Century 21 All Islands Hawaii Real Estate Blog

Planning For A Memorial Day Closing

Memorial Day ClosingsPlanning to close on your home at the end of May? Plan ahead. Memorial Day is coming and the holiday may delay your closing.

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and the 3-day Memorial Day weekend is a popular vacation time in real estate-related industries.

Real estate agents tend to take time off because fewer of their clients are actively home shopping on a holiday weekend; mortgage lenders are closed because banks don’t operate on a federal holiday; and, title agents are often away from the office because the former two groups aren’t working.

But what’s supposed to be a 3-day weekend is actually a 4.5-day one. This is because many people leaving for a Memorial Day vacation will not go to work on the Friday before the holiday, and then getting back into the “work groove” on Tuesday can be a half-day affair.

Therefore, if you’re under contract to buy a home , or to sell one; or if you have a refinance in progress that’s expected to close at month-end, there are some steps you should take to get pro-active with your closing. If you’re going to lose 4-and-a-half days at the end of the month, you’ll want to try to make those days up while the month is still young.

Here are 3 quick tips to speed up your closing and approval.

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Posted in Personal Finance | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Live the Dream in Puako, Hawaii While Making an Income

Have you ever wanted to live in paradise and at the same time make money? Well that opportunity awaits you in the quaint town of Puako located along the Kohala Coast of the Big Island.

Aerial of Puako Bay
Puako Sunsets

B&B FOR SALE

Puako has a lot of charm and history to it. The thousand-year old Hawaiian village of Puako was thriving when missionaries came here in 1823. Hokuloa Church was dedicated in 1860. In 1952 the state offered homesteaders lots in Puako at public auction. The first Reef House was homesteaded in 1958 and extensively remodeled in 1988. The second house was completed in 1995.

Hokuloa Church

With a population of less than 500 people and 160 lots Puako transcends along one main road, Puako Beach Rd, for about a 2.5 mile stretch where you can view a variety of homes including old fishing shacks, 60’s style beach houses and luxurious oceanfront compounds.

Puako Beach Rd

Puako is the only true oceanfront community along the sunny, desirable Kohala Coast where there are no gates, CC&Rs or fees.

The General Store has been a landmark in Puako since 1989, and is pretty much the only game in town to get your necessary provisions with the closest market, restaurants and shopping approximately 2 miles to the South at the Mauna Lani resort area.  This is what makes Puako so attractive to residents, vacationers and visitors, country living with all the conveniences of the life just a hop, skip and jump away.

General Store

There is so much to do and see in Puako you’ll never want to leave surfing, fishing, diving, snorkeling the coral reef, kayaking, biking, walking, jogging and the petroglyph fields.

Snorkling with the Turtles
Kayaking

Puako is considered the sunniest place in the state, averaging nine or fewer inches of rain a year with ninety percent of the days are sunny and free of cloud cover.

Sunny Puako Days

NOW FOR THE MONEY PART. Vacation rentals and B&B’s are extremely popular for vacationers around the world, especially Hawaii.  This successful B&B was previously featured in Travel and Leisure Magazine and has won hospitality and quality awards as a successful bed and breakfast. Just steps away from the pacific ocean, sit back enjoy living in paradise all while running your very own B&B.

Puako Bed and Breakfast

From the moment you walk into this home you’ll get that Hawaiiana feeling which boasts 5 bedrooms/5 private bathrooms for that perfect B&B set up. All though this property is currently being used as a B&B, the owners are not selling it as a business, but it could continue to be utilized as the only licensed B&B in Puako.

Relax in the Kohala Suite

CONTACT ME so I can help you make this dream come true.

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Posted in Big Island, Hawaii, Hawaii Real Estate, Homes For Sale | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Make A Mortgage Rate Plan Ahead Of The Jobs Report

Non-Farm Payrolls 2000-2012

Been shopping for a mortgage rate? You may want to lock something down. Tomorrow morning, mortgage rates are expected to change. Unfortunately, we don’t know in which direction they’ll move.

It’s a risky time for home buyers to be without a locked mortgage rate.

The action begins at 8:30 A.M. ET Friday. This is when the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its April Non-Farm Payrolls report.

The monthly Non-Farm Payrolls report is more commonly known as “the jobs report” and provides a sector-by-sector breakdown of the U.S. employment situation, including changes in the Unemployment Rate.

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Posted in The Economy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Home Values Start The Year Strong

HPI 2007-2012

Home prices started the year on an upswing.

According to the Federal Home Finance Agency’s Home Price Index, home prices rose by a seasonally-adjusted 0.3 percent between January and February 2012. The index is up 0.4% over the past year, offering a counter-story to the Case-Shiller Index’s assertion that home values are sinking.

Last week, Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index said home values had dropped more than 3 percent in the prior 12 months.

As a home buyer or seller , data showing “rising home values” or “falling home values” may be of interest to you, but we can’t forget that most home valuation trackers — including both the government’s Home Price Index and the private sector Case-Shiller Index — have a severe, built-in flaw.

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Posted in Housing Analysis, Real Estate News | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Mortgage Guidelines Resume Tightening Nationwide

Senior Loan Officer SurveyDespite an improving U.S. economy, the nation’s banks remain cautious about what they will lend, and to whom.

Last quarter, by a margin of 3-to-2, more banks tightened residential mortgage lending standards for “prime borrowers” than did loosen them.

A “prime borrower” is defined as one with a well-documented credit history, high credit scores, and a low debt-to-income ratio. The insight comes from the Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey of its member banks.

Last quarter, of the 54 responding banks :

  • 0 banks tightened mortgage guidelines considerably
  • 3 banks tightened mortgage guidelines somewhat
  • 49 banks left guidelines basically unchanged
  • 2 banks eased mortgage guidelines somewhat
  • 0 banks eased mortgage guidelines considerably

By contrast, in the quarter prior, not a single surveyed bank reported tighter residential mortgage guidelines. The period from January-March was a step backwards, therefore, for the fledgling U.S. housing market.

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Posted in Mortgage Guidelines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How To Clean Your Outdoor Gas Grill In Less Than 30 Minutes

Keep a clean grillRegardless of your hometown’s climate, outdoor gas grill cooking can be a four-season endeavor. Just remembe to keep your grill clean.

According to Weber’s annual GrillWatch Survey, less than 40% of grill owners clean their equipment with any bit of frequency, and 6 percent admit they’ve never cleaned their grill at all.

There are three main reasons to keep a clean grill. The first is that a clean, well-maintained grill will have a longer useful life than a dirty, sloppy one. Grills can be expensive and it’s often less costly to maintain them than to replace them.

The second reason to keep a clean grill is for sanitary reasons. Over time — especially when exposed to the elements — a grill’s finish can deteriorate and/or retained cooked foodstuffs. This can create a breeding ground for germs and disease.

And, lastly, a clean grill helps cooked foods taste better.

So, whether you’ve cleaned your equipment recently or never at all, it’s always a good time to freshen up your grill. Here’s how to do it, quickly :

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Posted in Around The Home | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Pending Home Sales Index Crosses The 100 Barrier

Pending Home Sales 2010-2012

After a series of worse-than-expected data last month, the housing market appears to be back on track.

The Pending Home Sales Index posted 101.4 in March, a four percent gain from the month prior and the index’s highest reading since April 2010 — the last month of that year’s federal home buyer tax credit.

A “pending home” is a home under contract to sell, but not yet closed. The Pending Home Sales Index is tracked and published by the National Association of REALTORS® monthly.

The March report marks the index’s first 100-plus reading in nearly two years.

To home buyers and sellers , this is statistically significant because the Pending Home Sales Index is normalized to 100, a value corresponding to the average home contract activity in 2001, the index’s first year of existence. 2001 was an historically-strong year for the housing market.

The March 2012 Pending Home Sales Index, therefore, puts current market activity on par with market activity from 2001.

You wouldn’t know it from reading this week’s papers, though. There have been stories about how the Case-Shiller Index put home values at new loans; and how the Existing Home Sales figures unexpectedly dropped off; and how the New Home Sales report was a laggard.

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Posted in Housing Analysis | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A Simple Explanation Of The Federal Reserve Statement (April 25, 2012)

Putting the FOMC statement in plain EnglishThe Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged within its current target range of 0.000-0.250 percent Wednesday.

For the fifth consecutive month, the Fed Funds Rate vote was nearly unanimous. Just one FOMC member, Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker, dissented in the 9-1 vote.

The Fed Funds Rate has been near zero percent since December 2008. It is expected to remain near-zero through 2014, at least.

In its press release, the Federal Reserve noted that the U.S. economy has been “expanding moderately” since the FOMC’s last meeting in March. Beyond the next few quarters, the Fed expects growth to “pick up gradually”.

This key phrase will likely be repeated by the press. It suggests that the economy is no longer contracting; instead moving along a path of slow, consistent expansion.

In addition, the Fed acknowledged that “strains in global financial markets” continue to pose “significant downside risks” to long-term U.S. economic outlook. This is in reference to the sovereign debt concerns of Greece, Spain and Italy, and the potential for a broader European economic slowdown.

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New Home Sales Revised Higher In February; Slip 7% In March

New Home Sales 2011-2012Sales of new homes ticked lower in March, unexpectedly.

Based on Census Bureau data, the number of new, single-family homes sold in March slipped 7 percent from February — the largest one-month drop in more than a year.

On a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis, buyers nationwide purchased 328,000 newly-built homes last month. The decrease in sales from February to March can be attributed, in part, though, to a massive upward revision in February’s figures.

Last month, the Census Bureau had reported 313,000 new home sales in February on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis. This month, those sales were re-measured to be 353,000 — an increase of 13 percent.

January’s sales were revised higher, too.

The long-term trend in the market for new homes remains “up”. This is no more apparent than when we look at the available new home inventory.

At the close of March, just 144,000 new homes were available for purchase, down 2,000 from the month prior and representing the most sparse new home housing supply since at least 1993, the year that the Census Bureau starting tracking such data.

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The Fed Starts A 2-Day Meeting Today. Make A Strategy.

Fed Funds Rate vs Mortgage Rates 1990-2012

The Federal Open Market Committee begins a 2-day meeting today in the nation’s capitol. It’s the group’s third of 8 scheduled meetings this year. Mortgage rates are expected to change upon the Fed’s adjournment.

Led by Chairman Ben Bernanke, the FOMC is a 12-person, Federal Reserve sub-committee. The FOMC is the group within the Fed which votes on U.S. monetary policy. “Making monetary policy” can mean a lot of things, and the action for which the FOMC is most well-known is its setting of the Fed Funds Funds.

The Fed Funds Rate is the overnight interest rate at which banks borrow money from each other. It’s one of many interest rates set by the Fed.

However, one series of interest rates not set by the Fed is mortgage rates. Instead, mortgage rates are based on the prices of mortgage-backed bonds and bonds are bought and sold on Wall Street.

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Posted in Mortgage News, Mortgage Rates | Tagged , , | Leave a comment
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