Can You Really Afford To Live In Kailua? We Found The Cheapest Homes

All right guys in today's video we're going to be going around Kailua looking at the two lowest priced townhomes slash condos and the two lowest priced single families that have sold in the last 30 days. Someone got into Kailua for 1.1 million. Rare find in Kailua. This house actually has a good bit of yard. For 1.1 million in Kailua, the fact that you got anything, great. What you're compromising on, what you're not, how did you get into Kailua for such a low price point and how could you when you go to courtteamhawaii.com. We're going to talk about that in today's video. We're standing here in what might not feel like quintessential Kailua. When you think of Kailua you're thinking of like coffee shops, beach, and paddling, and picturesque, and postcards. But there's other aspects to Kailua. Power lines behind me, the roads a little more crowded. If you want to get into Kailua, if you want to limp in at a lower price point, it's not going to be beachside right. And so I'm standing here in front of this home. So this home sold for 1.155 million. Three bedroom, one bath, barely over a thousand square feet. You know it's got a little bit of yard. There's some yard in the back. It's painted fresh. Plumeria tree, a little bit of a front yard. Get this one here. And in the back they actually have a view. Oh that's crazy. One point just to get into Kailua. I mean granted it's more of a crowded street, power lines, whatever. But I'm surprised. I think they got a good deal. The description, the verbiage, and the listing stated that it's a perfect foundation for renovations. This was more like, hey blank canvas you can live in it, but you're going to probably need to do renovations. I looked up the loan type and it was sold to someone using a VA loan. So that tells me that it couldn't have been that bad. Because if it's that bad, you can't get VA lending. Unless of course there's a VA construction loan, which those are almost non-existent. We almost never see them. So it could have been that bad. But it's a 3-1 thousand square foot. We're in the Keolu Hills neighborhood. So a lot of times when people are in Kailua, you're thinking, how far am I from the beach? Can I walk to the beach from here? Of course you can do anything. If you can walk, then you could walk to the beach. But it'd take you a while. I think from here, how far do you think? Kailua Beach Park. I was going to say half an hour. Well, it's 1.7 miles. Some of these homes you can see behind us up here, there's like Hillcrest part of Kailua. We have some clients living up there. That may not be that much further in terms of mileage, but there's really steep hill. You're not that far up the hill here. So riding a bike would be a little more feasible. Wouldn't be too bad. So it's an eight minute drive to Kailua Beach Park. And if we were to switch it to walking, 44 minutes. Yeah. More than I even thought. I'm surprised that a home seemingly this nice only went for 1.155. One of the things that sparked this conversation was that we did a consult yesterday and a couple wants ideally to be in Kailua. Their price point can go up to 1.3 million. Typically, you can't even get single family and Kailua at 1.3 million. You need to be higher than that for that particular couple. I don't think a three, one post and pier, a little bit older plantation style home with only, you know, one bath and a thousand square foot would work for them. My assumption that Kailua is probably not going to work out for them. Probably still stands true still yet for 1.1555. I think this is a good deal in Kailua. I'm surprised that this went for that disclaimer. I was not the agent on either the buyer, the sell side of this. We're just standing on the public road as Google maps or any other service like that would. And so I don't know what it smells like. It's not what it looks like inside. We're going to go check out one more single family. It was the other lowest price single family in Kailua in the last 30 days and see how it compares to this one from the street. So we've left Keolau Hills. We've driven over about a 10 minute drive to the coconut Grove area of Kailua. It's a packed in sort of chopped up, divided, subdivided CPR kind of place, but you're closer to the beach here. And this part of Kailua, this is where I expect to find something more sub one, three, sub 1.2 million would be potentially in that part of Kailua or here. So it makes sense that this is where we arrived today. This home that sold in the last 30 days for 1.1 million, just under a thousand square foot. So yeah, a two, one and a half plantation style home. So post in pier, you see that's actually foundation right there. Just the little concrete blocks and the pillar sitting on them. So call it jealousy windows. So the type of louvered windows, this is a little old plantation house, the type of house I would expect to find for you. If we're looking closer to a million for 1.1 million in Kailua, the fact that you got anything that's in livable condition is great. On top of that, there's some yard, you know, in the back, you can kick soccer ball with your kid or throw baseball or whatever. Now I will say, see this mango tree and how close it is to the home in that small amount of space in the picture, Kenji point Kenji's like, Oh, they're using an eight millimeter. I don't, I don't know all those things. What I do know is it looked like this in the pictures and it's, it's, it's right here from that corner. So picture in person, not that the home is bad or, or anything. And Hey, shout out to the listing agent for doing their job, right? Presenting the property in its best possible light. But sometimes for example, our clients are buying sight unseen, like the consult we had yesterday with this couple that wants to be in the Kailua market. Optimally he's from Hawaii and we'll be moving back, but we're likely to start shooting some videos and doing things virtually before they get here. So they're really relying on us to be discerning and negative and pessimistic. Tell them the real deal, like keep it real with them. That's one thing we would point out. We'd be like, Hey, you know that picture that makes it look like you're on a half acre. It's 10, 12 feet tree to house. We'd point that type of thing out. So pictures can be deceiving. Make sure you call us because we cut through that BS, but someone got into Kailua for 1.1 million and a nice little two bedroom. So how would you get into Kailua for a lower price point? Something to do with the street, not being optimal on. In this case, you're on a main road in Kailua Hills. You were on a tightly packed road. Cars had to kind of park half grass, half street, busy road, road, noise, small square footage, less bedrooms. If you're going to find yourself sub 1.3 sub, I mean, in these cases, sub 1.2, which is crazy. They're going to be some compromises, some concessions, right? A lot of people, especially people in the mainland will reach out and say, Hey, what do you think about Kailua? You're coming from San Diego. You're coming from wherever you're coming from. And you have this idea of walking into town and getting a brew and getting breakfast on Sunday and the farmer's market and the beach. Kailua is quintessential Hawaii for a lot of people, especially for those migrating in sometimes a little less. So for those who are out here for local people, Kailua is less Hawaii in a way, but that's a whole different conversation that I want to approach with thoughtfulness and sensitivity. So we'll talk about that later, but it can be quintessential Hawaii. So if you are going to get into Kailua for these price points, there's probably going to be some compromise. I don't want to just compromise for the sake of compromising, but the math is just going to have to math. So what we find a lot of the time is people who would either have to decide to be in a town home. That's at a suitable level of, you know, in terms of quality and build type, et cetera, for what they'd want to live in. But then now it's a town home and they want a single family. So now they're thinking, well, I'd love Kailua, but I can't do that. Not with my three kids and my husband and our Harleys and whatever, whatever situation they're in. So there's Ewa, but then we don't want to do that traffic. And Ewa just feels like halfway. It feels like an offshoot or an outtake from Scottsdale, Arizona or something. And so, or Vegas. And so track homes, not the same character. You're driving to go everywhere. Ewa. And so then sometimes Kaneohe is the compromise. Like, well, maybe we can get in at like 1.3 into a house that we actually kind of like in Kaneohe, but we can still just drive to Kailua. We're not that far from it. We still get East side vibes. And so this conversation of East side versus Ewa versus a condo townhome, it's a common one that we have with our buyer consults for our sellers. We kind of exactly know how to position things. Cause we do have so many incoming clients from this channel that we just know the market super well. So now for me bragging about ourselves and how we crush it in real estate, we're going to get closer to Kailua town, the heart of this whole thing, and look at a couple of the lowest sold condo slash town homes in the last 30 days. So that single family home, that was eight 67 square foot. It's actually smaller than this unit. We're going to talk about in the Meridian East here. This is the lowest price thing that sold in the last 30 days in all of Kailua. Two, one and a half, 990 square foot with an 80 square foot lanai was not in, you know, updated condition by any means. Maintenance fee of $765, which is actually not terrible for a building this old, a thousand square foot unit. The unit would come with a storage where you could put bike, kayak, whatever. And let's talk about this location though. One of the Kailua farmers markets happens right under that thing over there. You have restaurants up and down here. There's a tattoo shop that's also a coffee shop right down there. We just passed this little Indian food truck thing. Like you don't just, you just don't get Indian food in Hawaii very often. We just passed that over there. We're right behind or in front of Wahi Island Grill. Cinnamon's, a like world famous breakfast, brunch restaurant is right through there. Bachi Bistro. We're a close, close hop to morning brew coffee and Maui brewing and Lani Kai brewing and all these places. So we're right in the thick of it. So in terms of a fun Kailua life, this is the best one so far. Now, obviously 500,000 versus 1.1 million. It's a different thing, right? I get it. You have a family, you have three kids. This is probably not what you're going for, but people can get into this market for $550,000. $550,000 to be right in the middle of all this. That's kind of crazy. When we're consulting clients, if you asked me, how much does it cost to get into Kailua? I say, well, single family or town home. If you're saying single family, I'm thinking probably at least 1.4, because I know what most people's minimum standard is, right? I know most people, when they say I want single family, they're expecting a certain square footage, a certain build quality, a certain yard. Like don't want to be on a busy street, et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm thinking at least one, four, and then, and then up from there. But here we saw two homes in the 1.1 ish range today, right? When I'm thinking anything, not single family, I'm thinking 700, 800,000 plus. There are anomalies and there are ways to get into these communities you want to be in. I text them all here to ask her, is this the one that her husband used to live in? And she said, no, he lived in it. She reminded me probably for the fifth time. He used to live in an ADU, but when she said, oh, is that the one? I'm not going to say, show what she said, but she didn't have a nice thing to say about it. So now we're here in this condo town, homey part of Kailua town. We talk about this on multiple videos. We're at Poinciana Manor. You have Windward Passage, Windward Harbor, Hokurani, which we have clients. I think in every one of these, this is the densest part of non-single family in all of Kailua. You are really close to Kailua town. So it's a cool place. So these different places come up in consults for us all of the time. There's a unit that sold in the last 30 days in here, a two, two and okay condition for 565,000. It was 959 square foot. Interesting thing about that 959 square foot, but then this maintenance fee is 998. So almost a dollar a square foot around there. And it's not the worst, not the best, but around a thousand dollar maintenance fee for a 959 square foot place. Generally, when this place comes up, we get mixed reviews on it from our clients. One thing about the maintenance fee is obviously it's a little bit more than the Meridian East, but what are you getting at the Meridian East here? You're getting this courtyard, which needs to be landscaped. You're getting barbecue and benches. And it's obviously a nicer place to exist. I get that that's subjective, but I think most people would agree, but then you have like these, what was it? Cedar, like Cedar wood, shaky things. Like this isn't for everyone. It has a certain era feel to it. Some people feel like this place feels a little older, a little dingier, but then other people like, no, I like it. Like I'm going to be in Hawaii, that sort of Balinese wooden foresty feel like that's the thing I would want to. That's why I'm moving to Hawaii, not to be in something sterile. It would just depend. You tell us, is this the kind of, does this give the vibes that you would like? You know, you can see the balconies and the wood everywhere. We were just by Hokurani with all the blue and teal and green, and they're not going for that here. It's a different thing. And the people that choose it, that's what they want. I mean, look at this bamboo behind Kench. Like, you know, this has a, just a touch of a resort style feel living here. Maintenance fees. You look at the number, but you also look at what you get. So I pay three HOAs. The highest is my townhome rental in Ko'olina. It's almost 1400 or something. Not happy about that, but I get a lot from that. I drive into the resort. There's usually a girl waving hi, and then a waterfall and all this high level landscaping and a resort style pool. And I'm near the lagoons. I get a lot for it. While this maintenance fee is higher than Meridian East, would you rather pay a thousand for this maintenance fee or would you rather pay 750, whatever it was for that one? All right, guys, thank you for watching the video today. We haven't done a Kailua video in a while, and that's why we shot this one. I'm just going to be direct and to the point with you. I want you to go to coreteamhawaii.com, fill out the contact form, contact us from our website to buy in Kailua. We want more Kailua, Hawaii Kai. We just, we want to help more people that are going to be the right fit and just fit in our world and will fit in theirs. We want to help more of you. Now, we do have clients in every one of these pockets that we went through today. We have clients, we sell a lot of homes, sell like 70 homes a year. We have a lot of Kailua clients, but we want more. We want to help you. So go to coreteamhawaii.com, please. Aloha.