Nick Kawakami

Real Estate Service Powered by Innovation

Island Living

Alexa vs. Google: My Experience

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During the Black Friday bonanza, both Amazon & Google were discounting their voice assistant speaker systems, prompting many people to take the plunge and begin talking to their devices. Being an Amazon Echo owner for several months myself, I also took that plunge and decided to purchase a Google Home as well to see the differences. This post is some notes from my experience, as well as my thoughts on the whole smart speaker market in general. [Read more…] about Alexa vs. Google: My Experience

No Fear in Homebuyers, Despite Halloween! 🎃

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Happy Fall Everyone! The leaves are beginning to turn brown…well, the leaves that are dead are brown, but the rest are still green #fallinhawaii. In fact, thanks to a couple HEAVY rain storms, the island is extra green and lush!! Speaking of green, green arrows mean median prices are up along with closed sales! Let’s take a look at the stats for October and see if there’s anything new to report… [Read more…] about No Fear in Homebuyers, Despite Halloween! 🎃

Don’t Do That: Self-Leaked Passwords

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From time to time, I’ll see a story pop by that reads something like, “Former CIA Director Assures Us He Did Not Just Tweet His Password” or “Sean Spicer Just Tweeted Something That Looks an Awful Lot Like a Password.” And up until now, I’ve always thought, “Idiots! How can you be so dumb to send out your password?!” Well, today I found out. On today’s episode of “don’t do that,” I show you how easy it is to send someone your password. [Read more…] about Don’t Do That: Self-Leaked Passwords

The Real Estate Balloon Keeps Soaring Higher! 🎈

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What!? Fall already!? School is back in session, the REAL summer heat has set in, and real estate prices continue to set year-over-year gains. A quick shout-out before we get into the numbers, as my thoughts are with all of the people affected by the unprecedented weather in the southeast United States. I have a lot of friends and family affected by all of it, and ask that everyone do their best to help out those in need this fall! Anyway, on to the stats… [Read more…] about The Real Estate Balloon Keeps Soaring Higher! 🎈

5 Ways to Freshen Up Your Bathroom

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The bathroom is one of the most popular rooms of the house to renovate. But, you don’t have to overhaul it to make it sparkle like new. Below are five tips to enhance the appearance of your bathroom without undertaking an expensive and intensive remodel. Forward this information on to family and friends who are looking to update their bathrooms.

Records Were Meant to Be Broken

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You may have seen the recent article titled, “Prices Through the Roof,” in the July 7th issue of the Star-Advertiser. Besides the fact that they used the exact same title, almost to the day last year, it’s a headline that will catch some eyes and sell some papers. While I’ve been talking about this climb for a while now, let’s take a look at the June numbers to see just how “through the roof” we are.

The biggest number on the board is the median sales price of single-family homes at $795,000. That’s to say, if we were to take all of the closings last month, put them on a list in order of sales price, and looked at the one smack in the middle, it would have sold for $795,000. On its own, that’s a big number and eerily close to $800,000. But if we look at the entire year as a whole, the median price is only up 3.2% year to date. Versus June 2016, which was up 6.1% year to date, that median number may seem large, but the overall market is showing slower growth. Yes, we may see that median price jump over $800,000 in the near future, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start predicting a million dollar median price by 2022.

The most surprising number, in my opinion, is the number of closed sales in the single-family home market. In June, that number jumped 14.2% over last year, and continues up year-to-date. With all the industry talk about limited inventory, the number of closed sales continue to climb. This is especially surprising as the months of inventory (the number of months it would take to sell everything, if nothing else came on the market) dropped 10% to 2.7 months.

Condos saw their numbers dip a little, but continue to rise year to date. At $400,000 median price for the month of June, and $399,000 median price year-to-date, they are also on track to close the year as expected. I don’t see any real reason to believe that the growth should change, but will be interested to see as a lot of new listings came on the market last month (692, up 18.5% over June 2016, and up 9.8% year-to-date over 2016).

Looking forward, I don’t see any shortage of growth in prices but will be watching the inventory numbers closely. I’ll be looking to see if that ratio between new listings and closed sales still pushes the months of inventory down, or if the high prices start a shift.

Happy July everyone!
Nick