Where would you tell a friend to live?

[Blakeyboy1]

Guys we will be on the island in a few weeks and will be spending a good amount of time looking at properties and different areas from Puna through Hilo and north. Without providing too much information about our desires in a property (I don't want to lead people) I wondered what you would recommend for a friend and why.

-Blake
http://www.theboysgreatescape.blogspot.com/

[Carey]

Gonna say: That would depend on sooo many things: for neighbors, many of the older areas here have very tight neighborhoods... you really do have to 'earn' your way into the neighbors acceptance. For lots of land at a very good price, Puna has many rural ag areas, but some of the areas are not known for neighborliness. The Hamakua coast has a lot of older communities & a lot of ag land, with some of the most spectacular views you can imagine, but is also much higher priced than the Puna areas. Schools, very few are commendable, so that may be the very decisive factor if you have children.

In Hilo areas:
Pi'ionua (around Silva school) area with some fantastic bay views and many lots have waterfalls, convenience to downtown HIlo with some public transport, nice neighborly feel - (the neighbors will be in your business!)

Waiakea - some of the areas are very secluded with mountain/bay views for such an 'urban' area... there are some very tight neighborhoods some public transportation

Wainaku & Ainako - acreage land, some with great mountain/bay views close to town, no public transport

Out of Hilo areas:

The whole of the Hamakua coast has a variety of areas, many very small towns - the prices are down, but this is the more expensive land area on the east side.

Puna has so many private subdivisions, most all ag land, even though the lot sizes may be as little as 8,000 sq ft, to an acre, up to minimum multi acre. Most created about 50 years ago, most are half or less developed, so the feel of the subdivisions are still being created. With most of these private subdivisions, there are no public services of any kind. With a few of these subdivisions, there are fairly established and well working homeowners associations, others have been overly involved in litigation & are fairly non-functioning, and others never were functioning. One of the basic rule-of-thumbs with these subdivisions is the farther you are away from paved roads, the more unusual the character of the neighborhood (read: wild west)

We personally chose an area that was a crossroads type area, with full public services & the one of the best public transports on the island. Main reason: because we have done the private ag subdivision on the mainland (had planned to here, too) & realized there was a lot to say for having public conveniences, esp here on this island.

[Blakeyboy1]

Very comprehensive Carey! Thank you.

You made a good point too because my providing no information leaves the field a bit too open.

We have no school age children to consider so that is not an issue. We think we prefer being closer into downtown Hilo but do not want to rule out other things. We think we would be interested in some sort of home conversion from a commercial space but are not finding a lot of these types of space available. Ocean view is a lot more important to us than ocean front however having neither would not be the end of the world. When initially looking on the island we were more interested in higher, cooler and wetter than we were lower, drier and warmer. Again we don't want to tie our hands if the right property presented itself. While some acreage would be nice it is not a requirement by any means. Home size matters little to us and we prefer a small manageable space to a large home. Cost is a consideration for us as we hope to mortgage little or none if at all possible. Less is more and lifestyle matters more to us than a large home and lots of land.

Does this help at all? We are hoping to compile a list of areas/places to look at from your recommendations.


-Blake
http://www.theboysgreatescape.blogspot.com/

[John S. Rabi]

Blake, afyter working with buyers for 15+ years I can tell you, you perfectly fit the profile of a buyer who will buy something because he fell in love with the property! [] Bad idea. Your purchase should be business-like and you should know exactly what you want. Good luck with your search!

Aloha,
John S. Rabi, GM,PB,ABR,CRB,CM,FHS
808.989.1314
http://www.JohnRabi.com
Typically Tropical Properties
"The Next Level of Service!"

[Rob Tucker]

Aloha Blake,

For my purposed I first specifically looked for and found an old homestead. The house needed to be demolished but I valued mature trees and also acquired (at a very low price) electric, cable, water and septic.

Second point I was looking for was a town location so I would have neighbors and easy non-car access o most basic services. I was lucky and found exactly what I was looking for.

I highly value old homesteads. A tear down is no real problem. Your mention of converting a commercial building in Hilo could be very smart. Be aware that a lot of buyers avoid old crumbly relics of building because they look bad and are often full of mosquitos and rats. It's the site that matters. Location? View? Crappy old shack? Buy it.

[TheodoreJay]

Three rules to realestate still apply....location, location, location.
Doesn't matter how much you like the house if you try to sell it later and its in a crappy location then good luck. John's point is buy the house as a business proposition (would someone else buy this property later). You can always add home touches, landscaping, improvemtns, and paint but if you are next to a really negative property (bad views, noisy road, high crime neighborhood.....) thats hard to fix.

[dakine]

Avoid realtors - their motives are never yours.
Follow your heart - falling in love with a place is by far more realistic (to me) than its business potential (resale etc.)
Avoid cheap sub-divisions - lots of drugs/burglary etc.
Old is good - but watch out for termites, every old building has them, unless you are looking above 3500' elevation.
Hamakua - great views, great air most of the time, the further out (north) of Hilo the drier it is.
Mt View to Volcano - extremely bad air (VOG - volcanic gases) can be expected 10% - 20% of the time throughout the year. Hilo even gets it's share of VOG, and respiratory ailments are at epidemic levels on the island.
Lava Zones, 1,2,3... can make a big difference in cost of land/house verses long term cost of home owners insurance.
Ocean front - be aware of federal/state/local restrictions. Some places you can't change a thing, including removing weeds, without gazillions of hurdles (Vacationland in Kapoho comes to mind).
If services are a plus, the closer to Hilo the better. Though the smaller towns do have some.
Does the place have a garage? Cars rust real fast left out in the rain.
County water or catchment? Parts of Puna, and a lot of other areas on the island, have no county water. Catchment can work fine, and then it can be as bad as drinking out of the sewer. Lot's of variables involved. A major thing to understand before you buy. Insurance companies want lots of water stored, away from the house, to issue fire insurance.
How far from a fire station will have an impact on insurance also.
If the place you buy does not have sewer hookup, does it have a cesspool or a septic system? If cesspool, and you plan on doing major improvements you may be forced by the county to upgrade to a septic system (cost being upwards to 10k). And, if you have to add this improvement, you need an area on the property that can support it.
Dirt or rock? Lots of land in Puna has little to no soil. Hamakua has plenty of soil.
Water run off - find out what happens in major floods to the property in question. It could look great, with no sense of that river of water that comes right through your house once ever few years when the rains really hit hard.
If you are attracted to wetter areas, how much sun and breeze the house gets may go a long way towards defining how much mold the house has.
Invasive species - the coqui frog can be a deal breaker if you value quite evenings.
Transportation is good (free buses) and bad (roads that are too small to handle the demands of rush hour traffic). Living deep in Puna and working in Hilo can force one to cope with bumper to bumper every day
Strong recommendation.. rent! while you look. It takes ALL the pressure off, and gives you a chance to find out what you feel like in a neighborhood, before you put your money down. If you buy without giving time to learn and understand you may end up with thee ol neighbor from hell scenario, or roosters that go all day long, or the cars that race up and down the block all night.
Keep in mind, Hawaii has really bad heath care. If you expect to grow old here, or have any pre-existing conditions, you may find yourself in the dark ages compared to where you are. Do not expect to find a PCP that will take new patients. If you end up in a clinic keep in mind the doctors there do not have hospital privileges, and are often there (in the clinical setting) because they aren't good enough to have a real practice.
You say no kids, so I need not tell you the schools here are the worst in the county!

[Blakeyboy1]

Everyone, thank you so much for your comments and advice!

Having been around a bit I have picked up a lot of good information about the area yet every time I talk to people here I pick up a bit more!

I'd like to clarify that we are not planning on buying anything on this trip and it is just another exploratory trip (we were there in March and after this upcoming trip we will be back in December). We are still quite open to ideas and suggestions at this point and really are not sure what we want. Earlier in our searches were kind of steered away from Hilo and north and steered towards Puna where we spent most of our time on our last trip. We had zeroed in on HPP and have rented a house there for our upcoming trip but are increasingly refocusing on Hilo for being near things. We are not condo adverse (we currently live in a downtown high-rise condo) however there do not seem to be a ton of choices and HOA fees tend to be quite high for condos in Hawaii.

As far as renting first I know it is the smartest thing to do and we have been told that before. It is not entirely out of the question however our plans as they currently stand call for using savings and proceeds from selling properties we currently own to pay cash for a property and supporting us for a period of time (the essentially free housing helping to enable this). If we rent first we will have greater expenses and will be reducing the money we have to eventually buy a place with. Anyway we still have a while to figure all this out as we are not moving until this time next summer.

I keep going back to specific areas pointed out by Dakine and Carey. I am going to do some more research on these and also mention them to our realtor as potential places of interest. Thanks again everyone and keep the suggestions coming!






-Blake
http://www.theboysgreatescape.blogspot.com/

[kani-lehua]

we have NOT experienced THAT much vog over here in fern forest. yes we get it but so does the entire island some time or another. as rob said in another thread, "the answer is blowing in the wind..." we LOVE it up here even with all the rain, but knew that we were buying in the rain belt.

"chaos reigns within.
reflect, repent and reboot.
order shall return."

microsoft error message with haiku poetry

[David M]

Everyone is right!!!! Surprise surprise.

While we (Punaweb) can offer our particular insight on various areas, but only you know what suits you.
For us, it was a process. We made lists - what was important to us, what would be a negative to us. Resale was not part of our consideration, but living on the property for rest of our life was, and those factors made the list. Because of handicap access considerations, we were able to determine that finding a suitable property was highly unlikely, thus we'd have to consider remodeling. That led to remodel versus build. For us, it soon seemed unless it was an exceptional property, remodeling might not be more cost effective. Seems anything we initially liked was post and pier, usually high post and pier which seemed to limit single floor/wheelchair access. Having reached that decision point, building seemed most appropriate and now we could further concentrate on the requirements related to the location. I would highly recommend working with a licensed buyers agent. We did and she has also found the right property for several of our friends. This was the 3rd agent I had contact with and the only one that understood our relationship. The 1st seemed determine to upgrade me to what she felt we could afford; the 2nd just never seemed comfortable any further south than Paauilo. Can't begin to tell you how many hours of research we did - all before physically meeting our agent. We had already geographically limited our search to parts of Hiloside, as it appears you may have. We then developed a list of about 30 properties that would meet some if not all our criteria - all were not available due to recent sale or off the market, but I wanted to at least drive by for verification. When we finally made the trip to buy, our agent also added some comparison properties, some not meeting our criteria in some fashion, like price, but important in her mind for educational purposes related to our criteria. We started physically looking on Wed afternoon and found our piece on Friday. It wasn't on my list, wasn't on agent's list, but appeared "available" that Friday morning via a phone call. Actually the property had previously been listed but fallen out of MLS just before I made my list. Yes, we did fall in love with it. We did have properties remaining on the list and attempted to look at them Sat, but all we could do was talk about the one we saw Friday which is where we now live.
So my advise is to know not only what you want, but why you want it. What's funny, is our property had actually been available for quite a while, but few, if any found it attractive - but we did.

David

Ninole Resident