Open House Experience

Open House

Searching for a house can be a daunting task.   There were certain criteria that was included when choosing houses to look at. The search was narrowed down to family dwellings of two bedroom houses with 2 baths with a price max of $700,000.  With the basics narrowed three houses were chosen.  Two in the Nuuanu area and one in Kaimuki.  These locations were chosen from the perspective of a person employed downtown. Here we will discuss the evaluation of these three houses based on five personal criteria of construction, aesthetics, security, convenient locations, and realtors. The first category included construction of the building which was subcategorized into date built, if and when it was renovated, roofing conditions, wall conditions, and utility connects. The Second category included over all aesthetics and its subcategories of land, view, flooring, kitchen, bathrooms, off street parking, and noise levels of nearby traffic and neighbors.  The third category was security which included alarms, screen doors, electric shutters, fencing, and known crime in the neighborhood.   The fourth category was convenient location and included proximity to schools, stores, gyms, and hospitals.  The fifth category included was the Realtor.  The simple fact is that the biggest factors in selling a house is the quality of the real-estate agent. This category was included to show the importance of a good agent.

The first house I looked at was priced at $595,000.  When using the checklist of categories for evaluation not many of them were found to be sufficient.  Looking at the category, construction, the date build was in 1928 and it was last remodeled in 2003.  There were already cracks in the walls and the foundation appeared warn and potentially problematic. Their appeared to be mold issues in one bathroom which indicated a  ventilation problem.  The evaluation of the second category, asesthetics, passed sufficiently.  However, the neighbor was blaring loud music and security wise its located in a neighborhood know for crime.  Now, the Realtor, Tahiti was friendly and personable. She only listed minimal positive facts about the house plus a little about the history which included the year build and last remodel. She appeared new to the industry, lacking in real estate facts and being very vague.  The house was given an average evaluation based on the categories.

The second house was located in Kaimuki.  This house was priced at $798,00, which is significantly higher than the max chosen for evaluation. However, since it was also a three bedroom with a separate studio, the potential of renting rooms came to mind to offset the cost. When shown the house there were many alarming conserns.  The broker Vernon of Vernco Properties informed my friend immediately upon entering the dwelling of the many permit violations included in the house. The kitchen was built without a permit, which also happens to be the only selling point to this house. It also has a studio built off the back that does not have a permit. Plus, there were renovations done to add another bathroom that were never permitted. He informed my friend of all of these things and then proceeded to say “The other thing is it is too loud because it is next to the highway so if you want to keep looking around you can.” Vernon never spoke to me personally.  His associate Rebecca only asked me to sign in and then never said anything else.  So the interaction with the agents was very unwelcoming. This was an automatic fail in the evaluation of the construction and the Realtor. Another thing that was noticed is the miss representation of parking spaces.  The flier misrepresented it twice on the front page stating in bold “6+ cars” yet in the box next to it “3 Parking Spaces” is bulleted. Then after arriving Vernon said there were only two parking spots because the rest belonged to the house in front. Once again, total fail for the Realtors.  Moving on, the only thing that ranked in aesthetics was the kitchen. Its located in a good neighborhood and tucked behind another house so it passed the security evaluation. Plus, it had convenient locations around it that were suffice for that category.  However, when evaluating the place as a whole based on the five categories listed earlier, this house ranks very low especially because of the Broker and Realtor.