East Hawaii Real Estate Update: Buyer’s or Seller’s Market? July Update

Aloha, hey it's Julie Zienlis 365 Hawaii Real Estate Group. And I'm Kealoha Nui Browning, Nui for short. I am with Rio and Team Nakanishi. And we are in a very interesting place to bring your East Hawaii update for this day in July. Tell us where we're at. Today we are sitting at one of our listings located at 308 Kui Kahi Street. This is in South Hilo. It is just past Honolii which is a very popular surfing beach and if you look behind me you can see Keokaha and just that away is Puna. So we're going to be talking about South Hilo today, Puna and HPP, Hawaiian Paradise Park. Okay so tell us a little bit more about this listing. So this listing is listed at 440,000. It is 13,547 square feet and zoned RS20. So that does allow you to build your primary residence and you can build up to three additional homes right on this property. We are in Lava Zone 8 for those who are concerned about the Lava Zone and Lava Zone 8 is yeah insurance for insurance purposes mostly. But Lava Zone 8 is considered very safe as far as Lava Zones go. They start at 1 and they go up to 9 being the safest. So we're in 8. So 8 is pretty good. Yeah. And look at this view behind us you guys. This is like amazing ocean view and this is located how far out of Hilo? We are about seven minutes from downtown Hilo and to Honoka'a maybe about 40 minutes. So there you go. So we got jobs, we got jobs, we got education, we got restaurants, we got all the staff and you're only seven minutes from there. We'll drop this information about this listing below in the description at the end and also if you want to call Nui I'll give her your phone number so you can actually learn more also about these other lots if you're thinking about doing something pretty big right here with this oceanfront view. So speaking of views and property let's get into the statistics. Okay. Well I guess we'll just start in South Hilo since we're here. Yeah. I pulled these stats last week. So as of last week there were 89 active listings in Hilo with a median days on market of 80. So just about three months on the market median and median sales or median list price excuse me of $7.38 and last month there were 33 sales in Hilo at a median sales price of $6.42 500 which has gone up a little since April. I missed May's stats. She was in Washington D.C. with our legislators. Yes I was at the legislative sessions in Washington D.C. which was really exciting. We could talk about that later if we want to but yeah so it has gone up last month or excuse me in April the median was $570,000. The sales to price ratio here in South Hilo right now is about 90 almost 99 percent so 98.8 that's from the last listed price and from the original price 95. So that's after any price reductions. Yeah. Median days on market for sold homes was 41 in June for Hilo. So they're selling pretty quickly if you're pricing it correctly. It's like the thing I say every time. Yeah seriously and we're actually starting to see that too. The houses that go on just almost a little bit under have gotten multiple offers. Yes almost I want to say like the last three or four properties that I've made offers on have been multiple offers and then we're even starting to get multiple offers on our properties as well so if they're price correct you're getting you are still having to compete against other offers. Yeah yeah there's a I like to think it's called a penta buyer demand that some people are just staring at Zillow and as soon as the thing that they think finally is their home they're jumping right on. Yeah and there's just not that much inventory and so the inventory that's priced a little bit high it kind of will just sit because I mean it's all about value right so and then Hilo you're getting older homes that you a lot of times they need some work if they're in the 600,000 range still so as soon as something pops up in the 600 range that is decent and doesn't need a ton of work it flies off the market. Yeah so we'll move along to Puna which is right now Puna is a very huge district it's the size of Oahu about approximately so size of the whole island of Oahu and so there's a lot of active listings every month there are 422 as of last week when I pulled this with at a median list price of $379.50 and the Puna homes do tend to be more affordable because there are lava zones one and two in Puna as well and so we talked about that the lower lava zones are the more risky so it's harder to get financing and insurance and insurance is very expensive in lava zone one and two so you'll see the prices of homes a little bit lower. Yes if you see a house for $240,000 and you're like oh that's a steal probably it's going to be on lava zone or unpermitted. Yeah in lava zone one or two or that's where I was going like there's a lot of unpermitted properties in Puna and so when you see that there's this great deal on the market a lot of times it won't be permitted so you really have to watch out for that. As far as sold property $75 sold in Puna last month at a median sales price of $410 which was the same as April so no change. I think that's the average price of a house in America is $400,000 yeah so there you go there's your random like not tourist section like Kona but people who actually live full-time are paying about $400,000 and then also with the what's going on in Puna as well it's like it just seems that I'm not getting a ton of phone calls from people saying I want to live there but it seems that there's still a steady interest level and is that do you think that there's more people actually who live on this island moving and buying houses there? Oh yeah like a lot of the locals that I work with end up moving out that way because it is more affordable and you get more land so it's you know for family and kids that want to be outside in their yard and newer homes for really good prices. Yeah yeah we drove through there today we actually in HVP there are some beautiful brand new homes on those streets now yeah it's really cool so if you guys haven't like gotten a chance to understand like you don't have to live in a risky lava zone with unpermitted but there's some beautiful homes that are actually in lava zone three right? Uh-huh yeah yeah so in Puna it's lava zone one two and three so that's what you'll find out there so median sales price $410,000 last month with the sales to price ratio of $98,000 again. Wow that's good and yeah from from the original price though 90 about 97 so three percent off yeah people ask original from their original price and then median days on market is 43. May end of May everybody started coming back to the market yeah that's what we saw in West Hawaii as well yeah yeah and I don't know maybe do you think that maybe people and again just do you think maybe they they said interest rates are where they're at uh the world is where it's at it's time just if I'm not gonna I'm not gonna wait any longer to buy a house I've stopped kind of guessing but I don't know you know we don't really have seasons too much here like we do in the mainland but I know that some families it's easier for them to move during the summer because the kids are out of school yep yeah so I think that has a little bit of an effect but uh it's yeah it's good to see so in April the median was 77 so that's what you were seeing yeah okay and then it went down to 40 so that definitely is an uptick in the market yeah so we'll move along to HPP which is where what we were just talking about it's a humongous neighborhood and so usually more inventory than Hilo and this month there was at there's 102 as of last week when I pulled the data and the median active sales or the median active list price is 580 580 580 500 yes the prices are going up too yeah well um in May it was 579 so yeah a tiny bit well there was a while there there was a 450 oh yeah you could buy you could buy a brand new build in HPP for 450 and now it's passed over 500 so yeah wow well I think there's a couple over a million that when they're over a million they're usually on the water okay so if you look you look at paradise alakai that's like right on the water and a lot of those homes are bigger and um more expensive so they're skewing the statistics yeah I think there was one that's about 1.3 right now wow so it kind of pulls it up but actually this is the median price so that wouldn't the yeah yeah but there's a lot of homes on the market a lot of newer homes and a lot that are towards the bottom of HPP so at the bottom does usually have a higher price point because it's closer to the water right right right yeah um okay so we'll move on to the sold properties there were 27 that sold last month versus April was only 19 so yeah it picked up a lot yeah and uh the sales to price ratio is 98.5 and from the original price 97 so people are getting about three percent yeah awesome some negotiations but it's not the slaughter okay yeah that's good news for sellers um median days on market in HPP is also about 40 43 okay that's not bad okay and then when we went to a listing appointment today yeah me and julie and eric and i was explaining to the seller that in puna especially you'll see a lot of the homes are going above asking and what's happening is that people are asking for seller contributions back towards closing costs and so what they'll do is they'll bid above the asking price and so if something's like 600 they'll bid 615 and then um the seller will give them 15 000 back to help them with buy down their rate or something like that and then that really even though they're paying more it actually ends up being less interest over the life of the loan right right when you put that kind of money down right that's actually a very clever thing to do and so sellers think about that helping your buyers by working in that way and then the seller usually gets more money that way too because it ends up the buyer um their payment is actually lower than if they paid just straight 600 normally you want to double check this but normally it's lower and then um the interest over time is a lot lower usually but then the seller still gets their more money as well so everybody but you need to make sure that you're not going to turn around and sell the house next year because then you paid it oh yeah i need to pay down yeah if you have a mortgage right you pay most of the upfront costs in the very beginning right yeah so you want to make sure you talk to your lender about how long do i have to own this property for it to make sense to put more money down at front up front there we go so that's that's that there's a tip for you yeah okay yeah um so months of inventory in hilo is about four which means that it's technically a seller's market right now so sellers have more of the leverage and then in puna there's about eight months which buyers would have the more of the leverage which is why it makes sense that they're asking for it and getting it yeah and also if it's a buyer's market um one of my friends just coined this one buyers have more muscle now meaning that you could ask for more things things to get fixed they're flexing their muscles that's it and so tanya yeah and so the concept of um i want that like you know um because one of the ones we're dealing with i want that tree cut down because it's like blocking the view um i want a concession for new carpets i want and so a lot of sellers who just want to get out and get on they're willing to say you know what fine i'll give you some money or i'll do something you want me to do for the house yeah and then you can't do this with everybody but in puna there are so many spec home builders that yeah that they have like the they have people uh contractors and people that they work with that can do the work for you so we got someone to put in a fence for us recently and so you can ask spec home builders sometimes for improvements on the home not always and you don't want to just go asking a regular seller i want a carport yeah to build stuff that was another thing that we did we did do a carport conversion into a um another bedroom oh one of my spec home sales oh they did that uh-huh oh that's cool yeah okay yeah you don't even know what to ask for sometimes and sometimes you know i get a second story in my roof well but yeah you can you know you have to know who you can ask for what and then also just knowing what agents do what sort of things um you know knowing even that part of the world of real estate is very helpful because i know this agent will normally is able to do xyz things so if we go into contract with this person then they're they can probably make this thing happen for my buyer yeah i've noticed that now too the more you're longer you're in this business with the relationships that you work with different agents you can see that people are saying i just want to close this deal how can we make it work between the two of you guys and then they actually help make the seller make decisions to help everybody right yeah yeah some people don't realize that that's a really important part of the transaction about real estate yeah the relationship yeah part of it yeah yeah um so in hpp right now there's about six months of inventory so it's more of a balanced market and it's just interesting because when you're doing this every day you can feel the different markets you know even though they're not that far apart there's a definitely a different feel to each area when you're putting in an offer so um it's good to have your pulse on it well let me guess you could drive around for three extra days in hpp looking at houses we're in hilo if something comes on the market you have to be on it well yeah i i have one under contract for about two weeks now but in the second day um it was like second or third day she came over from oahu and then she looked at it we put in an offer and it there was already another offer in and well we got we ended up getting it but um i was like gosh it hasn't even been a week yet so yeah you have to be really fast if something you love it jump on it yeah it's almost like uh getting stefan costco around here if you see something you love get it now because it probably won't be there tomorrow um and let me ask you what was i was actually like this is your phone ringing with sellers yeah yeah mostly with sellers um some buyers not too much my niece is also on our team and so she's been getting a lot of the buyers the you know the lower price points are getting more buyers but that makes sense because there's a larger pool usually in the lower price points anyway so um yeah okay um and also uh that's one thing actually we did today we actually looked at two pieces of property that we're going for sale um and uh one is um we will put that down it's less than three hundred thousand but it needs a little work but we uh whatever newie is you know repping and we can do this piece of property too i'll put it in the description so you guys can see some of the work that newie's doing so you can actually work with her too to maybe get it home thank you okay so tell them speaking about working and things that you do in hilo tell them a little bit about the the punk program that you're working with oh okay so i'm working with a non-profit kamali ho and they are we put in an application to uh it's called punk p-o-n-c public open space um natural resource commission that's it i think that's i think i think i got it all uh so this is really my first time going through it i have a mentor helping me with it beth robinson um and so basically it's a rigorous process you have to put in an application and then once the application you have to kind of outline everything that you're planning to do with the property it's for conservation and preservation purposes and so with this particular property they're going to be doing native reforestation um food forests and sustain sustainability tongue twister um and then they're also going to be doing hawaiian culture education which i'm really excited about because growing up we didn't have you know we had a kumu come into our classroom once a week and we would learn some ukulele and some songs like uh about colors and we've learned how to count numbers and stuff but we never really learned about our culture and definitely not about i know land you know we didn't learn about the importance of taking care of it or growing things or sustainability or any of that so i'm as an adult learning it and i very excited about how much how much more available this is becoming the education so this is a really neat project because they are going to be doing education on the land so you get to learn how to you know work with it and um the cultural aspects to to why you're doing something right right um and getting your hands in the land and actually like having a sense of gratitude when your hands are on the land is things i've learned from the hawaiian culture because in california it's like oh here whatever we need to do on the land it doesn't matter almost like no don't put your hands in the land just use it we're here it's like you revere it and you truly believe that if it was not here for you like your kumu told us this like the mountains love the mountains because if these volcanoes weren't here we'd be standing in the ocean yeah yeah they made it they made this you know yeah like why so you learn to look at it for a different perspective when you're thinking about being one with the land really truly where if you don't think about it then that becomes the abuse of the land when you're not really in it to win it with the land and that's why it's interesting with the cultural education that you're talking about that i grew up like that too and so it's nice to have this opportunity for the next generation of children not just hawaiian children it's going to be open to anybody who wants to learn about the wine culture right yeah and um what's really neat too is uh you know our culture they really try to talk about balance a lot or and then there's always a reason behind why you're doing something you just don't really do something thoughtlessly there's a reason why you're doing it and then you always want to balance out if you're doing something over here then you want to balance it out over here it's like is the term for it uh yeah so um it's it's neat and so there's that she's gonna be teaching that i'm sure um but we did visit this property it's located in hakalau if you guys are interested in contributing they are gonna um be they're gonna have an active website soon so you can donate to the project oh beautiful um okay but i well are you gonna get that well are you gonna get the i mean did the project go through or okay so i lost my train of thought where i was going oh i know so the first time i visited the property um we were sitting there and my friend keikuhi she's like explaining to me i okay i grew up here but i never really thought about how things flow from mauka which is mountainside to makai and you know you hear about things going into the ocean but you don't it doesn't it's like you know you hear about it yeah you don't really focus on it it doesn't click and you're like okay well okay and then so she explained um there's at this property you can see the cliffs and there's little waterfall streams coming out of the side of the cliffs and i she pointed them out to me and she said you see those those are not coming from the top of the land they're coming from the sot like inside the middle of the land because of a lava tubes and different uh fissures inside the lava that has like an underground water yeah it just travels underground yeah yeah and then it flows out into the ocean and she said you know whatever you're doing up mauka this water is coming from up there and it's going down into the ocean and then she pointed down to the ocean and she said you see all the birds they're there because there's fish there so that's a good sign and there's limu down there that the fish eat and the turtles eat so tell them what limu is oh limu thank you seaweed um so she says if you're doing putting uh pesticides up mauka mountainside it will come down through the ground and into the ocean and kill the limu and then you don't have fish and then you don't have honu which are turtles and then you're not going to have seabirds because the seabirds eat the fish so if you see the seabirds and the honu then that's a good sign that there's limu there which it's like the bellwether of the health of the ecosystem yeah right yeah so i had never really put all of that together and it seemed so silly in my head when she explained all that to me that i hadn't thought about all of that and it was kind of mind-blowing because i'm like okay that makes a lot of sense and i just never would have thought about it well okay so i'm gonna ask my viewers how many people think about their wastewater treatment plants probably not many and so not knowing where that goes and where it ends up and also did you know um you know the hudson river was actually so polluted that that's how the epa was created because everybody upstream was dumping everything into the river so all the people downstream had a horrible polluted mess and because no one person wanted to be the guy that was going to stop polluting they had to create a government body to force everybody to stop dumping stuff into the water and so we don't really have that here and so that's one of the reasons why we're dealing with the the cesspool conversion issue uh around the island as well yeah right because it goes all goes into the ocean yeah that's a there there's a lot of talk about what really goes in and what doesn't and yeah so yeah um but yeah it's just very interesting so she is also the emphasis on that project is also going to be around um restoration of ecosystem there we go so this is a really neat project so so do you think that you're going to get it passed so we got through two of the first big hurdles so the first big hurdle is getting the application in because it's it's a lot and i did not have any part of that application really so i can't take credit for that but the second part is that you go and testify in front of the commission and the commission is the advisory board which then takes your project and they well they'll go out and do a site visit and then they take your project and they have a rubric which they score the project and um and they after they go to the site visit then they they score that against the plans of the project um like if it's actually viable can you do what you say you're going to do on this property and then they give you a score so you needed a minimum of 50 for the scoring to move on to county council meetings because what happens after that it goes to county council and the county council kind of makes recommendations from there to the director of finance right to find the project yeah to fund the project so um they pick the top projects and then it goes to the mayor and then the mayor will sign off of it it's not over then though because you have to find matching funds so then oh normally oh interesting in our case we're going to we are planning if if we can make it through the mayor we'll plan to go to the state for funding oh there you go and also um private funding can help as well yeah but um the more straightforward process the way that i understand it is that you would just go through a similar process with the state and because they're so similar and the state and county can kind of work together it's a little easier to get the project funded that way but you can get private funding as well but a lot of these properties are really big so they're expensive so it's not like one donor unless you're mark zuckerberg or larry ellison yeah yeah but we would yes mark zuckerberg right but the good news is that you said okay you said that 50 you get 50s get you there and what did you guys get we got 93 yay yeah we got a score of 93 so yeah we were all really excited and you're that means it puts you in the top three yeah yeah yeah there were eight projects um that that were being uh reviewed yes yes yeah and so now you guys know how hard it is to get the land purchased by the county and the state so that somebody can do something that's worthwhile on the land so when you see people doing worthwhile things on the state and county funded land uh appreciate that for all the work and effort it takes and how many people have to be behind that project to get it actually done right yeah and it's been a months months long process already so yeah so um when this goes forward and we get the website maybe when we talk next month you can tell people a little bit about more about where it's going and um you guys seriously if you want to do something really amazing and you want to help donate right then we'll give you that opportunity with the website and um you know have have a little uh have a little uh monolo aloha piece of your life here by donating you know to help the land stay uh so that stays in conservation and uh that has uh education on it and you can follow me on instagram and i'll put um updates on there and then um on hello ohio uh that is keikuhi educational side of which anybody can sign up for those classes too a lot of them are zoom and there's a lot of people from japan that are on those classes um she does only lessons so um which is chanting there's a lot of japanese people in japan because i've taken those classes too so you can hop on those and it's really fun because then you're with people like in asia that are trying to do hawaiian chanting and it's just yeah it's it's that's cool yeah very cool yeah it's an international experience yes yeah um okay so um because we're sitting in the sun we're not going to keep you guys here forever but what we will do is um i'll give you you're going to help me get all this stuff in the description below so you guys get more information and uh we will um you you can see newie on our all island update which is actually on our youtube channel as well and we will see you guys in august and we probably won't be sitting in a field somewhere in hilo but if you're interested in getting this view make sure you get in contact with that newie so thank you very much for being here with us and we'll catch you next time and here we are signing off from location aloha