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In January 1993, my wife and I were scheduled to attend a real estate convention being held in Washington, D.C. At that time, we managed about twenty rental properties where the owners lived in the D.C. area, most of the owners being current or former military/civil service personnel that had held on to a former home they had purchased during a tour of duty in Hawaii. I did some research using tax office data and found that there were about 500 absentee owners of Oahu rental properties living in the greater DC area. We decided to go Washington, D.C. a few days early and make ourselves available to meet with them. We sent them a series of letters and for three days there was a seemingly endless stream of visitors to our Key Bridge Marriott meeting room. We thought most of the absentee owners would be interested in discussing property values, rental rates, 1031 exchanges, etc. and while there was considerable interest in such real estate topics, there was equal interest in discussing what’s been happening lately on Oahu . . . what kind of shenanigans has Mayor Frank Fasi been up to, how are the ‘Bows doing, what restaurants have opened/shut, how’s the traffic, etc.
This experience gave rise to our quarterly newsletter with this being our 58th issue. I have written all 58 of them. I frequently attempt to project the Oahu Housing Market and readily admit to having been wrong on various occasions . . . both ways . . . up as well as down. In my defense, the other local analysts have been wrong too; e.g., the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization along with the Bank of Hawaii Chief Economist projected last September that housing prices would be flat on Oahu during 2008. Six months later, in March 2008, they acknowledged they had been wrong and began predicting a 3% decline in 2008 along with another 2% decline in 2009. It will be interesting to see what they say in their September forecast following their very negative June quarterly update.
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In January 1993, my wife and I were scheduled to attend a real estate convention being held in Washington, D.C. At that time, we managed about twenty rental properties where the owners lived in the D.C. area, most of the owners being current or former military/civil service personnel that had held on to a former home they had purchased during a tour of duty in Hawaii. I did some research using tax office data and found that there were about 500 absentee owners of Oahu rental properties living in the greater DC area. We decided to go Washington, D.C. a few days early and make ourselves available to meet with them. We sent them a series of letters and for three days there was a seemingly endless stream of visitors to our Key Bridge Marriott meeting room. We thought most of the absentee owners would be interested in discussing property values, rental rates, 1031 exchanges, etc. and while there was considerable interest in such real estate topics, there was equal interest in discussing what’s been happening lately on Oahu . . . what kind of shenanigans has Mayor Frank Fasi been up to, how are the ‘Bows doing, what restaurants have opened/shut, how’s the traffic, etc.
This experience gave rise to our quarterly newsletter with this being our 58th issue. I have written all 58 of them. I frequently attempt to project the Oahu Housing Market and readily admit to having been wrong on various occasions . . . both ways . . . up as well as down. In my defense, the other local analysts have been wrong too; e.g., the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization along with the Bank of Hawaii Chief Economist projected last September that housing prices would be flat on Oahu during 2008. Six months later, in March 2008, they acknowledged they had been wrong and began predicting a 3% decline in 2008 along with another 2% decline in 2009. It will be interesting to see what they say in their September forecast following their very negative June quarterly update.
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