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« Deep Dish Pieces
Holding On For Maui
I've been on a trying desperately to sleep and WTF is wrong with me that I can't sleep through the night anymore and feel refreshed in the morning routine every night. Unfortunately, that includes having to wait for my husband some nights to return from a gig, so I can rub and scratch his head while we watch an HGTV program, usually House Hunters. Then fall asleep, please God.
Last night, he rambled into our house way after 12:30 a.m., and I was barely holding on. Earlier, I tried to sail away in my mind with a couple on the latest House Hunters. They were from Florida, the woman received a job transfer to Maui, and they'd been settling in a fairly ritzy but small Kihei condo steps from the beach.
They needed a house with a yard. They wanted a pool. I needed and wanted to sleep in a house with a yard and a pool in Maui, anywhere in Maui.
What always strikes me about any show involving real estate in Hawaii is the aberrant high cost of living. For over $500,000, you can buy a two-bedroom, one-bath house considered a shack in the ghetto by Mainland standards.
These Maui homes were nice enough on the surface. But if you know Maui at all, you know that one of two things will inevitably happen: 1. you will eventually sicken of the high cost of living of living in a shack you convince yourself is a palatial deal because it's paradise and move back to the Mainland, preferably Indiana, or 2. you will start to see the cracks of paradise in its hot, humid weather, over-development, destruction of Mother Nature for more over-development, over-crowding, brewing resentment of the rich by the struggling locals, and then you'll move back to the Mainland, figuring the millions extra in profit from selling this comparable mansion will be worth the headache.
That said, I'd totally take #1, the new house in the new development in Wailuku. If I had five years left to live--knock wood.
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Apr 27, 2008 1:50 AM
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I'm right there with you.
I was in Oahu in November 2006 and it's amazing.
I'm a house appraiser and the prices there are unreal. One room, dirt floor, outhouse $400,000. Oy vey!
But, my goal in life is to now get there someway somehow.
I mean, as expensive it is there, it'd be easy to end up homeless. But at least you're homeless in Hawai'i.
Not that I'd ever WANT to be homeless.
It's a truly magical place, unlike anywhere else I've ever been.
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Apr 28, 2008 12:23 PM
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I would hope (springs eternal) that after 10-13 years away, the real estate market in Hawaii would've improved. You'd think, with the real estate market in general on a downward spiral, that Hawaii would fall in line. Never. Not in paradise.
My husband and I would go from home to home, condo or single-family, and find our hearts sinking. The quality of the craftsmanship never matched the high prices.
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May 7, 2008 11:44 PM
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