Pros & Cons Of Mililani And Speed Tour Of Our Newest Listing

In today's video, we're going to go over pros and cons of living in Mililani, but Aiden and I happen to have a new listing in Mililani. So as we get Aiden set up to give you guys a speed tour of our new listing in Mililani, if you're thinking of selling your house, go to coreteamhawaii.com, go to the bottom, fill out the contact form, let's connect. A lot of us Asians can do similar things. Not everyone has our skill, our authenticity, our outlook on the market, and no one else can get you on our YouTube channel like this. After all, things are greener on the other side with Core Team Hawaii. Oh, boy. I didn't know I was going to be doing a speed tour. Oh, wait, I got to get my phone on timer. I got to think of some things to say. We already did the intro. So you only have 90 seconds. Whoa. I got to just run through this whole house. Oh, 90 seconds. Ready? Go. All right. Come here. Primary suite, one big bedroom, big bathroom, all walk in closet, one living space. And you've got a large kitchen for you to cook in. It's bigger than yours. You got a laundry room on the other side. And here, second living room. Not that you have enough friends to entertain anyway. Upstairs. Let's go. Second suite for when you need to get away from all the people you're entertaining. Primary suite, dual vanity, big bathroom, outside barbecuing, lawn, backyard, private trees, grass. All right. Going back. Don't know if I mentioned the dining area in the extra living room, but it's there. Guest bedrooms for your kids. One, two, full bathroom and a two car carport with extra parking in the driveway and steps away from 16 acre park. In today's video, we're going to go over some of the reasons why you might not want to live in Mirirani. Now, we can't help but to spread some aloha and go over some of the positives. Some of the reasons why I live in this community. And if you stay tuned to the end, I'm going to spill the tea, tell you some stories about some of the anecdotal problems that some of my friends who live in the community have had themselves and with their children. So one of the reasons you might not want to live in Mirirani is the pricing. Now, I'm in Mirirani Mauka, which is a little bit different market than Mirirani town, which we'll get into. These homes are American Cossacks, the highest end homes in all of Mirirani, both parts. They're the upper echelon of homes in Mirirani Mauka. I've been home shopping and I looked at some homes. In fact, just right in that cul-de-sac over there, I looked at a home for one point six five. I've also seen these go for upwards of two million two point one. If you go to Makakilo, you could get a similar home like one point three ish, one point five. We're here in Mirirani Mauka. This type of home is more one six five to two million. We can all agree, even if you're from the mainland and used to nice homes, these are really nice homes, right? But some people may not see the value in doing that when they can go to Makakilo paid three, four plus hundred thousand dollars less for a similar home. Another reason you may not want to live in Mirirani is the association. So there's Mirirani Town Association, which governs the entire, well, not the entire nine, six, seven, eight, nine zip code, but most of what locals see as Mirirani. So there's that association that tells you what color your house can be. And if you can do this extension or not, maybe beyond the rules of the department of planning and permitting, not everyone wants that MTA oversight. In addition, a community might have another association that dictates further things about the community. Associations can be a positive. They can be a negative. It just depends on the person. Just because you have an association doesn't mean that things are going to be perfect. As we can see. This side note from the pros and cons sort of theme of this video, that is probably my dream home. We showed that house to our clients in the past. I think it's a four bedroom. There's a pool in the back, overlooking the perimeter. There's a little like pool house for the pool pump and stuff. Decent sized yard, a deck overlooking the perimeter, a perimeter lot in Malka and some areas of Mirirani town site as well is in that sort of upper echelon of homes that someone who's also looking in a Hawaii Kai, the nicer parts of Kaneohe, et cetera, they might see these homes and go, Oh, actually I prefer that. If we were going to stay in the Mirirani area that I think that exact home might be my, my, my dream. Also, I looked at that home over there with the black Tacoma. I looked at that off market. I, we could have bought it off market. They were going to set up for 1.65. We just didn't love it. We ended up getting into something a little smaller, a little less, but we enjoyed it more, had more yard. The primary bedroom in that thing was like, it was like 300 square. It was huge. You could have put four King beds and still had a yoga part in an office. That's the level of homes we're standing in Mirirani. So whereas in Makakilo and Ewa, you might have this big yard. You're on a postage stamp. Like you can't even kick a soccer ball in that yard for almost 1.7 million. A reason you might want to live in Mirirani are the schools. It's no secret to locals that Mirirani is perceived as this place where people move there for the school. We're standing in front of Mirirani Ike elementary, which is rated number 11, depending on what rating you pull up, rated number 11 out of all elementary schools in the entire state of Hawaii. Among other notable ratings are Mirirani Mauka elementary. And then on the Mirirani townside, Mirirani Uka elementary. Mirirani high school is also generally known to be more desirable higher ranking schools. I haven't looked up the ranking. Maybe Kenji will look it up and pull it up on the screen. As far as Mirirani high school ranks in the state of Hawaii. Mirirani is this place where people go to do suburb thing and go for these, these rec centers over here. So you have rec seven with the swimming pool and you can get shave ice and Simon and just have like a, you know, a padded, nice little suburban life. Maybe stay tuned to the end though. I'll share some tea about some problems in some of the Mirirani school districts that I've heard about just anecdotally from parents and give you a caution as to why Hawaii is still Hawaii. All right. So a reason you might like Mirirani and want to live here. One of the reasons why I like living here is that it's just cooler when you're going up the H2 and you go past Costco through the Gulch and Waipio, you feel sometimes like an eight degree temperature difference and that's really nice at times. So for example, we filmed in Ewa and Ho'opiri last week and I was wearing a similar fit and I was sweating and I try and get my sweat off before the shot and it's just so much cooler here. For most intents and purposes, that's people want it to be a little cooler. They don't want the Ewa heat that's seen as a drawback. On the other hand, it can be really rainy and really wet here and that's sort of a deterrent. So I'm always having to wash this white truck cause it's always getting dirty when it's like 4pm and we may or may not go beach today. It's kind of cool sometimes here and we have like a hoodie and it's overcast and it's sprinkling and I know down in Ewa beach it's beach weather, but to make that decision to drive 30 minutes down to Ewa beach, I oftentimes don't do it cause I'm just in this more Seattle-y type environment. No, I know it's not Seattle. Chill. Yes, it's rainy and that makes things green and it makes things cooler. But a sign of the rain is this right here. People who are like, ah, I don't want to live Kaneohe. I don't want that wetness. I don't want that like Pacific Northwestness. I wouldn't do Kaneohe. You might think twice about moving to Mililani as well because anywhere in Hawaii, this is a pro tip for looking at the island. You want to Google map and just drop yourself anywhere on the island. If you go around the neighborhoods and you have this mildew all over the place, it's obviously a wet area. It's going to be a green lush area and it's going to have this and driveways, white vinyl fences, walls, and then you go to like the Ewa's of the world. You don't have that, but you might see some red dirt and stuff. Even if you show me Maui or you show me big island, I may not know where this little photograph is. Show me some indicators and I can tell you what side of the island or what area it's in. One of the reasons you might not want to move here is that it's just so vanilla. I've said this on probably every Mililani video we've done. It's kind of lacking in culture and character. I'm going to drive around Mililani town center and point out some of our basicness. If you're like my wife and most people, you're like, what are you complaining about? For all you to be the concerned about is you don't have good avocado toast. Oh, poor Derek, right? CPK, cookie corner. We love long strugs. Don't get me wrong. That's, that's part of Hawaii's culture. A bank of Hawaii Panda express. Now we'll say Mililani movie theater is one of the better ones. They have good food seats, not too old. I, we love Mililani theater. Walmart, an auto parts store, city mill hardware store. So again, people thinking about Derek and the world's smallest violin, it's convenient. You have everything you need. Chili's, Taco bell, Jack in the box, a Raising Canes, which tell me in the comments, are you a Chick-fil-A or Raising Canes person? I think this is an important debate and we need the comment section to help us settle it. We make this channel. So you call us to do real estate further. We just enjoy it. We like doing it, but the way we make our money is you guys call us. We help you buy and sell homes because we've helped hundreds of clients do real estate. We know that there are clients that this idea of the vanilla ness of Mililani, it sounds like torture. They don't, they don't want this. They want better yoga studios. Like recently I've been looking for yoga. I've never done yoga and you have any back problems. You'll know that makes a huge difference. I don't like doing it, but I don't want to help my back. So I started looking for a yoga studio. You don't have that kind of thing in Mililani, but if you don't mind driving to a nicer night out, you don't mind driving to your, uh, yoga bar pole dancing studio. If you don't mind driving to a cooler gym, we don't even have a CrossFit in Mililani. They call it a box. You know, the gym is referred to as a box. The way this community was master plan, there is no box to have a CrossFit. There's no like industrial area in Mililani to have a CrossFit. It's just vanilla. What can I say? I like living here. My wife would not move and I just have to drive into town and Kailua to get my fix of cool avocado toast and coffee. That, that's another thing. There's no cool coffee. You have to go to Wahiawa. You have to go into town or go to Kapolei to Island Vintage. We have Starbucks. Our coffee shop game is weak. A couple of more reasons you might want to live in Mililani is its location. This is the closest thing to like a bullseye on a dart board that we have on Oahu. We're pretty centrally located. If you look all the way over there, I see that kind of tan orange building. That's Wheeler Airfield. And then you have Schofield Barracks, Nick Tams. If you're going to Pearl Harbor, it's still a better commute than from Ewa beach or Kapolei. So oftentimes this Mililani conversation is one between paying a little more to be in Mililani or getting a little less to be in Mililani. So maybe townhome in Mililani versus single family in Ewa, price per square foot and what you get for your money and commute and school. And so we talked about schools in this video, but as far as commute goes, which is a percentage of your life, Mililani is not the best on the island, but it's better than those other two. It's better than going more H1 West to Kapolei and Ewa with no traffic. It takes me about 25 minutes to get everywhere. If I want to surf at Barber's or White Plains, as people call it now, I want to go Haleiwa. Both are about 25 minutes. If I want to go surf in town, about 25 minutes. Whereas in Ewa, I'm really close to the beach and certain shopping. There's more shopping to be had in Kapolei. If I had to commute every day, I'd live in a townhome in Mililani over a single family in Ewa. But are you PCSing? Are you on a ship? Are you working trap hours? Do you, do you report? Does Liberty expire at 6am? If you're military, do you work for the city? Do you go in at 6am and leave at 2? All of these things get factored in. But if we just map it right now, Ewa Kapolei is a little to a lot worse in commute than Mililani is. It just is what it is. So I told you, if you stay tuned to the end, I'm going to spill some tea, give you a little bonus info. We're standing right by Mililani high school. So I'm going to tell you a few anecdotal stories. So I was just looking up the Mililani high school ratings. I see on great schools, it says nine out of 10 US news. It said Mililani high school is number two in all of Hawaii and Mililani middle school is number six in all of Hawaii. Now this is just anecdotally, but my wife went on a field trip with my son, talked to some other moms and parents just two days ago. And one of the moms was saying, Oh, at Mililani middle school, there's fights every day. I had a different experience. When I went to Mililani middle for the kids orientation, they made us feel so secure and like, we're going to take care of your children. And if you ever need anything, you just let us know. I felt like, Oh wow, this feels like a, beyond a private school. It felt amazing. But I do also know of another real estate agent who his daughter goes to the school and she's a freshman. And like four senior girls are going to beat her up. Another friend of mine, his daughter goes to this school and a couple of girls right now looking to kind of give her problems. Hawaii is still going to be Hawaii and kids are still going to be kids, especially at the middle school age. Tell me now, what is the worst age group for a human feel like middle school or some of the worst humans at times they're going to bully and they're going to fight and they're gonna do all these things. And then even at a more higher ranked high school like Mililani, you're still going to fight. Guarantee your kids smoked weed this morning. You know, this is still Hawaii. This is still public school. But I think when you look, when we look at these ratings and when you make your decision, cause Derek didn't tell you anything about what school to send your kid to. All he said was go to court team, Hawaii.com, go to the bottom, fill out the contact form and contact us so we can enter dialogue about these things. But even at a higher ranking school like this, kids will be kids. But I think you're looking at averages. You're looking at average outcomes and just trying to do the best you can. And for that reason, some people will overpay for Mililani versus the Makakilo or ever beach Campbell high school, couple of high school because they just feel that the average puts their kid in the better situation. Now, if you're a local, especially tell me what your views are on these, the trifecta of schools. Cause oftentimes Mililani, Kapolei, Makakilo, ever that trifecta is the consideration for people. And if you're on the mainland, also tell me like what are your thoughts about school ratings versus and school test scores, the average demographic and free lunch versus actual experience in the school and what that means to you. I'd love to know.