Email ElizabethBUYING A HOME IN HAWAII
Getting a Mortgage in Hawaii
Elizabeth Weintraub, before getting a mortgage in Hawaii, in our new back yard.
Getting a mortgage in Hawaii was dramatically different for me than obtaining a mortgage in California. As you may have guessed, what is precipitating this blog, we closed on our home in Hawaii on Friday. I don’t think the impact of that purchase has fully settled in yet, probably because I have a horrible cold after returning from our trip to Cuba and I’m thick in the middle of other real estate transactions for my clients that consume my time. But in retrospect, the biggest problems we encountered originated with our Hawaii mortgage lender.
The difficulties were not due to our loan application, income or credit. We have no skeletons in our closet. The lender said our file was clean as whistle. It was the lender. Now, maybe it’s just the way things are done in Hawaii, but I can’t imagine that every lender in the islands is as lackadaisical and whacko as the office we unfortunately had selected. It is absolutely no reflection on the individual who referred us to that office, either, I want to make that perfectly clear. But getting a mortgage in Hawaii was difficult and the processing was very unusual from the way it is done in California.
For starters, the mortgage loan officer continually advised me at inception that regulations for TRID could mess up or delay our loan. I am a top Sacramento Realtor. I am very familiar with TRID. I’ve been closing escrows that involve TRID since last October and, for the most part, unless the mortgage lender messes up or forgets to abide by the guidelines, they close on time. Using TRID as an excuse is, well, inexcusable. Many of the questions I asked the mortgage loan officer could not be answered. I was informed that loan processors do all the heavy lifting and mortgage loan officers do not have the answers to technical or difficult questions.
I had asked the mortgage loan officer to lock my loan but when I receive my loan estimate 3 days later, I discovered my loan was not locked. Again I insisted, and by this time, well, it was December 16th, the date the Feds raised the rates. So, the lender had to eat the difference. I had asked several other questions via email and received no response, so later that evening I inquired again, asking why I had not received a response to my earlier emails. The mortgage loan officer, whom we suspect had been celebrating the holidays a bit too much, sent a late-night email with a bunch of misspellings and threatened to cancel our loan. Out of the blue.
By morning, they were apologetic. We had 30 days to close and, unfortunately, we did not close on time. We could have closed early, however, if the lender had submitted our file to underwriting on December 24th. Instead, the loan officer sat on our file until January 5th. Maybe they closed the office? I don’t know. I could not follow up because I was on vacation in Cuba with very spotty internet.
We were in and out of underwriting in 3 days, and then the lender emailed our Closing Disclosure to the wrong email address, so we did not receive it on time. I won’t bore you with all the intimate details of other things that went wrong with our mortgage in Hawaii. The bottom line is we had a super easy file to close. If you’re thinking about getting a mortgage in Hawaii, you might want to allow for delays and just go with the flow, in case our experience is normal. But I hope it was just an odd chance of ending up in the wrong hands.
Royal Kona Resort for Lunch and Honokohau Harbor Snorkeling
Hawaii Broker Hella Rothwell and Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub at Kona Royal Resort.
Our home inspection at the Hawaii house went fairly well. There wasn’t much the inspector found, just a bunch of minor things, and I am not the kind of Hawaii home buyer to ask the seller to fix them all because that’s just plain idiotic. Every home has defects. Asking for home inspection repairs that are puny makes people irritated. Besides, it is far wiser to maintain good relations with these guys for reasons I won’t go into but suffice to say buyers who nitpick tend to lose sight of the big picture and can end up with no home at all.
I have my own way of doing things. As Hella Rothwell and I were driving to Ali’i Drive to do lunch at the original Don the Beachcomber at the Royal Kona Resort, I noticed a credit union along the way and asked Hella to stop. It makes sense to have a bank account in Hawaii, for many reasons. The problem was I had not planned on opening a new account so I did not have anything more than about fifty bucks on me.
Eureka! Guess what? It costs $50 to open a savings account at Hawaii Community Federal Credit Union. It can’t be done over the phone or online, either. Then I ordered checks and the bank clerk said I could not start the numbering at the four digit I asked for. Sure you can, I suggested. She checked with her boss, and yes, I was right. Then I asked for the checks to have one address and to be mailed to another. Can’t do it, she said. Sure you can. She checked with her boss, and yes, I was right.
Some people always take others at face value but this is the wisdom of aging and experience speaking.
The server at the Royal Kona Resort said she could not get my iPad to take a good photo of us because the background was too light. Sure you can. Just tap our faces. BTW, did you know Don the Beachcomber of Royal Kona Resort fame is credited with creating the pupu platter? The view on the coast is incredible, and the food was excellent, too. My husband I will be able to walk to this Kona Royal Resort from our new home but there is also free validated parking.
After lunch, I decided to schedule a snorkeling adventure through my hotel, so I stopped at the Expedia Travel Desk, which seems to be ubiquitous. The clerk was a bit uppity with me. She suggested a tour that included whale watching. Hey, I’ve gone on whale watching tours from Hawaii that produced zero whales. Also, as I pointed out to her, I’ve had my fill of whale watching in Alaska; we had hundreds of whales following our catamaran, breeching, splashing, enough to last me a lifetime.
Well, that’s a pity, snotty clerk replied.
They love me here. Then she suggested a night snorkeling trip. This is where all the snorkelers get into the cold water, form a circle, hold hands and then shine light into the water to attract fish and manta rays. That did not hold a lot of appeal as I have seen many rays in the Tuamotos. I could see I was not endearing myself to the clerk but she did manage to make me a reservation to go snorkeling at the Honokohau Harbor for today.
A Waikoloa Home Makes Kona Condos Attractive
$700,000 flipper Waikoloa home with an ocean view 6 miles up the hill.
My sister watches Hawaii Life on cable; I’ve never seen the show, but she loves to watch buyers look at homes in Hawaii. When I mentioned that Hella and I might take a look at condos, just so my husband and I could rule them out or perhaps decide to move in that direction, my sister already knew all about the HOA dues and how high they can go. She’s not joking, either, some of those HOA dues are in the range of $1,000 a month, on top of spending more than $500,000 for a 1,000 square foot place. And it’s not even prime oceanfront we’re talking about.
We are planning to look at a few condos today. One of the types of properties they call a condo in Hawaii is what we call a planned unit development and perhaps a patio home or zero lot line in Sacramento. We are looking at such a home today. It’s a free-standing, single level home with HOA dues in a community just above Kona. It’s comfortably cozy at about 1,200 square feet and in the low $400s. We have several more to check out.
Great room with bamboo ceiling and tigerwood floor in Waikoloa home.
Nothing like yesterday’s tour of a Waikoloa home. Bear in mind that this is just a second home investment we are considering. Nobody is moving to Hawaii any time soon. In case you were wondering. This Waikoloa home was absolutely beautiful. Bamboo accents in the living room ceiling and kitchen cabinets. Hardwood floors on the first level. Nice upgrades, crown molding, wood windows.
Wait is that artificial grass in the front yard I see? I tugged at it. Sure enough. Guess they ran short for a landscaping budget. Kitchen was spacious and perfect, brand new appliances with efficiency stickers; but something did not seem right. The listing agent wandered back into the house and I asked if it was a flip. Looked like a flip and was staged like a flip. Yes, it is, he said. That explained much. Although I’m not sure that he really meant to say it was a flipper and might have meant “spec” house, which is similar but different.
Balcony from second floor master suite at Waikoloa home.
Now, the view upstairs from the oversized master was spectacular, although a bit hazy, and the master suite bath featured all the bells and whistles: dual walk-in shower, Jacuzzi tub, plenty of storage, intricate stone tile design over the vanity, but it was still a flipper. As we stood out on the balcony, a young woman pulled up and got out of her car. What is the color of this house? she asked. Before Hella could respond, I answered, It is brown, ha, ha. This neighbor must have been watching all of the construction and now covets the paint color.
The sellers don’t even have this Waikoloa home listed in Big Island MLS. It seems to be only listed in the Honolulu MLS. It’s almost $700,000. I think they are looking for a certain type of buyer, perhaps a person unfamiliar with the neighborhood. There are tennis courts and a baseball field directly across the street, which negatively impacts the value in my calculations. It’s also much more house than my husband and I need. Too big.
