Relocating to Hawaii

Honolulu consistently ranks in the “Best” lists among major magazines. Fortune Magazine rated Honolulu as the #67 best place to live in 2009.
It also rated it as the one of the Best places for a long life. Men’s Health just rated Honolulu, HI as #1 in the category of “Blues-proof towns.”

Business Week listed Honolulu at Number 1 in the US from a study done by Mercer Consulting. Among all cities worldwide:
No. 29: Honolulu – U.S. | 2007 rank: No. 27
2011 Quality of Living worldwide city rankings – Mercer survey . Canadian cities dominate the top of the ranking for the Americas. Vancouver (5) has the best quality of living and is followed by Ottawa (14), Toronto (15) and Montreal (22). Honolulu (29) and San Francisco (30) are the highest-ranking US cities.

GDP: $13.86 trillion (2007 est.)
Population: 303,824,646 (total country); 380,000 (total city)
Life expectancy: 78.14 years

Relocating to Hawaii

A handy calculator shows you how to figure out the difference between where you live and Honolulu. For example, if you make $50,000 in Los Angeles, you will need to make $53,523 in Honolulu, since the cost of living is 7.7% higher here. Here’s the catch: employers in Honolulu typically pay less than employers in Los Angeles. That explains a lot, doesn’t it? Anyone that has tried to get a job here knows that pay rates are typically lower. It’s due to the sheer number of retail and tourism jobs, which tend to bring the median wage down. The closest similar income is DC – Washington.

If you want to get a good comparison of Hawaii home costs compared to the mainland, see UHERO. They have data on domestic and Japanese arrivals, employment, tourism, inflation, growth (including Honolulu’s CPI or Consumer Price Index) and forecasts. Good stuff.

When relocating, it’s very important to know about place where you are planning to move. Sometimes people regret relocating to a particular place, because though the place looked beautiful and tempted them to move here when they visited it as a tourist, actually staying in this place is a tough task, taking into consideration factors such as housing costs, economy, standard of living, etc. Therefore, before planning to move or relocating, one should do a thorough research about the place.

Moving to Hawaii

Maybe you’re thinking of buying your first home in Hawaii, or perhaps you’re relocating to Hawaii from another state. Either way, it’s important that you educate yourself on Hawaii before shopping for a home and mortgage. Here are some things you will need to know before buying a home here.

The first item to consider is that Hawaii homes for sale are much more expensive than the national average. The median price of a home in Hawaii (PDF) is $582,000. It appears to have peaked in the $643,500 range in 2007, with Maui peaking (and plumetting) higher (and fluctuating more). Homes in Hawaii doubled in price over the last 5 years. In hindsight, everyone sees that they appreciated at rates so high that they were unsustainable at those rates. As a result, income levels in many parts of Hawaii are too low to purchase a median-priced home with a conventional loan. This ratio, of the median sales price to median household income is known as the housing affordability index.  The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index: Complete History by Metropolitan Area (1991-Current)Excel file contains a complete history of the HOI by metropolitan area going back to 1991. As of the 2nd quarter of 2011, it stood at 40. The last time it was at this level was in 2005.

Aloha,

Frank

Relocating to Hawaii