Where would you tell a friend to live?

[EightFingers]

We decided to build and not buy an existing house that way we can have exactly what we want in a house. We also decided on buying acareage with 6 acres being the minimum. I also am more interested in rural where we can have some trees I can use for my woodworking - also need a spot for a woodshop. We also had a list of several other wants and do-not-wants. OF course being off-island, we looked at a lot of tiny pictures and vague descriptions. We picked out ten prossibles, got to Hawaii and crossed them all off in three days! What a dissapointment, nothing was right and most weren't even close! We felt we just wasted our time even looking. We did have an agent, but she couldn't find anything right and we almost bought something, but later cancelled because of what we learned about albezia trees. We finally found a nice lot which met all of our criteria, but that was after about 200 miles of driving.
Be prepared to compromise, you really have to decide what's important to you. Be prepared to drive a lot and talk to people.
You can't grow much of a garden living in a condo....