In Search for Housing

Even though we started about 8 or 9 months from our arrival date finding short term housing proved to be more tricky than anticipated. But we quickly found that our stay was during the “high season”. This meant prices were higher, and places to stay were getting booked way in advance.

Narrowing the Search
There are many places to stay on the island, north, south, east and anywhere in-between. For this experience, we wanted as rural as possible, but still very close to the beach. We determined that the north shore would be a close fit, if we could find a place close to the beach and with low density housing. Our objective was to be close to Hanalei and as close to the end of the road as possible. The road ends at the Napali coast, in a Haena State Park. The north shore gets the most rain, but has gorgeous beaches (and lots of them) and amazing foliage, hikes, and waterfalls. So we narrowed our search to this area.

Budget
We originally set a budget of $1400 per month for rent, but quickly found this would only work in Lihue (the “city”) or other areas near Kapaa (east shore). We ended up increasing our budget to $2500 per month after seeing several studios in Haena, which we could hopefully negotiate with. Between my working remotely, saved up vacation time and Jen’s summer paychecks, we crunched the numbers and found that we could make this new budget work if we saved up in advance. Afterall our trip was shorter, so we could afford to spend a little more.

Length of Stay
Originally we planned to stay for a few months, which I believe would have made housing a lot more affordable. With only 6 weeks to work with, most longer term rentals were out of the question. So we ended up having to negotiate based on weekly rates, with a discount for longer stays.

House Sitting
We thought it might be possible to find a house sitting gig for someone’s second home or beach house. We posted our profiles on a few websites and posted an ad in the community section of craiglist, but no hits. I found a few ads on craiglist for house sitting, but they were not very far in advance (a week or two) and we didn’t want to wait until the week before we land to try and figure out where we’d be sleeping. So we ruled out the house sitting option.

Vacant Real Estate Home
Being a broker, I know things don’t always sell as fast as the owner would like. So I planned to email and call several brokers and agents and plant a seed for our arrival. We could move out on a days notice and would cooperate with showings of course. Many vacant properties are furnished, so we’d have everything we needed. We didn’t end up going this route, but I thought it might have landed us an affordable place. Since this sort of arrangement can’t really be setup months in advance it was just too last minute for us.

Camping
We looked into camping which is very affordable! It’s just a few dollars a night. We could make a Wal-Mart run on arrival and pick up everything we need for the cost of one night in a nice hotel. But as we considered this more, we determined it would be very difficult for me to work remotely while beach camping (sand + computers = disaster). In addition, cell reception was patchy on the north shore, and a cell internet connection would be frustrating at best.

Morning Emails
I (Ryan) wrote a nice email that spelled out who we were, when we were coming and attached photo of us. I emailed about 30 owners. Each morning I would check craigslist and find places that were no more than 30% above our budget. I got some responses, but most of the responses were very firm on price, and not willing to work with us much. I also emailed a few local churches, to ask for word of mouth places, but got no response.

Jen ended up finding our place on vrbo.com. She emailed the owners and after a few back and forth messages she convinced them to let us rent for 30 days at a slight discount. The place is right in Haena and the location is perfect for us. For the remaining time Jen found us another rental down in Poipu, the more resort-like area.

We were surprised at the lack of negotiating we found! Hawaiian landlords are tough. We also didn’t like the fact that you have to pay the entire amount up front to reserve the unit. But we sent a check and hoped it would all work out and that the place actually did exist for our arrival in June.