Selecting Your Honolulu Home

February 20th, 2009 categories: For Buyers, Military

If you are not from Oahu and you are in the process of transferring to Honolulu as part of your military PCS or company transfer, it is important to select the right home. This decision is driven by your needs in the way of bathrooms, bedrooms and quality of the home and neighborhood. Falling in love with the specific home is easy. Here are 5-macro considerations about Honolulu real estate are more analytical and help you to make a good long-term investment decision.

1. Location. From a return on investment perspective, you may be better off buying a little less home, but a better location. Since better locations should experience continued high demand, you should expect your investment dollar to be safer than in outlying areas. Since some transfers are for 3 to 5 years, it is important that you do your best to acquire a property that has the best chance of maintaining its value.
2. Potential For Appreciation. Much of this has to do with the location as referenced above. However, when comparing locations and homes it is good to ask, “Which home has the most potential of offering me equity appreciation during my stay in Honolulu?” Since some transferees have their housing costs covered by their employer (housing allowances or BAH), the monthly housing costs become negligible. A buyer’s bigger exposure is protecting against a depreciation in value, as this amount of money may come directly our your pocket.
3. Active Inventory. Areas with a great deal of inventory on the market, maybe exposed to short term drops in value. You will want to take this into account when making your offer to purchase. If there are a great many homes for sale in a neighborhood, negotiate a lower price, as this will position you to take less of a hit if prices go down.
4. Short sales. Ask your agent to determine how many (if any) of the active listings in your area of interest are offered as short sales. If there are a significant number that are short sales, then you need to know that this indicates downward pressure on sales prices.
5. REO’s. REO stands for Real Estate Owned and this means that a bank has foreclosed and now owns the home. Since banks are aggressively pushing the sale of REO’s, you should expect these sales to depress price in the neighborhood. Be sure to determine how many REO’s are offered for sale around the home you are considering.

If you are moving to Honolulu through a business, government or military transfer, then be sure to hire a Realtor that can advise you on these important issues. Feel free to call me at 808-737-2093 or 877-737-2093 to discuss your move. You can reach me by email at keahi@lava.net.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under For Buyers, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.