Mikie Likes It!

Everyone likes a fright at Halloween, but these numbers are downright spooksville! 

TODAY IN WAIMEA:

Well, I used to think Waikoloa may qualify as a bedroom community.  After all, there’s no real town, it’s more like a suburb. In fact, I used to think it was so strange sitting out there seemingly in the middle of nowhere but visible from everywhere. Living the previous 20 years or so in Waimea and Kohala, after almost 4 years in Waikoloa, I now have a better perspective.

IT’S WAIKOLOA’S LOCATION -IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, THAT MAKES IT SO CONVENIENT! It’s a virtual hub; not much more than 30 minutes from almost anywhere you want to go. Costco, Kailua-Kona, Keahole Airport or Waimea. Let me tell you with the price of gas and traffic these days that’s a good thing. 

What is surprising though are the goats, donkeys, turkeys and bufos! That’s right, bufos in Waikoloa! My husband, warrior that he is just pulled #4 out of our ‘Peace’ fountain at the entry to our condo last evening.

He loves calling me outside to see his lastest prize.

“Hey, come here and take a look at this!”

Of course, I thought he was calling me to look for the fire that must have broken out (again) somewhere nearby as we’d been hearing the helicopters going back and forth the past hour. He holds up his prize and tells me it’s my turn to “relocate” this one. Of course, he’s dreaming. I won’t touch the thing. That is one of his jobs!!! I hate to be sexist and all, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Aloha, “Mikie”

Mikie Likes It LLC
Realtor Referrals & Mortgage Freedom

Waikoloa, Hawaii
Phone: (808) 896-1943
eMail: Mike@MikeSells.com
website: MikeSells.com

Not to be confused with “If can, can. If no-can, no-can”, the laid-back pidgin saying which basically means if you can do it okay, and if not, well that’s okay too.

The ConCon is a constitutional convention and Hawaii hasn’t had one in 30 years, way overdue IMHO. The ConCon allows us to amend the State Constitution. Delegates are elected from all the islands to review and revisit the laws and make improvements and changes to our state government addressing things that never seem to get done by our legislature.

The short story is the that local and national teachers’ unions as well as the sitting majority in the State Legislature are all against a ConCon. Any time you have big money from outside paying for ads against something you probably want to look closer and see what they are fighting so hard to protect. I’ll tell you in 2 words:

“turf and power!”

Some of what proponents of a ConCon would like to do it is decentralize the Dept of Education. One DOE and BOE for the entire state located in Honolulu and totally Oahu-centric is simply out-dated. It’s inefficient and our schools and the kids pay the price.

And what about term limits for judges? HOW ABOUT TERM LIMITS FOR EVERYONE??? (would be my suggestion after watching our Congress perform so brilliantly of late), or balanced budget initiatives, there’s a concept, huh? And what about protecting our environment and agricultural lands? The point is, if we have a ConCon we get to decide what issues are important, if not, the legislators get to decide and we see where that’s taken us over the past 30 years!

And the ConCon vote which was mandated every decade to give the people a vote is rigged against us anyway. When it last came to a vote in 1996, it passed. There were more “yes” votes than “no” votes. So what did they do? They changed the rules. They got our corrupt State Supreme Court to strike down the people’s choice by declaring that any blank votes would be counted as “no” votes.  Well that sort of takes away any reason to vote doesn’t it? But it happens here in Hawaii and they get away with it.

Can you believe it? I couldn’t then and I’M STILL AMAZED THAT THE BLANK VOTE BULL-CRAP (sorry, there is no other way to say it) still stands. In fact that ruling carried over to all ballot initiatives since, and if you think it’s hard to inject change into this “old boy” system you are RIGHT!

 So I say, let’s have a ConCon and see what the people want for a change.

Aloha, “Mikie”

Mikie Likes It LLC
Realtor Referrals & Mortgage Freedom

Waikoloa, Hawaii
Phone: (808) 896-1943
eMail: Mike@MikeSells.com
website: MikeSells.com

Hawaii ALWAYS lags mainland economic trends. After the Gulf War the mainland came back a full two years before Hawaii did, so it’s no wonder now to see Hawaii’s foreclosure rate suddenly though surprisingly to some, catch up with national trends.

Get this, in Hawaii there were approximately 1,300 foreclosures filed in all of 2007. In September 2008 alone, there were 594! This is according to RealtyTrac, the research firm that tracks foreclosures nationwide.

All you have to do is take a drive through condo-town at the Waikoloa Resort and this is just one example. Check out all the empty buildings just sitting there. Oh sure, they’ll get a bump in a few weeks with the high season, winter, the holidays and all, but overall there’s a lot of underutilized inventory just a sittin’.

Some of them are developer units that never sold, some are legit second homes that folks never intended to live in full time and a very few are owner occupied. But probably the most worrisome of the group are those bought on spec (pity the fools), the owners expecting to flip them after a year or two of the high life. This is the group that is gonna keep adding to those foreclosure figures.

And who can blame them? Say you bought at the top of the market, got the NINJA loan (no income, no job or assets) like so many did, and now you can’t rent the place to even offset your mortgage. You can’t afford to get your butt here to use it yourself, and oh yes, the maintenace fees have skyrocketed because of rising electricity, etc., etc. Many of those borrowers had very little skin in the game, so they’ll be walking sooner or later and you will see Hawaii’s foreclosure figures start to catch up with other places.

Aloha, “Mikie”

Mikie Likes It LLC
Realtor Referrals & Mortgage Freedom

Waikoloa, Hawaii
Phone: (808) 896-1943
eMail: Mike@MikeSells.com
website: MikeSells.com

Note:  Read no further if you’re expecting any real estate comment today -we need a break!!

My husband loves SHINY RED CARS. That’s all there is to it.

If you ask him, he’d say not necessarily, but if you look at his cars over the years, 90% of them have been RED! And where does the shiny come in, you might ask? It comes from being born and raised in the Motor City -Detroit, Michigan!

But he takes the best care of our cars of anyone I can imagine. Sometimes to the degree that it drives me crazy. I mean how many times can you polish one spot? He sprays grease (if that’s the right word) on the tires, WORRIES AND FUSSES OVER EVERY TINY LITTLE FLAW IN THE FINISH and has every part looking absolutely brand new! Yeah, it’s true. When I bought my VW Beetle last year (42 miles to the gallon, highway, thank you very much!) he declined a free detailing from the dealer because he said they would do a lousy job! So I guess you’d have to say he maintains our cars better than brand new! And no, my new Volkswagen is not red! I had to settle for silver because the only red one was a standard shift which I didn’t want.

Anyway, his string of shiny red cars started with this BEAUTIFUL SHELBY COBRA REPLICAR. He saw a couple one day on the lot at McKenna Motors when we were on Oahu and never shut up about it till he had his own! I do admit it was beautiful. And there is nothing better than an afternoon drive on the Kohala Mountain Road just as the sun is setting down Kawaihae way!

Aloha, “Mikie”

Mikie Likes It LLC
Realtor Referrals & Mortgage Freedom

Waikoloa, Hawaii
Phone: (808) 896-1943
eMail: Mike@MikeSells.com
website: MikeSells.com

Sad to say, fiscal stupidity is not contained at the national level, but alive and well in Hawaii County too. I don’t know about you, but the word BORING always comes to mind when I see a photo of developers and County officials leaning on the “golden shovels”. 

Don’t forget Kamakoa, the Waikoloa workforce housing project and where that’s now headed.

Get this, Public Works Director Bruce McClure, known for his infamous quip to West Hawaii commuters:

Due to my fixation with the NATIONAL MELT-DOWN LAST WEEK, this post is a little late. These stats are for the month of September representing a snapshot of the market on Sept. 30th and the previous 30 days. 

 Sept 30th in WAIMEA:

• 102 homes on the market
• 13 are less than or equal to $400,000
• The least expensive = $248,5000
• The most expensive = $5,390,000
• The highest days on market (DOM)= 952 (This Seller must be waiting for the re-opening of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel)
• Sales in the past 90 days = 19
• Sales in the past 30 days = 6

IN WAIKOLOA:

• 89 homes on the market
• 17 are less than or equal to $400,000 (4 more than last mo)
• The least expensive = $289,800 (an REO)
• The most expensive = $875,000
• The highest days on market (DOM)= 418
• Sales in the past 90 days = 23 (30% were developer sales)
• Sales in the past 30 days = 6

IN KOHALA:

** NOTE** Kohala data pertains to the entire district of North Kohala, including the coast and resort properties 
• 87 homes on the market
• 11 are less than or equal to $400,000
• The least expensive = $259,000
• The most expensive = $15,000,000
• The highest days on market (DOM)= 645
• Sales in the past 90 days = 4
• Sales in the past 30 days = 1

IN SUMMARY:  As you can see, we’re dying here. Thirteen residential sales in West Hawaii the past month is not paying anybody’s bills. It’s a good thing we have beautiful weather and great beaches. All I can say is there are worse places to ride this out!

Aloha, “Mikie”

Mikie Likes It LLC
Realtor Referrals & Mortgage Freedom

Waikoloa, Hawaii
Phone: (808) 896-1943
eMail: Mike@MikeSells.com
website: MikeSells.com

I have been nauseated recently by those begging for the bailout as if it’s the only answer to opening credit lines and getting houses selling again. Don’t be so self-serving. THE WHOLE SYSTEM NEEDS AN OVERHAUL!

This would be funny were it not so true! But it’s a done deal now. Our gutless leaders (ha- that’s a misnomer if ever there was one) have sold us and future generations down the river. Why when seemingly most of “Main Street” was against this did they do it anyway? Why someone please tell me, why did $100,000,000 in earmarks added to it after the first failed vote make it more palatable?

Houses are not selling because they are priced too high-period. Let’s face it, somebody -a lot of somebodies as it turns out, just got caught without a chair when the music stopped. Everybody; buyers, sellers, lenders-yes Realtors were rushing around those chairs hoping and praying the music wouldn’t catch them with no place to park their butt.

And it’s not like there weren’t warnings. Sellers were insisting on (many still are) ridiculous prices, many of whom could have gotten out whole. Buyers were taking loans they knew would snowball in the future. Lenders knew they were building a house of cards too.

Okay for all you free market bashers- you know, the “we’d rather have government bailouts” crowd, HERE’S AN EXAMPLE ALREADY OF WHY THE BAILOUT WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA.

Just this morning, Citigroup who had tendered an offer of 2.2 $Billion to acquire Wachovia’s banking arm is now crying foul as Wells Fargo has stepped up willing to pay 15.1 $Billion for it!

What does that tell you? It tells me if the government would get out of the way, investors, entrepreneurs and the many, many sound companies remaining in the world would see opportunities all over the place in these failing banks and Wall St. firms. And they would pay a much better price and tender better offers to those companies and, this is the key thing – they would also get far more back for their shareholders than Uncle Wall Street will ever recoup for us taxpayers.

If we’re looking at Mavericks like JMcC or change agents like Barry-O to do what’s right for us we’re in a heap of doggie-do.

That’s my Tip of the Day!

Aloha, “Mikie”

Mikie Likes It LLC
Realtor Referrals & Mortgage Freedom

Waikoloa, Hawaii
Phone: (808) 896-1943
eMail: Mike@MikeSells.com
website: MikeSells.com