Report-Attitudes

--------------------------------------SPECIAL REPORT

------------------Attitudes

This Special Report is inspired by the huge numbers of people who are "discovering"

East Hawaii and rushing to buy homes here . . . often for the wrong reasons. Some of

the following is already covered to some degree in Affordable Paradise, but it is so

important that I decided to expand it with some renewed emphasis.

Hawai'i is about people. As a comparison, one might say that California's infamous

Silicon Valley is about money and the things money can buy. Of course, both of

these concepts are generalizations, but they begin the painting of an essential picture

of Hawai'i.

Hawai'i is about love, friendship, peace of mind, and most important of all, aloha.

Aloha includes love, friendship and peace of mind, but is also far more than that.

Aloha is a feeling so powerful that to some people it is nearly overwhelming, yet

to others it seems to be just another word -- maybe coined by the Hawai'i Visitor's

Bureau.

Do you feel a special feeling around Christmastime where you live now? Not too

many years ago, even in the hearts of the big cities, there was just "something in the

air." It remains today, but probably not as pervasive as it once was. People just seem

to be more friendly, more open. They take the time to greet others on the street, make

eye contact where at other times they were too preoccupied with other things to bother.

That feeling is a very brief description of what aloha feels like all year long. In the

Hawai'ian tradition, it is essential to give back to your community. It is a part of

everyone's life to give of themselves, not only to their families and friends, but to the

community and to the land and the sea. There is no word in the Hawai'ian language

for "consumer."

How does all this relate to the topic of attitudes? Aloha is the foundation of the attitude

of the Islands. Mainland attitudes are, with some exceptions of course, quite different.

Some of the exceptions are that generally, the more rural the area you hail from, the

more closely your community's attitude might resemble Island attitude. Conversely,

the more densely populated your community is, the less likely it is that you get to enjoy

anything similar to Island attitude.

Let me tell you a little story. We have been managing 14 vacation rentals for a while

now, and believe it or not, conservatively 75% of our rental guests are here looking for

property. Many of those looking actually buy something before they return home. This

means we're getting a lot of new people here, and the increased auto traffic all over the

Island is testimony to that fact. Fortunately, the great majority of the newcomers are

terrific people who feel Hawai'i in their hearts and just know in their knowingness that

hey must be here. But there have been a few who are not of that kind.

We have seen a few folks come here from the fast-money places on the Mainland and

when they see the reasonable prices of homes here, all they can think of is profit.

Making a fast buck off of the next guy who comes along. To them, Hawai'i is just another

place, but one in which they feel they can make some easy money.

I like to use this anecdote: Hawai'i has been said to be a cruel hostess to those who

should not be here. We have seen examples of this over and over. We used to just

listen to stories from Hawai'ian friends about how Madam Pele, the Volcano Godess,

has taken care of the profiteers. We've seen the results of that, too. But we have seen

even more in-our-faces results of people who have come here for the fast buck. They

don't stay long, because for some reason they cannot understand, they simply can't

make things work for themselves here as they are used to on the Mainland.

We've seen people come here and get into a frenzy to buy themselves a vacation rental.

When asked if they were planning on retiring here one day, they would say, oh no, we

just see how we can buy this place for nearly nothing down and have the rental guests

pay for it, and that is good real estate wealth-building practice.

There are few logical explanations for the ultimate failure of most of these kinds of

ventures, but after living here for years, we can almost always see it coming. Often

the first signs are when these profit-oriented people start complaining about how things

work here. The next phase will be the complaints about how difficult it is to get anything

done right. How undependable and incompetent the local workers are.

We've experienced vacation rentals that simply won't book. The photos look fine in

their Internet presentations -- maybe even better than others on the same Web site, but

nobody ever inquires about them. Why is that? Again, no logical explanation. Things

just work differently here. We believe that most people can feel things from their

hearts that they never become really conscious of, among them perhaps some negative

energy from an Internet presentation. They don't stop to ask, "Why do I feel this way?"

Somehow, it just doesn't feel good and they go on to something else.

We've tried our best to explain this phenomenon to people we saw were clearly heading

down this un-aloha path, and they probably thought we were nuts. Psycho-babble, right?
We've also seen lava flows take out areas exactly as predicted by the local Hawai'ian

elders after their warnings of improper development went unheeded.

No logical explanation.

Hawai'i is a very special place. It is a place of awesome mana (spiritual power), and

we encourage those who feel and honor the mana to respectfully investigate the

possibilities for themselves here. But with all due respect for those who do not, we

encourage them to seek other environs. We encourage all to honor the Hawai'ian tradition

of giving back to the community, which means way more than simply not seeing Hawai'i

as a potential for financial profit. That is certainly one aspect of it, however.

Affordable Paradise was written not as a blanket invitation to come to Hawai'i. The

reason behind this book was more of a reality-check to those who were coming here

anyway. I get quite a bit of terrific feedback from readers, and the folks for whom I feel

I have done the greatest service are those who tell me that after reading the book,

they changed their minds about moving here. A failed effort to "move to Paradise"

can be an emotionally devastating experience, especially to those who search for reasons.

With much aloha,

Skip Thomsen