I live on Hawai’i Island (where Kīlauea is erupting again - yay!)
The house next door is for sale and I am a total property slut - I love to house hunt, so of course I had to look at it when they had an open house. I truthfully told the RE agent that I was not in the market to buy a home, but had friends and family on the mainland who occasionally threaten to retire to Hawai’i, so I just wanted to take a look on their behalf (behalves?).
All well and good, but of course the idea of moving here is pretty much just a pipe dream. No one I know is actually SERIOUS.
Nonetheless, the agent is now eager to show me all the properties she represents. I get it, but I feel kinda bad because I doubt anyone I know on the mainland is ever going to settle here. I don’t want to waste her time (which is why I only checked out the house next door when there was an open house - I didn’t drag the agent out for an appointment).
Anyway, if you’d like to join the pipe dreamers (or if by some miracle you are genuinely contemplating a move), tell me what you’d like. I’ll keep an eye out for homes that match your specs.
Well … i was going to take you up on your offer1, but a quick google streetview
tour shows that it seems to be all national parks in the interior, and holiday
resorts on the coast !
Very disappointing !
Although i may come for a holiday one day.2
1 subject to enormous lottery win. 2 also subject to enormous lottery win.
Of all the places I might want a dream home, Hawaii never seems to penetrate my consciousness. I’ve never been there, so maybe I’d love the place, then again, I’ve never even given serious consideration to visiting. I think the remoteness of the islands is the biggest negative for me.
Now, if my imaginary dream home had a wormhole to get me to CONUS, that would be different…
I’d probably want to live on the Big Island (but as far from lava flows as I could get), and I have lusted after George Clooney’s house in The Descendants ever since I saw that movie. I really love a house with wide, encircling verandas.
Just googled, and I found out its on Old Pali Road! I have a friend from Kaneohe, and she used to tell me ghost stories about Old Pali Road that she’d claim were true.
Ooh, can i shop on Kauai, or is this just the big island? The idea of having my house destroyed by flowing lava is kinda nerve wracking.
But if this is the big island, i want someplace unlikely to be in a lava flow.
Features of the house? A lanai with a view of the ocean. And walking distance to public access to the ocean, too. Three bedrooms, so i can host my kids, and probably also to use as home offices. An eat-in kitchen. And fruit trees on the property. A mature breadnut. Some coconut trees. A mango tree. Maybe a couple of mango trees. And space for a garden.
Well past where the development peters out, there’s just a dirt track, then over the next rise. A small, bordering on tiny, bay. A grass shack, on stilts, two rooms, an atap roof, woven bamboo walls, situated back into the first palm trees, close enough to catch the ocean breeze.
An amazing ocean view, can always hear the surf. Hammock on the porch. Porch six feet off the ground, so on blistering afternoons I can move the hammock and read in the shade.
Just over the next small rise, down the dirt path, is a small collection of a dozen homes, There’s a few shops and a small market every Saturday. Mostly local fruits, veg, seafood. There’s one bar, one place that has a cooler for ice cream. There’s a single ATM, and a wee bookshop/news vendor, and a cafe with occasional internet access, and a scooter you can sometimes rent. Plus, two Mama style restaurants, and one Chinese chicken rice shop.
From time to time I check out available Hawaiian properties on Zillow, including the Big Island.
I don’t need something on the beach or an ocean view. 10 acres or so, with no detectable civilization in sight, plenty of arable land to grow native plants, some exotics and tropical fruit trees. A barn with corral for livestock, and a nice protected enclosure for a small herd of capybaras (it should have a pond for them to wallow in while softly grunting). Indoor details aren’t too critical as long as there’s a hammock somewhere convenient for sleeping.
And absolutely no swimming pool.
And yes, somewhere way upwind and upflow from volcanoes.
I’ve never visited Hawai’i, but I think my dream house per se would be more doable there than anywhere else. It involves two half-sized houses around an enclosed courtyard, which nearly anywhere else I would want to be enclosed on all sides due to being either too cold or oppressively hot for several months of the year, but I hear that on Hawai’i, that doesn’t happen, so I would be able to save the extra cost of HVAC for the enclosed space (and perhaps being counted as large square footage for tax purposes.)
Furthermore, Brutalism works well in a tropical environment, and my dream house would be made of concrete. Surrounding it with tropical plants would make it beautiful. Perhaps, like fallingwater, it could be placed next to a creek, but for my house, I would merely have a waterfall in the courtyard that would in in harmony with the creek rather than having it go under my house.
I sorta like the wet side of the Big Island, Hilo et al. I once stayed at the Leilani estates in a place that is now buried by lava that was pleasant. I was fond of the daily light rains. So in a general sense this shitty little place looks okayish. Private, not quite so large that it would be impossible to keep it sorta clean yourself without having to hire folks, a more or less adequate back yard .
But…I wouldn’t do it. Aside from the slight social unease of being just one more rich haole moving in from out of state (I’m not rich, but I would be if I could afford that ), I just don’t think I can do Hawai’i. Even just a couple weeks vacation a couple of times has convinced me I’d probably get island fever.
For me it’s a neat place to visit and that’s probably about it.
The location is definitely a draw, but the house looks like most of the houses I see marketed to ex-pats in Mexico or Costa Rica or other tropical places. Generic. Kinda boring.
Living on the Big Island doesn’t have to involve danger from lava flows - if you deliberately choose to take that risk, you’ll know when you buy your land for absurdly cheap.
We have flow zones that tell you the likelihood of a lava flow in your area. I live in an area that hasn’t been affected by lava in 10,000 years and there is no reason to think it will be affected in the foreseeable future, because volcanoes and the movement of magma are well understood.
You can definitely choose to live in an area at risk of lava inundation, but you can also choose not to.
I grew up on a 10-acre “ranchette”. 10 acres is not enough to escape civilization. But your neighbors will leave you alone. It’s too far to walk, and too near to justify using the car, to come visit you.
If you plant a wall of trees and shrubs around the perimeter, you can create the illusion of solitude.
We’ve been to the big island 3 times, always flying in to Kona, and staying in Kailua just south of town.
Driving down from the airport we would pass a house on the ocean that I always kind of fancied. A two story, orangeish, kinda stucco place.
I looked for it on Google Maps and I think it’s at 75-5972 Ali’i Dr.
Unfortunately Google won’t let me link the picture.
I’ll never get to live there though, 'cause my wife didn’t like it.
Probably too noisy these days anyway.
Another place we liked a lot was up on the north end of the island, around Halaula.
Mauna Kea and Hualalai are dormant, not extinct. So if Madame Pele gets really mad, AUWE! Better put on your best rubber slippers and run!!
I believe most of the volcanos in Hawaii are dormant, not having erupted in the past 10,000 years. I used to live at the top of Aliamanu Crater on Oahu and always marveled at the idea that it could erupt someday!
How is it for you when the vog hits? I live on Oahu and my sinuses act up at the slightest hint of vog, long before the official vog alerts.
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