When we began our Big Island property search in earnest in mid-2004, we really didn't have any particular location in mind. In fact the only premises we started with were: Kona's expensive and Hilo's wet. We discovered that these, like all generalizations, contained elements of truth seasoned with large quantities of equine effluent .

We heard a lot of comments questioning the very wisdom of making the move under any circumstances - "you don't know anybody there", "it's so far away!", "they don't like haoles", "you'll feel cramped living on an island", "you'll never see your family again!!", plagues!!!, floods!!!, pestilence!!!, locusts!!!, boils!!!, fire!!!!, brimstone!!!!, "THE VOLCANO!!!". . .  GAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!

Hawaii's Big Island really is a big island. At nearly 4,100 sq. miles, it's larger than the land mass of the rest of the state combined. It's twice the size of Delaware and nearly four times bigger than Rhode Island. When I lived on much smaller O'ahu years ago, I never felt island bound nor developed "rock fever" so I can't see it happening now. Neither can Pam. Besides the mainland is only 5 hours away.

After reading all the reference and travel books we could get our hands on and studying every available newspaper website, we pretty much narrowed things down to the Puna District (roughly the southeast corner). Our decision was based on several factors: principally the price of raw land and the proximity of amenities. The Kona side of the island has the amenities and ideal weather but real estate prices have escalated to the point that we were priced out of the market - at least for the type of property we were interested in i.e. at least a half acre. Moreover, outside of the resorts and gated communities, it also appeared largely barren  and not particularly attractive to our eyes.

This was also true of the Kohala district on the northern point of the island. The Hamakua Coast above Hilo is very lush but seemed a bit too wet. The south - Ka'u - we really didn't consider at all due to it's relative isolation. We live in a rural area here in California and enjoy the lifestyle, but we're not into driving an hour or more just to hit Safeway.

Puna seemed to offer a good variety of topographies and climates and most all subdivisions were within a reasonable distance of Hilo.

At about this time, we were introduced to a man here in Oroville by a friend of Pam's who has bought and sold land on the Big Island since the mid-1970's and he proved to be a gold mine of local info. In his opinion the area around the community of Mountain View in general and the subdivision of Fern Acres in particular was the garden spot of the island. I'm sure it's pure coincidence that he felt this way and also had property for sale there. At any rate he encouraged us to check it out for ourselves and to certainly not buy anything sight-unseen.

We also spent hours a day for most of the summer trolling the Multiple Listing Service searching for deals and educating ourselves on the local market. By September we felt we were ready to fly over for a couple of weeks and do some business.

We'd prepared a list of nearly 30 properties in 7 different subdivisions to look at and were confident we'd have no trouble getting a quick deal done.

That mood lasted about a day once we arrived.

Practically every one of our possibles was either already in escrow, the location was wrong, or the price had risen.

We'd arranged to rent 2 vacation homes in separate parts of Puna for this trip to give us a feel for different areas and varying climates. The first week was spent at a place in Nanawale Estates near the town of Pahoa at an elevation of about 600', and the remainder of the time right in Fern Acres (where BTW, we highly recommend Jeff Hatfield's Guesthouse ) at around the 1600' mark. Based on our experience, higher seemed to offer more of what we were after than lower. Areas close to the ocean were hotter, drier, and more humid; with  mosquitoes very evident. Further up the hill (mauka) it was cooler and rained more with less bugs. We also discovered a few interesting tidbits that 'they don't teach in school' and that I'm sure the real estate industry doesn't like to talk about.

Throughout all of lower Puna below about 1000' elevation or so we saw examples of a beautiful tree. Some of these specimens were enormous: well over 100' in height with branches forming a canopy covering half an acre or more.  We thought at first it would be wonderful to have a place with many of them on the property. Fortunately, one of the Realtors we were working with set us straight. What we were admiring was the  Moluccan albizia  a relative of the mimosa or silk tree. This native of Indonesia is basically a weed. A gigantic weed. A very fast growing gigantic weed. A weed that while huge, is notably weak in its structure with brittle wood and therefore tends to drop branches in anything resembling a strong wind. In other words, not the sort of tree to site a house under. I wouldn't even care to speculate on the amount of $$$ required to log - and that's what would have to be done - one of these monsters. It's fortunate we found out in time, because we were about to make an offer on a lot covered with 'em.

Another little surprise was the Coqui Frog. This tiny import from Puerto Rico is about the size of a quarter. It gets its name from the "Ko-Kee" call of the male. For such a small amphibian it certainly has a loud voice, and a big group of them make a lot of noise.

Finally, it was obvious that when most of the Puna subdivisions were plotted in the late 1950s through the 1970s, the point of the exercise was sell now, worry about infrastructure later. For example, most areas of rural Hawai'i do not have piped-in water and instead rely on a catchment system whereby rainwater is collected from the roof, stored in a cistern, and pumped to the house much like with a well. This sounds primitive and I suppose in a way it is. I does work well though, as long as there's sufficient rainfall. During periods of drought water deliveries are needed. Roads in many areas are rough at best. It's not too bad if pavement is nearby, but getting to some "neighborhoods" requires traveling 5 miles or more along poorly (if at all) maintained gravel or cinder. There are also areas without utilities of any kind available i.e. electric power or telephone service and some of these are anything  but inexpensive. For example half acre parcels near or on the ocean in Wa'a Wa'a are currently being offered for upwards of $275,000. That's a lotta cash for the privilege of running your appliances and TV off solar panels, batteries and a generator . . . even if the views are spectacular.

All of this didn't dissuade us though. Every place we've ever lived had it's good and bad points, and the Big Island has way more pluses than minuses.       

Fern Acres was the first locale we seriously considered but found it somewhat disappointing in that virtually all the lots are 2 acres in size with dimensions of 100' wide x 871' deep. We felt that while the overall square footage of the lots was fine, they were too narrow for our purposes. Construction setbacks per the county are 20' front and back, and 15' on the sides. Since the house we're thinking of building is over 70' wide, it would have to be oriented perpendicular or, at least at an angle, to the street, or parallel  to the sides; something we didn't want to do. Everything else was great. Electricity, phone, cable, pavement. If only the lots were even 25' wider, we'd have jumped on the deal!

This issue also caused us to pass on other subdivisions with lots of similar widths - principally Mauna Loa Estates and Leilani Estates. The latter, by the way, was probably the most attractive of the many we looked at. With the exception of one small corner where all the trees look dead, it is very lush with great roads, all utilities (except county water), home mail delivery and CC&R's just restrictive enough to keep things neat and tidy without unduly cramping one's personal style.

Throughout our 2 weeks, we drove past the road leading to Eden Roc Estates dozens of times without stopping to investigate. This was mostly due to the adverse comments we'd heard that caused us to arbitrarily ignore the place: bad roads, no power available, abandoned junk cars everywhere, blah, blah, blah. We were having little luck in our search elsewhere though, and besides it was right next door to Fern Acres so there wasn't anything to lose by taking a peek. Our first run through was cursory since it was the end of the day and light was fading, but we were able to make several observations: Most of the cross streets were indeed gravel, but both of the main north-south streets - Ohia and Palainui Avenues - definitely were paved; there seemed to be phone poles on all streets and power poles on most; and we didn't see any abandoned cars. Our first look was encouraging enough to convince us to return later for a more in depth eyeball of the place. We also checked plat and county TMK (usually referred to as APN or Assessors Parcel Number in other localities) maps to see what the lots were like size wise. In this we were pleasantly surprised.

Eden Roc's total area consists of about 1800 lots (almost all of which are 1 acre) with the overwhelming majority laid out in one of 3 different dimensions: 130' x 334', 141' x 307', or 167' x 260'. Smaller by half than Fern Acres parcels, but to our minds much more sensibly proportioned. The subdivision is about 3½ miles long by 3/4 mile wide, and roughly 20 miles from Hilo on the slopes of Kilauea. Elevations range from 1700' to 1900'.

The next morning we grabbed the nearest convenient  Realtor and had him check to see what was available. There were only about a half dozen lots of any size for sale. As it happened, two of them were side by side properties on a corner that had just been listed the previous day. They were on pavement, electricity & phone; and were the 167' x 260' size which we thought was best.

Off we went to check them out. On this trip we paid close attention to the whole area. We drove up, down, and across every road in Eden Roc. As big as it is, it is very sparsely populated and developed. Less than 300 of the lots have homes on them, and there are fewer than 500 residents. We looked hard for evidence of trash houses and junk automobiles, and although we did find a few, it was no worse than other subdivisions and vastly better than most. When we came to the corner parcels, we thought we'd found our special place. They were nicely wooded with ohia trees, hapu'u ferns, and wild orchids but not so dense as to be a jungle. The land appeared to be fairly level so clearing and drainage shouldn't be a huge problem. We also noted that the person owning the property across the street had done a wonderful job of landscaping and that added to the visual appeal of vicinity. Other than that, there didn't seem to be any other homes within probably a half mile (although it's hard to really say, because people tend to build back from the road for privacy).

Eden Roc looked good to us and we were scheduled to leave the next day, so we headed back to the real estate office and had the agent write offers on both lots.

To make this long boring tale short, the offer was accepted on October 1st and the deal closed November 12th.

It's probably going to be some time before we're able to move; contractors and builders are currently booked for months (or longer), but at least we've now got our own 2 acre "piece of the roc" .

©2005 Gene and Pam Leis
 

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