The decision has been made to move to a warmer climate for your retirement years. You have narrowed it down to either a new home in Maui or Florida. Both destinations feature beautiful weather and plenty of activities for retirees. So, how do you decide what state to move to and call home? Well, it all comes down to what conveniences you want compared to what the two states offer.
For starters, Maui, and Hawaii in general, is considerably less crowded than Florida. There is very little traffic to deal with in Maui and, for the most part, facilities and shopping are no further than a short walk or bicycle ride away. While the cost of fuel is more expensive than the mainland, there is little need to drive around, making the cost of fuel and transportation relative.
One of the biggest problems facing people who retire to Maui is the probability of becoming “rock happy”, where they find Maui to be the perfect place to be and realize they no longer leave to go anywhere else. Formed by two extinct volcanoes that joined in the middle, the peaks and valleys are breathtaking and the ocean and sky invigorating.
There is little in the way of cause for concerns with the weather on Maui. Where Florida has its seasonal ups and downs with the regular seasonal threat of tropical storms and hurricanes, Maui has no such annual concerns. With temperature at a near constant of “practically perfect”, Maui experiences little in the way of severe storms.
Excellent healthcare facilities that are constantly improved, such as the recent helipad addition to the Maui Memorial Medical Center, are established and ready to serve the needs of Maui’s residents. Expert specialists and general practitioners call Maui home and are available should the need arise.
While education is not nearly as important for those seeking to retire, there is the age old adage that you are never to old to learn something new, so perhaps a course or two at the Maui Community College is right up your alley.
Crime is low on the island and people respect each other, looking out for one another and helping when needed. A true sense of community thrives on Maui, making it the perfect place to consider settling for your retirement.
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When the winter chill settles into your bones and the frost needs to be scraped off your car’s windshield before you can drive to the store, remember you can ride your bike to the store in the middle of winter in a shirt and sandals if you happened to be one of the lucky residents of Maui.
There has never been a better time to buy a home in Maui. Leave the cold winters behind for good and enjoy beautiful sunrises and breathtaking sunsets, with the days filled with luxury and comfort, and the nights filled with rest and relaxation. No more slipping on frozen sidewalks, no more shoveling snow day after day. With a home on Maui, the problems of a cold winter and the discomfort of a frozen landscape are gone forever. If dressing in multiple layers of clothes just to walk down the block to buy milk has worn thin with your patience, revitalize yourself with the good things in life, like warm weather and sandy beaches, friendly people and smiling faces.
While the rest of the nation is locked down in the deep freeze of an unforgiving winter, you can feel the weight of the anxiety and stress list off your shoulders when you enter your new Maui home for the first time. Buying a home in Maui will also bring the peace of not having to count down the days until you have to leave Maui and return to the same frozen place you sought to escape. Live in Maui all year round and enjoy Maui’s unique lifestyle. Go for a bike ride in December. Try some snorkeling for New Year’s. Read a book on the beach for Groundhog Day.
If living in the cold has worn thin on you and you seek a permanent escape where you can wake up feeling good about your surroundings everyday, then buying a home in Maui and escaping the cold to live in paradise may just be the winning ticket to the comfort you have always deserved.
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If you have been considering buying a home on Maui, some incredible, but extremely limited, deals have become available in Wailuku and Kehalani. Responding to the demands of an interested public, award-winning developer Stanford Carr Development has made available new releases of brand new Maui homes located at The Villas at Kehalani and Ho’ole’a Terrace in Wailuku (Hawaii).
Also available to buyers are some outstanding pricing specials where a new 3 bedroom Phase 1 home at The Villas can be had for the low cost of $474,000. This pricing is a limited time special, and available units are equally limited. These homes feature a 3 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom design, for a total of around 1724 square feet of living space. The homes also have stunning designer features, with select homes also having gorgeous 360 degree ocean views.
Laurie Lee, Principal Broker for the community, says, “We have seen a strong increase in demand for Maui real estate, particularly new construction. Our Plan I new homes offer spacious floor plans that truly feel like a single family home, offering convenient low-maintenance living. The Villas Plan I offer the ideal residence for buyers who want a central Maui location with ocean views at value pricing.”
Kehalani is a community of 2400 homes on 550 acres of beautiful land located south of Wailuku. Touching upon the base of the beautiful West Maui Mountains, Kehalani is a Master Planned Residential Community on Maui and features extensive views, a comfortable climate and an ensured water source. Located on the east side of the West Maui Mountains, Kehalani is one of the coolest places to live in central Maui. Lifestyle features include bike and pedestrian pathways, pocket parks and a wonderful recreation center. Nearby Wailuku complements the new Kehalani community with such amenities as area schools, additional parks and shopping.
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The nation’s housing market is having its road to recovery paved with a new mortgage refinancing program, which was unveiled Monday October 24th 2011. Building upon the successes of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), the government has introduced some changes to the rules that will allow more homeowners who find themselves sinking further into debt to reduce their debt by taking advantage of much lower interest rates. Qualifications for this new program require the mortgage to be backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and must have been originally sold to the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) prior to May 31st 2009.
The previous guidelines limited the qualifying homeowners to those who owed up to 25% more than their home was actually worth. Under the new revisions, this 125% loan-to-value (LTV) limitation cap has been removed.
There have been other program enhancements designed to address issues that have proven to restrict the program’s impact. Certain risk-based fees have been eliminated, and mortgage insurers can now automatically transfer the original loan’s coverage to the new loan. As well, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have eliminated the need for a new property appraisal where there is already an Automated Valuation Model (AVM) estimate provided, and certain warranties and representations on any program refinanced loan have been done away with. The final date for HARP has been extended from June 30th 2012 to December 31st 2013.
The risk of homeowners foreclosing due to strategic defaults will be lowered with the new guidelines. By opening HARP to a larger pool of indebted homeowners, borrowers will be able to get control of their household finances and will be less likely to walk away from a mortgage with negative equity. About 1 million homeowners have already taken part in the program and refinanced their mortgages, and it is estimated that another 1 million homeowners will step forward to take advantage of the program.
You can learn more about the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) here.
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- Nov
- 08
Maui: Place To Live And Work
Maui is the second largest island of the Hawaiian Islands, and the 17th largest island in the United States. With a population of 144,444 (as of 2010), Maui is the third most populated Hawaiian Island. Maui’s original name was “‘Ihikapalaumaewa”. The island’s current name came from the Polynesian navigator credited with discovery of the Hawaiian Islands. According to that legend, Hawai’iloa named the island of Maui after his son, who in turn was named for the demigod Maui. Another name for Maui is “Valley Isle” because of the large and numerous valleys carved between the island’s northwestern and southeastern volcanoes.
The island’s volcanoes are just a couple examples of places tourists like to visit when they are on Maui. Also popular amongst tourists are the Haleakala National Park, the Hana Highway, and Lahaina, which is a gateway to the beach resorts of Kaanapali and Kapalua. Tourism is a huge industry for Maui, bringing in over $3.5 billion in 2007, with a majority of the tourist coming from the US and Canada.
Along with the importance of the tourism dollars for Maui, agriculture has a significant role in the Maui economy. Coffee, papaya, sugar, pineapples, and beautiful tropical flowers are some examples of Maui’s diverse agricultural exports.
More recently, government research groups and high technology companies have discovered Maui as a business environment conducive to growth in these areas. As a result, the Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) in Kihei is a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Center providing over 10,000,000 hours of computing time per year to the research, science, and military communities.
The high elevation, dry climate and negligible pollution offer year-round ability to observe satellites, missiles, orbital debris, and astronomical objects, making Maui an excellent locale for astronomical research and development, as well as a wonderful location for the astronomy hobbyist.
The remainder of the large Hawaiian Islands include Hawaii (The Big Island), Kaua’i (The Garden Isle), Kaho’olawe (The Target Island), Lana’i (The Pineapple Island), Moloka’i (The Friendly Island), Ni’ihau (The Forbidden Isle), and O’ahu (The Gathering Place). The Hawaiian Islands are actually exposed mountaintops of the undersea mountain range called the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, which was created by volcanic activity. Located about 1,800 miles from the nearest continent, the Hawaiian Islands have always been, and will always be, a destination of choice where a person can go to truly get away from it all.
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New regulations are being proposed up by Maui County Councilors that will affect vacation rental properties. These new regulations will put into affect several requirements onto owners of short-term rental properties located on Maui.
If the proposals go into effect, owners of vacation rental properties will need to be available 24 hours a day and live within a 20 mile radius of the property they rent out. In the event the owner does not actually reside in the Maui County, the property owner would be required to have an acting property manager who would both hold an active real estate license for Hawaii and live within 20 miles of the vacation rental property.
It has also been discussed to limit vacation property owners to one permit per person. This provision may not affect owners of estate homes, however, as the council is not wanting to punish owners who have spent large amounts of money on non-residential properties.
It can be expected that the legislation will take months to create while the Maui County Planning Committee tries to establish rules, enforcement procedures and a process to allocate permits to short term vacation rental properties found in residential areas. This is not entirely unprecedented, as the council put similar policies into action several years ago for Bed-and-Breakfast establishments, but with the present scenario’s exception that Vacation Rentals can be managed by someone living off-site.
The number of properties an owner can operate has also been a discussion for the Council members. While all members side that vacation rental property owners should be limited to one permit, the council was split with respects to an exception for multi-million dollar home owners. Noting that estate housing would never be used for affordable housing, Council Member Gladys Baisa felt that such a cap on permits would hurt owners currently operating more than one vacation rental. Council Member Mike White also had concerns about the cap, as it could potentially hurt the employment of people already working at such large estate-type vacation property rentals, like housekeepers, gardeners and managers.
The cap concerns are not echoed by all council members. Council Member Joe Pontanilla said, “People who want to operate a chain of vacation rentals should stay within the resort district, where those activities are allowed. If the person owns more than one property that is in excess of several million dollars, then it’s just exploiting Maui County. It’s almost like running a hotel. You come here, buy five or six lots, put up million-dollar homes, and then apply for short-term rentals. I think that’s wrong.”
The council eventually agreed on an exception to the one permit rule for houses worth more than 7 times the average Maui home price, putting the value about $3.2 million, as it “…ensures someone doesn’t come in and just buys a bunch of houses for that purpose.” Council Member Mike Victorino said.
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The number of properties in Hawaii attached to foreclosure filings fell dramatically in August, dropping a staggering 75 percent when compared to the same month a year ago. While this number may seem like a good thing, the reality is this number represents a lag in the system as it switches from non-judicial to judicial proceedings. Based upon implications of Act 48, which was put into law May 6th 2011, bank’s lawyers most likely suggested cancelling any non-judicial proceedings. Once these non-judicial proceedings are re-filed in the court and judicial system, the number of foreclosures will once again rise.
For the time being, however, Hawaii has moved down to the 32nd spot for total foreclosures in the nation, based upon information supplied by Irvine California’s RealtyTrac. For every 431 housing units in Hawaii, there was one foreclosure filing for August, for a total of 1,197 foreclosure filings. That number breaks down to 725 notices of default, 74 public auction notices and 398 bank repossessions.
The intent of Act 48, while noble, has so far failed in its execution. Instead of opening up dialogs between lenders and property owner occupants who are unable to meet payments, Act 48 has created a backlog in an already over-taxed and under-staffed court system. As a real world example, immediately upon Act 48 becoming law, Fannie Mae decided all its foreclosures must be commenced as judicial foreclosures, and any non-judicial foreclosures not yet in process are to be dismissed and converted to judicial foreclosures. Obviously, this immediately caused the court backlog to grow, and it only became worse as time moved ahead.
While the state of Hawaii did launch its Mortgage Foreclosure Dispute Resolution Program this month, giving the opportunity for lenders to meet with owner-occupants of homes in non-judicial foreclosure for purposes of trying to negotiate loan modifications, time will tell if this is an effective way to handle disputes of foreclosure and repossession.
As it is, Act 48 has done little to stem the flow of foreclosures. Rather, it has simply redirected the steady stream to a court system barely able to handle what it already had to deal with before Act 48 dumped a lot more work on them.
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Maui, and Hawaii in general, has always been in the unfortunate position of being one of (if not the most) expensive places to purchase gasoline in the entire USA. Thankfully, some much needed relief is in sight as Maui is about to get a price break in the form of an expanded Costco in Kahului featuring a gas station and car wash.
As of Wednesday September 27th, a gallon of unleaded regular in Maui was $4.39. By example of the potential for cost savings, on the same day Costco was selling a gallon of unleaded regular in Honolulu for $3.92 where the average price was $4.12.
Nearly 90% of residents of Maui, a number totaling over 91,000 people, are card-carrying Costco customers. It’s not clear how much Costco in Maui is going to charge per gallon, but the potential of substantial savings for Maui residents on their fuel costs is quite obvious.
The Costco store located in Kahului is “one of the busiest in the world and one of the smallest in square footage,” said Jaime Havron, the store’s general manager. “We need space.” Listening to the concerns of the store’s management, the Maui Planning Commission voted this week to approve Costco to expand its Kahului store to include a gas station, car wash, 18,000 additional square feet of warehouse space, and more parking.
Not everyone is happy with the expansion, however. A petition submitted by Dairy Road Partners operating a nearby Superstop gas station have expressed concerns about the increase in traffic, and have said the Costco expansion would hurt their business. Commissioners overseeing the application have dismissed the petition, stating that Superstop’s economic interest in preventing the Costco expansion was not enough to qualify them as an intervener in the proposed expansion.
Expansion construction is expected to begin in January. As well as adding the much needed floor space, customer parking and fuel cost relief to the residents of Maui, Costco’s expansion will need to add a much needed 110 extra jobs to their current roster of 356 employees.
“We’re raring to go,” said Jack Frank, vice president of real estate and development for Costco Wholesale Corp.
With a break in fuel costs in their near future, residents of Kahului and area are raring for Costco to begin their expansion, as well!
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Big changes have come to the Maui Memorial Medical Center, changes that will help patients receive the medical care they need faster. On September 22nd, the Maui Memorial Medical Center dedicated a new helipad that will allow faster transportation of patients needing medical care. Located at the west end of the Kahului hospital grounds, the helipad dedication coincides with the new MMMC Cardiac department.
As recently as one year ago, patients requiring relatively straight-forward cardiac procedures were having to go off island, according to interventional cardiologists. However, now thanks to the new acute care cardiac program, and the new helipad to bring in patients faster, Maui residents can receive top-quality cardiac care without having to leave Maui.
Maui Managing Director Keith Regan said, “I guarantee you that in at least the next two or three years, you will have a friend, or family member, or someone that you know whose life has been saved by this building right here, and the helicopter that’s going to be landing there.”
Dr. Joseph Chambers, a member of the new MMMC Cardiac Services Department, added, “We’ve treated over 10 patients in the last month with acute coronary syndromes and I think with this helipad in place we can look forward to that number growing. In five years, we can imagine a network that extends throughout eastern Hawai’i, which is an under-served area.”
MMMC CEO Wes Lo commented, “We used to average about 30 patients we flew off to Honolulu per month for cardiac related conditions. This last month, there were only seven or eight, so we’ve really made an impact on the whole delivery system in one month.”
As the only neighbor island that can treat emergency heart attacks, patients from Hana on the East end of the island have been treated already, and the MMMC will available to patients from Lana’i and Molokai, as well. By landing patients at the hospital’s helipad instead of the War Memorial Complex in Wailuku, 10-15 minutes of critical time can be shaved off patient transportation time, and those saved minutes can literally mean the difference between life and death.
Along with the new helipad and Cardiac Care Department, MMMC has also installed two new generators. After the earthquake in 2006 that left most of the island without power for several hours, MMMC installed two generators, each capable of running power to the entire hospital in the event of a power outage due to earthquake or other event. Of the generators, Managing Director Keith Regan said, “The helipad is great, and the cath-lab is as spectacular as they come, but those two new generators that we just blessed, are really an amazing thing,” adding that the “double redundancy” of the two generators “is so comforting to us.”
With the helipad, new cardiac care department and new generators, MMMC is there to provide medical care to the residents of Maui like never before!
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Richard Chamberlain, a longtime and decorated actor of both stage and screen, has sold his 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom 8764 sq ft Maui home for a reported $13.8 million. This beautiful residence overlooks Maui’s Keawakapu Beach, and is close to four world-class golf courses. The new owners will have the splendor of 1/2 acre of sprawling land to set up a seat and admire the gorgeous sunsets that silhouette the distant islands. Built with the finest of materials and custom architectural designs, this home is as unique and classy as the person for whom it was built.
With such entertainment classics as “The Thorn Birds” and “Shogun” in his list of acting accomplishments, Richard Chamberlain has long been a fan favorite in both TV and film. In the 60’s, Mr. Chamberlain was one of the hottest actors on the market, with a bevy of teenage admirers buying up his posters and putting them on their walls. Now, with Hollywood calling him back again and again to work on new projects, Richard Chamberlain, also known as the “King of the Mini-Series”, felt it was time to move back close to the work and give up the Maui homestead, a decision that could not have been an easy one.
The homestead Mr. Chamberlain chose to sell took him 4 years to complete and combines luxe minimalism with a hint of an Asian theme. With a spa and screening room as noteworthy features, the property also has a two-bedroom two-bathroom guest house. Other features worth mentioning are two master suites, a formal dining area, library, atrium, media room, and chef’s kitchen. Private and secure, the estate is mere minutes away from the Grand Wailea Resort, designer shops, as well as fabulous restaurants.
A longtime resident of Maui, Mr. Chamberlain will be keeping a place in the state, but will be living most of his time in the Los Angeles area to accommodate his busy work schedule. At 77 years old, this is one actor who does not seem to be slowing down!
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