05/13/25 Summer Is Heating Up - LIVE w/Core Team Hawaii

What's up guys? Good morning. Good afternoon. As you can see, it's just me today. Derek has family in town. Kenny's got a sick boy at home, so he's working from home. Aiden is busy as usual, doing a bunch of work, coding it together, and it's just going to be me. So as always, we're going to do some safe surveys. Our safe surveys are what Charlotte, our assistant, does with our clients who are active. We'll say hot or lava, meaning you are about to write an offer. Maybe we're doing showings together, you're in escrow, or maybe you just closed. So I'm going to pull up a few safe surveys for the week for our kind of star agents of the week, which Charlotte led the meeting with. Oh, sorry, Mahe. I don't have anything for you. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So Kenny from Matthew P. He knows our situation and is aware of wants and needs. He's a good communicator and keeps our wants and needs at the forefront. There's no doubt in our mind that the team is working to meet our goals as positive as it gets. Good team. Kenny is friendly, positive, and is working for, towards our best interests. Can't ask for much more and appreciate his efforts to date. Awesome. Thanks, Matt, for the feedback and good job, Kenny. Good job. We got one for Derek and Aiden. This is for a seller client, Robert. They're great. We're about a week out and it's all pretty smooth with Derek and Aiden. So this is, yeah, this one is a sale closing pretty soon in Mililani. Really cute house too. Good job, guys. Smooth one. Yeah, I think that was the last video that dropped is, yeah, you'll see a preview of that place. So check that one out. Go check out the last video from Sunday. Okay. And one more for Kenny from Shania. We had a really good experience and everything is done. We have our house and we're good. We closed on a house a bit ago and he's awesome. He was very communicative and gave us really good details when we had questions. Awesome. Right on, Kenny. Good job. Thank you guys so much for your time when you participate in giving our team feedback, whether that be positive or even potentially room for improvement. Our team is always looking to see, check in with you guys what your experience is like, because we want it to be the best and we want to improve where we can and double down on the things that you guys like and appreciate. So thank you guys. All right. So if you guys have any questions, please don't hesitate. Load me up with some questions. So we have some things to talk story about. If you don't know, or you catch me after we've already signed off for the day, load us up with questions on the bottom of this and we'll get to it next week. Today will be a little bit of a shorter one since we're all kind of like all over the place, all over the island today. So I wanted to make sure I hop on and address whatever questions you might have, and then give you guys a little bit of an update on what's going on. Did I just see Steven Camacho say, how's it? How's it Steven? Great talking to you yesterday. Ethan, let's go. Mahia, how are you feeling about the summer market? That is exactly what I'm going to talk a little bit about today. So I already this morning, what is today? Tuesday. Today's Tuesday, just this morning. May 13th. Happy belated mother's day to everybody. Happy birthday month to me. Just throwing that out there for everybody. But yeah, so we're kind of like really stepping into summer. We're really starting to step into the summer season here. We are starting to see more of an influx of both inbound leads, as well as people really starting to get the gears moving and the thought and the idea of like, okay, I would like to start this process now. So that is generally speaking something that happens around this time of year. I had two different clients reach out to me this morning to say, hey, I'm seeing more inventory in this area. Is that normal? I'm seeing more houses coming to market in that area. Is that because of PCS season or what is that? And these are PCS in clients. Some of them who are asking me, and yeah, I mean, it kind of is, right? So summer season for here in Hawaii, you guys know, it's not like we have this real obvious changing of the seasons here. So things like snow and sleet and all of that stuff, that may not have an effect on our market here, but we do have those normal seasonal things that buyers and sellers and families experience. And summer, spring and summertime, it just generally speaking nationwide and Hawaii is not off of that list. We get a little bit more action, like things start to heat up. We have more people coming to market and that is both buyer and seller. So I've had a lot more conversations over the last couple of weeks of people coming in, starting to be ready to get serious and heat up with their purchasing and with their home ownership and buying. A lot of those people are PCS in clients. It is PCS season, but on top of that, even for like our local families here, May especially is in Hawaii, most of your girls, I don't know, your girls pause school in May. They only have one more full week at school. Yeah. So we're right now, all of our kids are starting to end school, right? So we're entering that season, that summer season. Here in Hawaii, our schools end in the latter part of May and typically start like in the first week or so of August. I know in a lot of other States, it's like September and they don't end until June and they don't start until September. It's a little bit different here. So especially now during the May season is when we start to see things really heat up because people one, have the free time where they're not shuffling and shuttling their kids around during the school year to get more serious about honing in on their home purchase. But also we have a lot of people who are maybe considering, where is my kid going to school next year? And we want to be in that school district. We want to close in that school district this summer before the school year starts in August. So things right now do start to heat up. We do start to see a lot more people coming to the market, both as buyers and sellers. What does that mean for you as a buyer? That means that you may start to see more things come to market, but just like you're ready to come to market now, there's a bunch of other families who are ready as well. So we may also see a little bit more competition in the market. We may see more, depending on the neighborhood and the community, we may see more multiple offer situations. And we may see more strengthening clauses as we enter into areas that are more competitive. What does that mean for you as a seller? That means you may start to see more people coming to market. You may start to see more foot traffic. You may start to see more showing requests. It's just a busier time of year. And we're definitely starting to already feel that in a meaningful way on our team when it comes to like our meetings on Mondays and Tuesdays where we discuss like, our team does a lot of meeting of the minds and putting our heads together. As you guys know, we're a small team. We like to collaborate on everything. So Mondays and Tuesdays, we do a lot of that work of like, hey, discussing what we're feeling in the market. What does our business look like? What does our business look like individually? And as a team, how can we collaborate and help? And the meetings get longer as the summer approaches. So a lot more people coming to market. And we love that. If you guys have questions, go ahead. And now is the time to start filling out that contact form at coreteamhawaii.com. Scroll down to the bottom, fill out that contact form. If you're ready to get serious, let us know. We want to help. We want to connect you to lender. Make sure you're in position to have all your ducks in a row so that when it's time for you to come to market, you're ready and we'd love to help you. So, Ethan, what are the most common concessions buyers are asking for lately during deals? Well, it depends on the area you're looking at, you know, closing cost credits sometimes. And sometimes people will say like, oh, for instance, on a house that I just purchased, we had a credit that we were able to negotiate as a result of the J-1 or as a result of our home inspection. So that is a big time for buyers to go ahead and like ask for things, ask for repairs, ask for credits. But keep in mind that it is an as-is state here, meaning like a buyer can ask for anything and a seller may oblige and may be agreeable to those things. But anything you need and you know you need to have a happy closing and to move forward, you got to ask for in the beginning. So if you know you need a $10,000 credit, then you ask for that within your offer. Like, hey, my offer is easy math, $500,000 with a $10,000 seller credit attached to it. And that's for to be applied to closing costs now. We see that sometimes after a home inspection, like if it's like, oh, you know, I was willing to pay 500, but now I know that this thing needs a new roof. Now I want some credit. So you may ask for that credit. They may give that credit to you. And that may either be, sometimes they ask, oh, would you rather have that as a closing cost credit or would you rather have a price reduction? So those are important things to kind of discuss and consider. And for say it's like a $15,000 or $10,000 credit, the difference between what your monthly payment will look like if you lower the overall purchase price by a $10,000 reduction may be like this big, right? Like real small comparison, like in comparison to what it would be at the price you're agreed at, but the $10,000 credit via cash in your pocket, because you're now applying that to your closing costs, that may be more meaningful to you. So there's different kinds of different trains of thought. There's different ways to do that, but it really depends on the market you're shopping in. So if you're shopping in a, like a ocean point or something, and there's 10 other houses like that, then you're a lot more likely to get a seller who is agreeable to a closing cost credit. That is going to be a little bit easier to accomplish if it's been on the market for a bunch of days and there's a bunch of things just like it all around it, easier to accomplish that way. However, if we're shopping in say a $1.2 million single family home in Kailua market, where that's still very competitive, there are still quite a number of people who are looking for that specific thing. You may not be able to accomplish it. So, you know, there are ways that a buyer can be a little bit more aggressive now via, you know, asking the seller to pay for this, asking the seller to, you know, do the cleaning and do the whatever, like you can make more requests, but it really depends on the market you're in. It really depends on the kind of the micro market that you're shopping in and what is happening within that market. And we'll always keep it real with you. You know, if we have a chat and we're looking at a specific thing in a specific neighborhood, we'll keep it real with you. It'll be like dependent on property to property. It'll also be dependent on neighborhood to neighborhood, but really good question. Thank you. So what, okay, you get, oh, I mean, thank you, Ethan, but we need more questions. Let me, let me down with some questions. It's very lonely over here. It's just me today. So help me out. Help me out guys. Oh, did you? Ethan, are you seeing listings get multiple offers? How competitive are listings looking? I know it depends on the type of product and we're on the Island. I'm seeing a lot of both. I'm seeing a lot of listings that are sitting and have been sitting for a while. And then I'm seeing listings that are within a day have three, four offers on them. So it is truly super dependent on the micro market that you're looking at and the supply and demand of that market. If it is a market that for instance, is like a, like an other beach or something like that, that has not only a lot of that specific type of home, but then very similar homes around it. And there's just a influx of inventory. Then maybe you don't have multiple offers. Maybe you are waiting for the right buyer, but it depends on kind of how unique the property is. Unique in either direction, like unique of like, this is a really like interesting low price point for the community because it's a little bit smaller, but like, oh, this is like my opportunity to buy into that area that may have a ton of offers on it. Or I mean, being unique in that, oh, this is like not exactly what I thought it would be, but it is in the right community. And so there's just really, it doesn't, there's not like a general statement to be had as far as what all the offers are looking like. You can definitely have multiple offers, but it really depends on what the product is that you have. Let's see. Oh, okay. Ethan, what's the key things sellers often forget about or are unaware about when they are preparing to list? Forget about, I think things that they sometimes don't consider are little adjustments and little tweaks that can be made to your home that really bring out, that are easy ways to kind of like make it shine and make it like fancy and nice looking, but without it being too heavy of a lift, they may not consider the season that you're coming to market in. Sometimes we have specific price opinions of our home that may not be in line with what the market is. And that's totally fine because not everybody is running comps. It's not everybody's job to be up at night, like losing sleep over running comps on things like that's what we do. So sometimes we have like price opinions that are a little bit different. Sellers sometimes will base their price opinion on Zillow and Redfin. And I like, please don't do that because it's not accurate. Sometimes it's way too high. Sometimes it's way too low. So I think a lot of times sellers don't lean into professional help soon enough. And I think that if they had a meeting, say you're like, oh, I'm thinking I want to go to market in December or whatever. And maybe had you met with a strong agent and you had the ability to come to market sooner, you just didn't think that you could coordinate and organize those things sooner, but it would have helped you to come to market, like say in the summer. I think really you got to reach out and get a solid agent to help come to these recommendations and to help give you the additional insight into the market and what the market is doing now, because we're the ones who are plugged into it. We're the ones who are doing the day-to-day activities. So we want to make sure that you're up to speed and not in a way that Zillow and Redfin can teach you, but in a meaningful way via producing agents who are consistently watching what the market is doing. A local kind guy, has permitting gotten any better within the last year or two? Does it still take forever to get permits? No, it has not. And yes, it does. So that's very quick, dirty answer to that. But yeah, we're not seeing anything like real meaningful as far as improvements in our timelines and permits. I think there are certain things that you can get like emergency permits for a little bit easier now, meaning like if your foundation needs work and it's like unsafe to live in, they may be able to expedite that. But no, we're not seeing anything like real meaningful as far as like, oh, the DPP now has enough staff and we are clearing our queue. No. Kevin Mackey. Hi, Kevin. Please share the name of the app you use for measuring a room. Very useful when comparing bedroom sizes. We are in escrow with Kevin and Margaret. That was just my iPhone app and it's not super reliable. Like it's definitely a tape measure is better, but your iPhone does come preloaded with a measure app and probably most smartphones have that now. It's usually pretty accurate, but it's always just like a little bit off. So for basic measuring, like if we're on the fly, we're trying to find something, we don't have a floor plan for something. We'll pop that guy out, but a tape measure would be better. Kevin Davis. Have you heard anything about condos losing value when those bill seven affordable housing developers are being built, i.e. on Pensacola Ave? No, not really. Because it's like a building that has affordable units in it, surrounded by non affordable or reserved housing units. And they hold value in different ways because they have different restrictions and guidelines attached to them. So for instance, a affordable housing unit that you bought, you may not be able to rent it out or resell it for five, maybe 10 years, unless you offer it up to the developer first. So something like that, that has that type of restriction that may have a suppressed appreciation on it, but the buildings around it that have normal fee, simple, non-affordable housing, you can sell at your leisure. You can rent at your leisure. Those are still going to hold value in a different way because they're just a different product, but really good question. Um, Steven, my parents are thinking of being spies for Core Ridge, since I can't go there and retain you folks as agents anxiously awaiting Ke Olu updates. Oh, we're going to spy. I drive, I drive past Ke Olu every day to go, or I drive past Core Ridge to get home every day on Kam Highway. So no worry, we're going to spy for you too. Larry Tran, what's the percentage of transactions you getting seller paid commission for the buyer's agent on the client side? What do you and the team typically charge if seller doesn't pay? Good question, Larry. So thus far it is a hundred percent in our experience that the seller is at least willing to pay part of the commission. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's like two of the last, I don't know, 50 or 60 transactions since August where, um, the seller wasn't able to pay a portion of it. For instance, um, you know, they, one seller was like majorly underwater and already bringing money to the table so they could only offer 1% of the final purchase price to, um, the buyer's agent team. So each team will be different and each scenario will be different. Um, each person's snapshot, um, of what different teams do may look different for us here in Hawaii, where the industry standard is two to 3% of the final purchase price with Hawaii GE tax. So plus Hawaii GE tax, a lot of people are confused about what that is. It is our privileged tax that we get to pay here for operating a business. So if you go to the store, there's a GE tax attached. So the sales tax, essentially, um, all business owners have to pay it for doing business here in Hawaii and it does get added onto that. It's 4%. It's not another 4% of the purchase price. It is 4% of whatever is earned. So say the earning came out to $10,000. Hawaii GE tax would be 4% of that. So another $400. So the total earning would be 10,400 and that is with GE tax. So our team does have a bottom line fee for service when it comes to the buyer side. And that is, um, 2% with no G E T. So it was very rare that the seller isn't already covering that or more. Um, you know, but that is our bottom line fee for service. We've had two instances where the buyer has had to come up a little bit, um, for that, but you know, we work really hard for you. Uh, we have a whole team that, you know, our transaction coordinators, our assistants, me, Derek, Kenny, Aiden, Kenji, you know, our YouTube. So we do have a fee for service. And fortunately thus far, there's been only two transactions where our, um, buyers were, you know, really more than happy to bridge the gap. If the seller wasn't able to do it and had really positive experience at the end of the day. And we're happy to do that. So good question. Um, local kind guy. So permitting is still tough. Our sellers conceding a lot of price when selling property that doesn't match tax records, not necessarily. So it depends on where it is. Um, it depends on what the things are that aren't permitted. Um, now you may have a house in a or something like that, where like a whole ADU was slapped on there that doesn't necessarily, um, have the permits or maybe the permits are opened and they're not closed yet. That doesn't necessarily stop people from buying it or, and it doesn't even necessarily stop people from like overpaying for what is on tax record. So it gets appraised that whatever is physically, I'm sorry, whatever is there legally on tax, but you know, sometimes people will bake in that market value of like, yeah, except that with that ADU, even though it's not legal yet, like that's a valuable to me and my family. And I have the liquidity to put more of a down payment to pay, you know, the market value as opposed to the appraised value of what's on tax. Now there's also the process of retroactively permitting, which a lot of people think in their mind, like, eh, it's a lot of legwork, but if I want to, I can go through the permitting process of having somebody come draft the area, write up the paperwork, apply for the permits and retroactively get all this stuff permitted, which would then boost the value of the home because it's all legal. So it depends on the area. If we got like a house that's like 900 square feet on tax and 3000 square feet on physical, like what's there on the land, then sure, that's definitely going to affect the value of the home or, or what people who are financing are going to be willing to and able to pay for it. But again, it's another one of those things where it really kind of depends on where the community is and what the work is that has been done. Sarah, any observations on trends with the condo market and our HOAs doing special assessments or adding the cost to monthly maintenance fee? So we are seeing a little bit of an evening out, whereas this time last year, everything was kind of like wild and we, everything was like revolving around insurance and like, okay, what's the hammer that's going to drop here? Like, what's the big jump that's going to happen? Now, a lot of the condos that we're seeing, they've already like addressed that issue. So whether that be that it went up, you know, their HOA went up 50% last year and you know, now it's just kind of staying there and should just go up normally from that, or, or whether it went up a little bit and they had a one-time assessment or whether they still have an assessment that's attached to it. It's still an issue. It's still something that we are looking out for, but in today's market, a lot of that is already kind of baked in. So, you know, a lot of the mystery is sort of taken out because they've already addressed the issue and decided, you know, per each HOA, how they're going to handle it. So it's still something to be mindful of. It's still something to be careful of, but now it's a little bit less mysterious because a lot of these buildings have done the things and taken the steps that they need to take to shore up their insurance premiums. And so it's, you know, right in front of us and on the table. And we, we know what we're walking into a lot more often than we did a year ago. Okay. Local kind guy. Yeah. But are those overpaying buyers all cash? A lender wouldn't lend on. Right. So they maybe have a larger down payment so that the loan to value ratio isn't going to be as important. So appraisal isn't going to be, you know, as it's not going to be as big a deal. It's not going to be a deal breaker. If we have like a VA buyer who's zero down and they're shopping on that same home, it is going to be a big deal, right? Because appraisal is going to become an issue, but these markets where it's like, Oh, we don't really care. Like a lot of those people have the liquidity to have a strong down payment to be close to, or all cash. So a lot of the times it just doesn't matter for that buyer. You know, if they love the community and they love that house, they're going to do it anyway, because it's not it's not a loan requirement for them because they, you know, either they don't need, maybe sometimes they don't even need to have the appraisal or, you know, their loan, their down payment amount is such that like, it doesn't really even matter. Like if it appraised low, it doesn't affect our loan to value. So we can still move forward and we'd still be able to purchase it. Yeah. Larry. Mahalo. Hey, Kenny was great while I was actively house shopping. You guys have always been open and transparent. Core team folks are the best. Thanks, Larry. Yes. For better or worse. We, we just kind of keep it real. I did have like a couple consults lately that are, you know, my last thing I want to do is to like hear your hopes and dreams and the things you want to accomplish and have to be the one to tell you that, you know, Hey, so realistically, this is what we're looking at. However, what I do like to do is be honest and open with you because sometimes the thing that you think is what you are going to get and what you want right now, it doesn't need to be right now. That can be a thing that we're working up to. And the steps in between are the happy parts, the things that we get to like say, but look at what we can accomplish in the short term. And then look at what we can accomplish in the midterm. And then look at how we can get you to that point. So, you know, we're always going to be honest with you. We're always going to be transparent with you. We never want to waste your time. We never want to, you know, blow smoke and do all of that. We always want to make sure that, you know, we are having your best interests at heart and your best interest is to have an agent who is, you know, knowledgeable and knows what they're talking about and is going to be honest with you about the things that we need to do either to get us into position or the things that we do when we are in position to be strong. So hello from Boston. What's up? All right, guys. Thank you guys so much for loading us down with all those like rapid fire questions. I really appreciate you guys coming on here and talking story with me today. We do have a lot to take care of. So I'm just going to give a couple more minutes to see if we got anything that any last minute things that come through. But yeah, it's getting busy. The summertime is really starting to pick up. And if you guys are starting to think of like, hey, when should I be reaching out? If you have any aspirations of like moving within this PCS and summertime, like now, like call us now. All right, guys. Well, I don't see any more questions popping up. So thank you guys again for hopping on with us. Join us every Tuesday when you can at a time in and around 1030 ish between 1030 to sometimes 12. Our apologies. We're going to try and keep it around this time all the time. Be prepared with your questions. If you guys are not ready to have a full blown consult with us yet, this is a really good time for you to get into a conversation with us and for it to be, you know, noncommittal and low key for you. So please join us for these Tuesday lives. But if you are ready to have a full blown conversation about the next steps and to get serious with things, you have finance questions, market questions, neighborhood questions, and you need that extra level of like one on one, go to coreteamhawaii.com, fill out the contact form, either our assistant Charlotte or one of us will reach out to you and we would love to talk story. Okay, guys. Thank you.