We’re continuing our series on what it’s like to relocate here to Hawaii. In our first installment, we were determining which side of the island do you want to live on – the east side or the West side? We were also trying to figure out if this was your secondary home, a vacation home, or it was your primary residence. (Check out the first blog post here) Now, the next step in your relocation to Hawaii – we, The Hawaii Team, have found you the house and you’re getting ready to close on this house and again, as I said in the first blog post, all of this can be done remotely from where you live. We gave you the virtual tour of the house, we executed the contract via docu-sign from your home on the mainland, we went through the inspection online and looked at the report and either objected or had some things fixed or repaired. We went through the appraisal, we got through the title work with the title company, and then, of course, we’re getting to closing where you are going to close remotely where you live on the mainland with a notary there send those documents back to the title company in Hawaii. And then they’re going to record the sale.
So, congratulations, now you own the home. Now what do you do? Well, you’ve got to take care of it until you get here and there’s two schools of thought on your property:
Number one, if this is your primary residence and it’s going to be a month or a month and a half, or whatever it may be until you get here, the only two things you really got to worry about is landscaping and pest control. Everything grows like crazy here – you are perpetually cutting, trimming, and hauling when you live in Hawaii. That requires a really good landscaper, so you’re going to need that even after you get here.
And the other thing is just somebody who can help you with pest control, because this is Hawaii and it’s tropical, so we’ve got bugs, and so you’ll need to have that.
Those are the two minimum things you need just to nail down and take care of the house until you get here.
Number two – if this is your secondary home and you’re not going to be living here full time, well, then again, you’re still going to need those two things, but then there’s one other layer – if you are renting it out while you’re not here. If it is a short term vacation rental then you’re definitely going to need a property management company. (If you need a referral on some property management companies, you can ask us here at the Hawaii team and we’ll be happy to provide those to you, but there’s two parts of property management that you really need to know about when you hire a property management team. Are you hiring them just to maintain the house? For example as mentioned earlier, landscaping, pest control, make sure there’s nothing wrong with the houses, etc. OR, are you hiring them to do the sales and marketing of your property? Most of these property management companies do both right. They’ll go ahead and book your house with renters and they’ll make sure that the place gets cleaned and the money gets collected, and for a fee they’ll take care of all of that, and they’ll handle the property maintenance.
An important thing to remember, if you’re doing a short term vacation rental here on this island, the law requires that you have an an island contact for your guests. So, anyone staying at your house must be able to contact somebody who lives locally on the island – this is also true if you’re renting it out yourself on Airbnb or VRBO. So couple of things to think about. Now you’ve got to move.
We hope this has been helpful if you in fact considering a move to Hawaii. As always, if you need to buy, sell or invest in real estate contact us here at the Hawaii team.
