Hawaii Real Estate News

During November, sales of 170 single-family homes and 201 condominiums were reported through the Board's MLS, decreases of 30.6 percent for single-family homes and 47 percent for condominiums, compared to the same month last year. This brings total single-family home sales on Oahu to 2,547 for the first eleven months of 2008, a decrease of 24.8 percent over the same time period one year ago. Total condominium sales through November were 3,690, a 28.3 percent decrease from last year. The median prices paid for island properties from January through November 2008 were $623,500 and $325,000, respectively, a decrease of 3.3 percent for single-family homes from the same time period in 2007 and no change for condominiums. The total dollar sales volume generated in the housing market for the first eleven months of this year was $3.447 billion, a decrease of 25.9 percent, or $1.203 billion, compared to the $4.650 billion produced one year ago.

I was talking to a few real estate agent friends that I know from Santa Cruz county last week about the market in northern California. They informed me that the Santa Cruz real estate market is taking a hit like the rest of California. It was not as bad as cities in southern California like San Diego, but the prices last quarter fell dramatically because of the amount of foreclosures.

I know a few agents that work the East Bay real estate market in Berkeley, Pleasanton, Livermore and other surrounding areas. They pretty much reported the same thing. Agents in both areas did let me know that the amount of sales rose last month. Which is great news, if the amount of sales continue to rise that will reduce the supply of homes and hopefully stabilize the home prices.

Even though Hawaii is a different market than the mainland. It is good to watch the markets on the mainland to see what the over all real estate market and economy is doing.

Up until the last few months Hawaii was in the bottom third of all states for the amount of foreclosures. Hawaii foreclosures rose a whopping 340% in September compared to the same time last year. They were up approximately 76% from last month and that was a huge increase as well compared to last year same time period.

I guess the economists from Bank of Hawaii and the presidents from the larger real estate firms here on the island of Oahu were wrong again. They were saying 2 years ago that the Hawaii real estate market would not be affected and would just level off. They were even saying that just a few months ago as well. Lets be real, the Hawaii real estate market is going to adjust downward just like any other market and has been doing so for the past 2 years.

Hawaii real estate is a lot more affordable compared to two years ago. If you are buying for long term it may not be a bad time to buy because you can not predict the exact bottom of the market. If you are buying and planning on selling in the next three years, I would suggest holding off a bit to see what the market is going to do. Now with all that said, there are some great deals if you are patient and you do your home. The rise in Hawaii foreclosures creates prices to soften and great buying opportunities. Not just foreclosures either, it forces the really motivated sellers to compete and lower their prices as well.

Feel free to contact me and myself or one of my partners can help you locate a property that makes sense for you.

Well, I have finally launched my personal site.

Here is a quick update about the launch.

My new hawaii real estate search is up and seems to be working well. Most of the feed back has been great. The search is much faster than the old site. Users can do more detailed advanced searches. They can sign up to get email alerts of their saved searches and even choose the frequency of the alerts (daily, Weekly of Never). Plus they can save multiple searches and could not on the old site. They even can manage there account in their profile area.

Here are some features that are not yet live that will be coming soon:

Save favorites
Interactive Map
Map it function.
Much more!!

We would love to here more feed back so we can keep improving the user experience.

I recently had my website re-designed and we changed our IDX real estate website provider A lot of friends have been contacting to let me know how much they like the new site and what a huge improvement the new site is. They also have been asking why I changed companies and some of them are even people I had referred to Cybersunshine.

Here are top 5 reasons why:

1. Cybersunshine was not completely honest with us on several occasions.

2. Their customer service was horrible - Response time to problems was very slow and Cybersunshine very often would tell us there was not a problem when there was.

3. They deleted our property data with no back up and the site had no property search or properties to view for a week.

4. I requested 3 times by email and left several messages on the owners voice mail that I needed my user data from my data base and they didn't get back to me for 10 days.

5. Paid for VIP search they never integrated on change Request #10173 plus paid extra for rushes they never delivered on.

Here is the main reason and the final straw:

Back at the beginning of 2006 Cybersunshine convinced me that I needed to upgrade to the VOW / Hi-Central MLS RETS solution because it would make my site more stable and reliable because they were having problems with the IDX files (other vendors were not). They also said it has more data than the IDX data which the Honolulu Board of Realtors confirmed. So I agreed, paid $1398 and signed change request form #10173. By doing this I also incurred a cost of 75 a month by the Honolulu Board of Realtors for this feed.

The second week of August the search on my site stopped working and there were no property results for the Honolulu Board of Realtors. I contacted Cybersunshine to let them know. They informed me that the boards server was not responding. I contacted the board and they informed me that their server was having problems and they were going to have to change servers. It was up and working later that day. I informed Cybersunshine that it was working and they said it was still not responding. This went on for a week with no data on my site because Cybersunshine did not have a back up of the data and deleted it. I was basically out of business for a week because Cybersunshine deleted the property data and had no back ups. This is not a good thing when you have over 10,000 users on the site trying to search for properties. I wonder how many went over to a competitor's site?

The Honolulu Board of Realtors informed me that Cybersunshine was requesting the IDX passwords because they were not using the RETS server.

Cybersunshine quickly responded that they were using both to cover themselves. They stated that the IDX had information that the RETS did not which is just the opposite and the board confirmed that.

I also got a message from a friend and a good source confirming that Cybersunshine never implemented RETS and the owner knew for almost 3 years :-(

Note: I do have emails, correspondences and documentation to support all of what is posted here. Feel free to contact me about anything in this post at 808-792-7040. I also want to let you know that my 1st year with them was not that bad, but their services declined quickly after that.

I would love to hear how you would handle this and what actions you would pursue if any.

This was my experience with Cybersunshine and others may have had a great experience. So it is very important to ask for references if you are considering any company that is going to have control of your businesses website.

Just wanted to let everyone know that American Dream Realty has pushed its new IDX Hawaii real estate search and web design of the company website on a new domain. It is designed and powered by Real Geeks. They are a start up company that is focused on bringing effective and useful real estate solutions. It is not complete, but is up online and the basic MLS search of all islands is working. Things that still need to be completed are:

-Advanced Search Functions
-User Profile Functions
-Saving Searches and Favorites
-Map Search

I will keep you updated on the progression of the site plus let you know when my personal site ADRHI.com is ready to be launched as well. I will be happy when I can dump Cybersunshine get away from them and their horrible service.

Aloha
Jeff

I continue to look for ways for the website to make our users experience better. I have been working with National Relocation and Real Geeks development team consulting them on how a real estate agents website should work. They are currently in the process of working on real estate web design and IDX websites to help agents with their real estate marketing efforts.

I have personally been helping them come up with a list of features that are a must for both the user surfing the sites for properties and the real estate agent to help the client with there house hunting. Some of the features that they will have for the users are:

1. Easy to use real estate search.
2. Interactive map search.
3. Variety of detailed search options.
3. User profile to save favorites, create and save searches to receive daily email alerts.

Some of the features for the real estate agents are:

1. Back-end lead management system.
2. Easy to use content editor.
3. Built in Blogging function.

The whole goal is to help agents with their online marketing efforts. I can't wait to see the finished product. Almost anything is better than what Cybersunshine created for me.

Well, I haven't posted anything in a long while. I have been working on many things to improve our business online. We are in the processing of interviewing some new great agents to join our team. We have a couple super prospects that are close to making a commitment. As soon as it is official we will be making some announcements. We are really excited about one young lady that will be joining in the near future. We feel our clients will benefit greatly from her experience and professionalism. She will bring allot of talent to our team. You will here more about her very soon.

We are also working on a few other exciting things that will be beneficial to our users as well. As soon as those are ready to roll out, we will be notifying everyone. We look forward to continue to be a leader online and in the real estate industry.