone is well-known here. In the 1960s, land speculators—aided by a new county government hungry for tax revenue—bought thousands of acres and carved it into lots of an acre or more that were snapped up by investors. 

[TomK]

"Land in an active lava zone, it turns out, is relatively cheap".

I wonder why?

[Punatang]

Thanks for posting this - I missed it somehow.  Here it is, preserved in archive.today:  https://archive.ph/joOXw

[terracore]

Although it has some inaccuracies, the gist of the article is accurate that the housing market is active here compared to many places on the mainland, but it oversimplifies a lot of the reasons why. There are still people moving here from the madland, but we're also seeing transplants from Oahu and Maui. We're also seeing people trying to migrate from LZ2 to LZ3 because of the insurance and mortgage issues. There's also been a lot of developers creating new housing with higher end finishes in LZ3. I remember looking at online listings here 10-15 years ago and most of them were HPM style homes with dumpy builder-grade finishes as the "high end". A lower end home might have boasted a living room with an exposed water heater in it and the clothes washer sitting on the ground out the back door. Of course those gems still exist but people looking on Zillow from the madland or another island can also see a selection of new homes with great finishes, and often times acreage, that they couldn't well afford where they are looking from. And the gold standard for remote or professional workers that didn't exist just a few years ago is everywhere now: High speed internet. We're also seeing multi-family generational migration. People are looking to move here with their parents (or parents looking to move here with their adult children). They are generally looking for something with more than one dwelling on it. They are looking here because "Hawaii" but also they could never afford such a living scenario in their own towns, even with multiple incomes. They don't move back after a few years to care for their parents or whatever because they brought them with.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

gold standard for remote or professional workers that didn't exist just a few years ago is everywhere now: High speed internet.

It’s almost as if by building the information superhighway, with unimpeded access to elsewhere, without being regularly stuck on a single slow connection that’s endlessly loading, waiting, that a problem in getting to where you want to go has been solved?

[terracore]

gold standard for remote or professional workers that didn't exist just a few years ago is everywhere now: High speed internet.

It’s almost as if by building the information superhighway, with unimpeded access to elsewhere, without being regularly stuck on a single slow connection that’s endlessly loading, waiting, that a problem in getting to where you want to go has been solved?

Starlink was on the cusp of single-handedly solving the broadband issue for Puna, but Hawaii Telcom, funded with similar FCC grants, beat them to the punch.  Now they get most of the monthly subscriber fees.

We can imagine a future where SpaceX (or whoever) will be on the cusp of solving the single road issue and the local good ole boys network will find a way to beat them to the finish line.

Maybe we don't need flying cars.  They are already using drones to deliver to homes in some markets.  Eventually the range issues will be worked out and there will be less trips to get "stuff".  The "stuff" will drop from the sky.  Maybe in the near future our catchment tanks will have a second story for catching parcels.  The big round "landing pads" certainly would be easy for an AI pilot to find.

[Wao nahele wahine]

Mahalo to HOTPE for posting part of the article and to Punatang for providing a link without a pay wall.

I was on a break at work when I started this thread and didn’t have time to post anything else besides the link.

I agree with Terracore's comments regarding the gist of the article.