Kona Kohala Blog

First, housing in West Hawaii.  North Kona and South Kohala continue to see increasing sales as prices continue their decline.  More and more people are seeing Hawaii, West Hawaii especially, as the ideal place to retire full time or just part of the year when it gets nasty at "home".

We hear about those people who are "upside down" or "underwater" on their homes and investment properties but the smart ones don't always, actually, seldom, make the news.  These are the people who have lived within their means, who have put money away each month and who didn't use their homes as ATM machines during the run-up of property values early on in this decade.

Now they're faced with reasonably priced properties, low interest rates and choices, wonderful, wonderful choices.  Many of these budget minded people are even coming to the table with cash for their purchase, either all of it or the lion's share.  I can't help but think these are the people who grew up in relatively functional families where they learned early on the value of hard work and of saving.

We're also seeing this increased sales activity in all price ranges where just recently it was just in the low end products.  What's still missing is the upper middle class, the $600K to $900K home buyers.  These seem to be the people hit the hardest in the recession.  While many of the lower paid workers with more general skill sets have been able to find work, those specialized in management and mid-management are having a harder go of it.  It's also homes in this range that we're now seeing come on as foreclosures and short sales.  These folks were able to hold out longer and didn't want to tarnish their credit history.  The last thing they want to do is walk away but sometimes, there aren't many choices.

Speaking of choices, Obama could choose not to keep pushing Bail outs through congress. Also, internal White House documents that were leaked to Rep. Bill Posey, R-FL, and posted on his web site Friday indicate that Labor Department, Health & Human Services and the IRS all agree that by 2013, 51% of employers will have to relinquish their current health care.  That number is 66% for small businesses.  I could swear Obama said we'd be able to keep our health care, hmmm.

Back to the bail outs, it seems Obama owes a lot of unions a lot of favors and one way to repay them is to keep asking for more bail out money.  So far, out of the $862 Billion bail out funds, $100Billion was set aside for education.  About $34.7 Billion of that hasn't been spent yet but now he's asking for an additional $50 Billion of which another $23 Billion will go to union educators.

It's interesting to note that the number of students has increased by just 6% in the past decade while the number of teachers has gone up 15.8%.  I'm wondering what has happened to SAT scores with all these additional teachers?

Just a quick note on Obamacare; it's only been around 4 months and we've been told it's going to cut debt (he told us we'd be able to keep out health providers, too) and already, it needs a bail out.  Obama is requesting another $400 Billion for Obamacare.  When I was growing up, the only place we heard the number billion was in math class.  Now it rolls of politco tongues with no hesitation what so ever.

Can't wait until November.