Aloha and Happy Valentine's Day (belated - sorry!)

 

Here's some food for thought in these dim economic times:  I was reading John Mauldin's "Outside the Box" Newsletter the other day and I thought the author made a very good point about human behavior that I wanted to share with you..  He was talking about all the doom and gloom scenarios that are running around out there and he reflected on a personal experience he had that seemed to run counter to the notion that the world will allow itself to go down the tubes.   For the sake of brevity I will condense his story to the punch line.  He basically said that even though things can look really REALLY bad from the statistics and the financials, there is one powerful variable that is not being accounted for in all those numbers.  That variable is the Power of the Human Spirit to Survive a Crisis.  He stated that a very large number of us have a very strong impulse to keep our individual houses in order.  When the stakes are down, human beings will draw on almost superhuman strength to keep their families, their businesses, their selves, even their pets, from falling down a dark hole.  When those individual efforts are multiplied across the multitudes, it can go very far to stopping what might seem like an unstoppable train...  I believe him.  When the chips are down, I fight back, and I've seen a lot of other friends and family do the same thing.  I don't think's it's an American trait, or a female trait.  I think it's a human trait and it's designed in our DNA.  So the numbers might be bleak, and the fancy pants news folks might be feeding us a never-ending stream of negativity that might make us think about putting our heads down and giving up.  But humans as a species don't do that.  We fight.  That's how we adapt to change.  That's how the early fishes decided to crawl out of the sea and grow legs when the water got too shallow or too hot way back when.  So the moral of the story is:  Be like a fish. G
�0����lZb  Grow legs.  Stand up.  And walk out of this mess. Gosh Darn it.

 

The weather in Kauai lately has been chilly and rainy, but still very beautiful.  It's amazing how lovely the mountains look when the clouds are misty and settled over them.  I took a chilly walk on Hanalei Bay a few days ago.  As I was walking from the Pier towards the Pavillion in the late afternoon I looked up at  the mountains in front of me and my mouth dropped open by how lovely it was.  The mountains went up forever to the sky, green and majestic, shrouded in soft clouds.. The waterfall falling down from the top was a white thin jagged line..  And just then, a flock of birds flew by in front of that silouette in a perfect V.  I almost got tears in my eyes it was so beautfiul.  I said to myself  I'm so darn lucky I live in a postcard.

 

When the real estate market gets me down it helps to remind myself that I am indeed very fortunate just to wake up every morning in Kauai.  Every day here is a gift and I don't take it for granted.  Ever, not even when it's raining or the roosters wake me up.

 

Sales Volume:  As I was looking at the stats this month I got all excited because January Homes Sales Volume showed 27% higher than last year's numbers at this time.  "Yee-Haaaa!  Whoopeee!  I said as I did a little happy jig.   Then the cold stark reality sets in as I delved deeper into the numbers  I see that number are skewed high because we had a $13M sale of a large 146 acre estate on the North Shore..  So I stopped dancing and started crying..partially because the numbers aren't up, there still down, way down, but also because I'm so jealous of that darn realtor who made that sell.. Did I mention it was "all cash".  Boo hoo hoo....

 

In other Sales Volume numbers..Vacant land, 96% below last year's volume so far in January... not so good.  Condos down 85% from last years numbers... not so good either.  On the North Shore no vacant land sold all month, and condos were down 90% over last year's numbers.  Koloa/Poipu Home Sale Volume down 79% over last year.  Boo hoo hoo..everything is down, down, down.

 

Units Sold? Not so pretty either.  Total number of Houses sold was down 55% over the entire Island.  Down 67% on the North Shore, and down 67% in Poipu/Koloa.  Vacant Land was down 57% over the entire island from last year, condo volume down 65% over the entire island.  Breaking that out, we had 1 condo  sales in Koloa/Poipu compared to last year's number of 5.  Lihue was down 40% with 3 sales this year, compared to 5 sales last year, and North Shore was down 75%  with 2 sales this year compared to 8 last year.

 

Median prices took another hit in January to $466K for houses, compared to $495K in December.  That's a 20% drop from our median price of $585K in January 2008..  There was only one sale of vacant land on the entire island in January, a $200K parcel.  Cheap vacant land on a beautfiul tropical island, anyone?  Median condo prices fell to an astonishlingly low $235K over the entire island.  Lihue had 3 sales that put the median price of condos at $210K.. whoooa.   North Shore condos prices were down 46% to $488K.

 

So to sum up.. Prices continue to drop everywhere on the Island more every month.  Number of sales for also continue to decline.  East side is looking like it is starting to stabilize a bit in terms of consistent sales each month.  Condos sales, although units sales "look" down compared to last year's numbers, the sales month to month are fairly stable from last August.

 

On the home front... even though the numbers are dismal I've been watching several investment type condos go into escrow lately.  These are those flashy expensive water view properties that have taken the hardest hit.  I don't want to get my hopes up... so I'll just wait a bit and see if the numbers reflect an improvement in the coming months.  Will keep you posted.

 

Speaking of keeping YOU posted, will you please keep ME posted?  I'm going through my database in the next few months and even I haven't heard from you for over a year or more you could end up in my trash bin (no hard feelings).  So if you enjoy my newsletter but haven't responded to my personal inquires or sent me an email EVER EVER and want to continue getting my newsletter, please drop me a quick reply that says "Please! Please! AnnMarie, don't send me to the trash bin!"... or something like that and I promise I won't hit "delete" when your name comes up.  Remember, you only need to do that if you've NEVER contacted me.  If you have, then don't worry about it.  You're in like flin.  I just don't want to get 1200 replies.  Thanks.

 

Until next month little fishies, Your Island Realtor, AnnMarie