Aloha Everybody:

 

Here's a little dog story...Being a big dog lover I have two dogs of my own.  My partner Phil has a dog, and we periodically babysit Phil's daughter's dog while she travels.  So at any one time, we might have 4 dogs flying around my house and we wouldn't have it any other way.  If you're a dog lover you know what I mean.  If you're not, get a dog and you will be.  

 

My two dogs are a long-haired Chihuahua named Bruiser, and a Bichon Frise named Max.  Phil's dog is a Boxer named Indie and our step-dog who stays with us sometimes is a Japanese Chin named Mochi.  One thing I've always liked about dogs is that usually dogs are straight shooters and pretty predictable.  They are relatively simple loveable creatures that you can always depend on to love you and be loyal to you.  That is until I got Max, my Bichon Frise.   As a rule, Bichons are simply adorable and Max is no exception.  He is a little white fluffy dog with big dark eyes and a little black nose.  He's incredibly cute and is usually very sweet.  But don't be fooled by the cute thing.  Max plays head games.  He's a master at it.

 

A few weeks ago I went on a little vacation down to the south side of the Island for Fourth of July for some much needed R&R.  When I got back a few days later my Chihuahua (who does not play headgames and is always loyal and loveable) was waiting at the door so happy to see me, all excited, jumping up and down barking like I had been gone for weeks.  Where was Max but upstairs hiding under my bed, sulking because I had left him home alone for two long days with the a neighbor he doesn't really care for.  He was not happy about my little selfish adventure and he was going to let me know about it.. Later that night he wouldn't eat what I fed him.  Even when I put the little goodies in it to bribe him.  He just stared at it and looked at me with those sad eyes as if to say "You're kidding, right?  I'm not eating this.. YOU ABANDONED ME!" and then he turned around and ran for my bedroom and hid again under the bed.  When I took the dogs for a walk the next morning, Max started out the door fine.  Then suddenly he planted all four legs and become frozen like a little white frozen popsicle and wouldn't budge off the front porch.  Finally, after begging and prodding, I gave up and turned around and took him back inside, defeated once again   When I tried to hold Max and pet him, he stiffened up like a board, wouldn't look at me, jumped off my lap and went to lay down under the bed again.  

 

This went on for 4 long days. I was so worried about him that I started to obsess about it.  I said to Phil, "Something is wrong with Max, I just know it.  I'm taking him to the vet this minute.  This has gone on too long.  Poor baby. He's probably in pain and can't tell me.  Maybe he's got early doggy Alzheimers and has forgotten who I am!"  Phil would say, "AnnMarie, nothing is wrong with Max.  He's messing with your head.  That's just Max being Max".  Sure enough, early one morning  he jumping up into my lap as I was having tea, reading the paper.  He nuzzled my hand, licked it, and looked up at me with those cute little floppy ears and sweet little face, like nothing ever happened.  For a minute I started to wonder if maybe I imagined the whole thing.  Psych!

 

So now you all know my dark secret: I'm not a good dog trainer.  It's true, I'm an awful disciplinarian.  My dogs rule the roost.   No, I don't watch The Dog Whisperer even though everyone I know who has dogs has told me to.  I don't know how to act like the Alpha dog which is what they always tell you to do when your dog is misbehaving.  I've never bared my teeth at my dog when he acted naughty, grabbed him by the neck and wrestled him to the ground like a good dog owner would.  But my defense to being a lousy dog trainer is this: That's why I never had kids!  By being a bad dog owner instead of a bad mother, I probably saved the world from having 3 or 4 awful ill-mannered children that probably would grow up to torture me and the general population unmercifully and eventually end up in San Quinten or some other appropriate place for grown up bad kids.  So please don't judge me too harshly.  I may be contributing to the spoiled dog population, but not the juvenile delinquent population.  And I think that's better, don't you?

 

Let's turn to Kauai Real Estate and get up updated on what happened to the market last month.  Sales Volume took a nice big jump from $22M in May to $34M in June.  Much of that was on the Northshore with Julia's new house being purchased for $10M.. yes, that's Ms. Robertson's new 8 acre oceanfront digs right next to Ke'e Beach (or so the rumor says).  If you take out that big purchase we are still up from the month prior.  Condo volume stayed fairly steady from last month, vacant land went down just slightly.

 

On units sold we went from 37 in May, to 42 in June.. a nice little bump.  Houses sold on the north shore more than doubled from last month (4 vs 9), condos stayed steady, and land stayed very slow, at 0 lots selling last month and only 1 selling this month.  South shore homes stayed steady from last month with 4 houses sold.  Condos were down on the south shore from 3 last month to 1 this month.

 

Median Home Sales Price took another big dive after several months of big consistent gains, going from $600K last month to just $440K this month, showing us that even though activity is picking up, pricing is still trying to stabilize and hasn't started climbing back up yet.  Houses on the north shore jumped up a bit to $608K vs $534K, but condo pricing declined from $837K to $575K.  Southshore homes jumped a bit from $550K to $684, but east side and Lihue home priced declined.

 

So to sum up it looks like the market is starting to see positive gains in many areas, but we are not out of the woods yet.  Time to go walk the dogs now.. hopefully Max had a pleasant day and he'll go easy on me.  Until next time, Your Island Realtor, AnnMarie

 

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