In this newsletter:
Home Prices Headed Higher
New Paragon MLS System
Luxury Homes
Pray for Peace

HOME PRICES HEADED HIGHER A client of mine forwarded me an interesting article a few days ago that I would like to share with you. Steve Kerch with CBS.MarketWatch.com reported on a conference held in Los Angeles on the state of the U.S. Housing Market. The basic conclusions drawn by nearly all of the speakers which included economists and noted industry experts is that although the market may be overheated in certain places, there is no imminent danger of collapse. One analyst commented that in areas where prices have shot up rapidly, that trend will simply level off for several years. In other areas where appreciation has been steady but not spectacular, he felt that the same pattern should hold. I believe that Maui falls somewhere's between the first and second category. In some areas of the market, we have seen spectacular appreciation such as in the high end. Recently, prices in the low end have started to accelerate their rate of appreciation as inventories have dwindled and demand has been quite strong. If you would like to read the entire article (highly recommended), please click on hyperlink in the title heading above or copy and paste the following URL into the address bar in your browser window. http://www.mauisales.com/tem/cbsmarketwatchstoryonrealestatemarket.pdf

New Paragon MLS System Starting tomorrow, January 20th, we will be unveiling the new Paragon Web Based MLS system that has so many new enhancements that it will probably take us a month or more to learn how to fully utilize all of its features. Some of the benefits to you will be mapping, ability to see up to 30 photos on a property (assuming the listing agent puts photos in), an automatic notification system, a variety of new reports, links to public tax record information, and much more. During the past week, we have been doing a conversion where all the data from the old system was entered into the new Paragon system. In order to preserve the integrity of the data, we had to stop inputting any new listings or other changes for the last week. Because of this change over, we are not doing our normal list of hot buys this week. As soon as everything gets back to normal in a few days, we will send out new hot buys and update the old ones. There is one listing in particular, however, that is so outstanding that we wanted to bring it to your attention now. Palms at Wailea #208 for $359,000 fell out of escrow, and at the same time the market has gone up by about 15 to 20% since it first went pending a few months ago. In our opinion, this a "no brainer". Go to my website, click on listings, condos, and then from the pull down menu select Palms at Wailea 1. You'll be able to see all of the current active listings and decide for yourself whether or not this is the best buy in Wailea right now, or simply click here to bring up just this listing. If you would like to take advantage of the new Auto Notification system, please drop me an e-mail with a list of your criteria. Just about whatever you'd like to be informed about is available to you immediately as soon as the data gets in to the computer, or if you prefer, the information can be accumulated and sent at the end of the day in one e-mail. For example, you might be interested in knowing about any new 2 bedroom ocean view condos in Kihei, Wailea, Makena, Lahaina, Kaanapali, Honokowai, Napili, and Kapalua. Choose one or any combination of areas. You can also specify land tenure as fee simple only or both fee simple and leasehold (stating nothing you will get both). You can specify a price range such as $400,000 to 600,000. If you want to know about not only new listings but other changes in status such as properties going into escrow, ones that have sold, expired, or been withdrawn, that is also possible. You can also do the same thing for one particular complex if you so desire. You can have different sets of criteria, too. Maybe you want to know about condos, homes, and vacant land. Set individual parameters for each category. Who knows better than you what you are looking for. As much as we would like to personally notify you when something comes up that might be of interest to you, it is impossible given the number of people that we work with to stay on top of every situation. Please help us out by taking over some of that responsibility. The last thing we want to hear from anyone is, "Why didn't you tell me about that new listing?" Now, there is no excuse because we are putting you in charge of your own destiny! We will continue to alert everyone on what we consider to be the best deals, but since we are not omniscient, please don't count us to find every great deal and tell you about it immediately. In this market, timing is everything as we have seen in so many cases recently where well priced properties have sold within days of coming on the market.

Luxury Homes Within the next few weeks, we will be adding a link to www.luxuryhomes.com on our website. Currently the site is not up yet, but it will be soon, and we have bought top billing for all of Maui to feature some of the finest luxury homes that are available. We will talk more about that in a later issue and let you know when it is up and running. If you have a Luxury Home that you'd like featured, please let us know. We will be able to feature up to 20 listings.

Pray for Peace Although this Newsletter is not meant to be a political forum, we would feel remiss if we didn't express our most fervent prayers for a peaceful resolution to the crisis that is brewing in Iraq. Have a wonderful week. Mahalo Nui Loa, Ken and Greg

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