04-10-2011, 08:41 PM
Ah yes, the pictures! So true. I went through a similar situation with shopping east side while living near Hawi. I would find a list of properties and the agent would put together a showing day. I really didn't want to waste her time, so before we made the appointments I stared at all the photos, noted every red flag, looked up the TMK, studied the permit history ... and screened the list hard. Still hit ones that were were not as they seemed online.
Agents have access to larger, higher resolution versions of the photos you see on the MLS. Get the agent's link and you can see a lot more.
Once you have the TMK, go to the property tax site
www.hawaiipropertytax.com
and look at the permit history, the sales history, the zoning, the parcel map, and check what is built on the adjacent parcels. I did that for each property before asking to see it.
Of course a good agent will alert you to stuff, but realistically no agent has time to do four hours of research and devote a day to showings and do that several times, so I always tried to do any work I could do myself.
There are so many properties, and it's roughly 2 1/2 hours each way to come over from Hawi. Would be worth staying a night or two.
Another thing I do is take photos of each property, because they start to blur into each other. I am careful not to focus on personal stuff if the house is lived in, but just things like room configuration, materials of counters and cabinets, bathrooms, windows, flooring, landscaping and neighbor houses.
Agents have access to larger, higher resolution versions of the photos you see on the MLS. Get the agent's link and you can see a lot more.
Once you have the TMK, go to the property tax site
www.hawaiipropertytax.com
and look at the permit history, the sales history, the zoning, the parcel map, and check what is built on the adjacent parcels. I did that for each property before asking to see it.
Of course a good agent will alert you to stuff, but realistically no agent has time to do four hours of research and devote a day to showings and do that several times, so I always tried to do any work I could do myself.
There are so many properties, and it's roughly 2 1/2 hours each way to come over from Hawi. Would be worth staying a night or two.
Another thing I do is take photos of each property, because they start to blur into each other. I am careful not to focus on personal stuff if the house is lived in, but just things like room configuration, materials of counters and cabinets, bathrooms, windows, flooring, landscaping and neighbor houses.