The House from Outer Space!
My first adventure into the MLS listings for the Big Island was a lesson in futility. Of course the first area (and about the only area) I knew to look in was North Kona. And of course the prices were way too high for what we could afford. So I started to search into the areas north and south of Kona. All of the sudden I started seeing houses in my price range in Ka’u and Puna. I even found a few houses I could afford in the South Kona District. But most of those were either fixer uppers or way too small.
One thing I noticed about the houses there were the colors in which they were painted. Here in SoCal most of the houses are painted muted and pale colors. The homes I was looking at were bright greens, blues, yellows, pinks, etc. And the metal roofs sometimes clashed with the house color. A lot of the houses were post and pier construction. Some were sold as-is and some had owner financing. There were fee simple and leasehold. I had no idea what fee simple and leasehold meant so I looked it up. Even though buying a house on leased land is cheaper, I want to own the land the house is on. There were even unpermitted homes and homes with unpermitted attachments.
I started searching for homes in my price range. I started in North Kona and got zero hits. I tried South Kona and I got 3 hits. One house was a fixer upper in bad shape. The next one was nice but was on leased land and the lease was up in 5 years. The third one was, kinda, sorta, well maybe it was, to be honest it was indescribable!!! The best way to describe it is it looked like a flying saucer from outer space! It truly looked like something I would see on Star Trek (Original Series). AMAZING!!! I’m not a dedicated Trekkie but I could see myself living in this spaceship. The best part of all, the house was well within my price range. There was a red flag though, the listing stated “Owner Financing Available”. This usually means the house is unpermitted, DARN!
It probably wouldn’t have worked out any way because my wife is not a Trekkie and she would not want to live in a spaceship.
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