 Welcome to Inside Hawaii Real Estate, a show dedicated to providing up-to-date information used to Hawaii homebuyers, sellers, and investors. I'm Wilton Aka with my co-host, business partner, and wife, Leone Lam, a realtor with over 20 years' experience in various leadership roles in the Hawaii real estate industry. Thanks. Well, I was a lawyer and the former head of a Hawaii title and estro company. And we are full-time realtors working as a team to bring you the latest in Hawaii real estate. And today we have an exciting show for you today. We have a very special guest all the way from the island of Maui, Erin Clapper. And we're going to cover a lot of ground today to talk about Hawaiian language, Hawaiian heritage, the Maui culture, and Maui real estate. So Leone, it's going to be a jam-packed show. And you know, Erin Clapper is a proud graduate of Maui High School, and then she went on to attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa and she got a couple of degrees, one in Hawaiian language and the other in fashion, design, and merchandising. And then now she's the principal broker at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Advantage Realty Valley Isle over in Maui. And she's incredibly passionate about the Hawaiian language and helping island families come home. Welcome, Erin. Hey. Aloha, Leone. Aloha, Leone. Aloha, Will. Thank you so much for having me on today. I'm so excited to be here and so excited to share. Thank you. All right. Welcome, Erin. Welcome, Anna. Aloha. So when did you first start connecting with the Hawaiian language? Is it something that you grew up speaking at home, or can you tell us more about that? Oh, I wish I grew up speaking Hawaiian language. My family did not speak any Hawaiian. I think it started in middle school. I had a social studies teacher who didn't have any Hawaiian. She was this Japanese lady, but she was super passionate about the Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian language. And I think seventh grade was when I had her, and that was when I started becoming a little bit more interested in my heritage, in my culture, and in the Hawaiian language. That is so cool. And you know, I just read an article about a small Hawaiian immersion school right in Wailuku Maui. And they're actually providing families of children that attend the school and the community with classes on Hawaiian language, on grammar, on values, on culture in general. And I think that they're doing that to support the children's learnings at home as well as in the classroom. And I thought that was really cool. And it's clear that we're seeing a resurgence in Hawaiian language much more so over the last several years. What are your thoughts on that? It's so exciting, you know. The Hawaiian culture has a pretty tumultuous history, particularly with, well, including the language, right? Back in the late 1800s, the Hawaiian language was banned. And could you imagine that the language itself, prior to it being a written language, was an oral language? So the example that I like to give is, you know, I make a pumpkin crunch dessert every Christmas, right? And so every Christmas, I get out my recipe and I'm like, okay, I know exactly what ingredients to have, what I need, how long to cook it for. But could you imagine in a culture where everything, where the language is oral? I would have to remember not only that recipe every single Christmas, but everything about my life. So, you know, back then, from it being banned as an oral language, and now with the resurgence, I think back in 1978, the state of Hawaii finally recognized the Hawaiian language as another language of the state, which is incredible. There have been so many great milestones reached with the creation of the Ahapuna Nalau, which is sort of the preschool immersion program. Then they went on to creating an immersion program that allowed kindergartners all the way through high schoolers to complete their education all in Hawaiian. And then in 2002, we had the first college degree earned from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. And then in 2012, kind of one of my favorite, more recent things is the state of Hawaii declared February as Olalua Hawaii Month. So businesses, it's certainly gained popularity over the years, but businesses across the state participate. You'll see signs up where they'll have some of their major items labeled in Hawaiian. People make an effort to speak more Hawaiian. There's tons of events. So it's been so empowering and exciting to see this resurgence of the language. Wow, that is fantastic. And in terms of the Hawaiian language, there's a lot of transplants or visitors. Of course, we say aloha, ahalo, whether it's in an email, but in terms of the proper pronunciation of some of the words, can we take a deeper dive into maybe some of the words that we encounter and maybe even the, how many letters and vowels and consonants are there in the Hawaiian language? Yeah, we can breeze through this. We'll pull up the first slide that just demonstrates the Hawaiian language is made up of 13 letters. And okina anakaha ko. So the okina is a glottal stop. And the kaha ko sort of makes you elongate your vowel. So these are the, this is the Hawaiian alphabet. And then the next slide I've got a couple of just common words, words like kane. So the pronunciation is super important, right? So the first word, people always say kane, but you can hear the difference when I say kane versus kane. So that's the kaha ko, where it elongates that vowel. One of the tricks of pronouncing Hawaiian words is to make sure you say every single letter. So I think a very common word that people know is lei, but you probably hear it as lei versus lei. So if you can hear the difference where I pronounced that last letter, that last I, that's actually the correct way to pronounce it. And then a lot of people say lani, it's actually lani, so heaven. And then Hawaii, that's what we probably hear most often. The correct pronunciation is actually Hawaii. So if you just make an effort to pronounce every single letter, that'll set you up for success. Wow, that was awesome. Like, so what role does the Hawaiian language play in your life as a realtor? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's a pretty incredible thing to be a realtor. We get to help people, you know, find their dream homes and start their families and just help set them up for a life that's just full of great memories. And, you know, being part of a community. And so for me, it's really important that whether I'm helping local families or whether I'm helping families that are moving here from the mainland, it's really, really important to me that they find that connection between the language, the culture and the people. So whether it's encouraging my clients to understand the history of their neighborhood or how to pronounce their street name correctly, I usually like to make sure that I educate them just a little bit on now that they're going to be part of this community. It's their responsibility to be a part of it and to, you know, play a respectful role in being here in Hawaii. And Erin, you know, just going back to the first slide, was there only like 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet? So 12 and then the Okina is sometimes considered the 13th letter. Oh, wow. OK. Got it. Got it. I do have a little slide that has a couple commonly pronounced neighborhoods here. Oh, yes. That's all kind of fun. All right. So this will be a little pronunciation tutorial for you folks. So most often we hear people say Honolulu, right? They say, oh, we're going to go to Honolulu for vacation. The correct pronunciation because it's H-O-N-O is Honolulu. So again, just pronouncing every single letter. This is a fun one. I think this is probably the word that gets the most action, right? The like, like highway. So actually, like, like. This one, Hana, you know, if you've ever been on the road to Hana on Maui, it's that windy road takes you two and a half hours. It's worth it. You get to see so many beautiful waterfalls and ponds. And by the end of it, you're getting the most delicious banana bread you've ever had. If you stop at the little grandma's store on the side of the road. But just to explain how to pronounce the difference. So Hana or people say Hana, oh, I try and Hana. No, no, no, let's practice this one. Hana and then Haleakala. I like to pronounce that one because of course I'm here on Maui, but Haleakala, I hear that a lot. Haleakala. And then I think I already talked about Hawaii. So we hear Hawaii a lot, but the correct pronunciation Hawaii. You know, you you named a lot of landmarks and things on the island of Maui. And you talked about Haleakala. You talked about the banana bread at the end of Hana Road and things like that. So like, what else do you feel like makes Maui so special? Yeah, you know, if we can pull up that map of Maui, Maui is kind of broken up into six different general areas. We have the North Shore, East Maui, which is the Hana area, upcountry, which is Kula, Pukulani, Makawal. We have South Maui, which a lot of people who have come here on vacation are familiar with, you have Kihe and Wailea in South Maui. You have Central Maui, which is where the airport is, Costco, Target, Walmart, and then West Maui. So you're Lahaina, Kaanapali, and Nipili. So, you know, what I love about Maui is that there are so many different demographics, there are so many different climates, different environments, you really have the best of both worlds. If you were here, let's say the beginning of January, where it was really, really cold and you caught a little bit of snow on the top of Haleakala, where else could you go? We're in a matter of two and a half or three hours. You could be from standing on the top of a mountain in snow to all the way down in 80 degree water on the beach. I don't think there are very many places like that. But if you catch a snowy day on Maui, that's possible. But, you know, we have so much to offer here. There are fantastic restaurants, fantastic beaches. There are amazing hikes. And I really do think that part of what makes Maui so special is the people. You know, a lot of times people who are not from here will say, Maui, you either love Maui or it'll spit you up a hole if you weren't from, you know, if it wasn't meant to be for you to be here. And so I do believe that, you know, I also tell my clients that Maui is what you make of it, you know, are you exploring? Are you getting to know? Are you being respectful? And if so, then, you know, Maui could certainly work for you. And we'd be happy to have you here as long as you're playing your part in the community. But I love this island. If you haven't been, I would encourage you to come and visit. I also have a list of fun things to do if you need any recommendations for best bakery or best Thai restaurant or best hike. You know, every time I visit Maui, I do feel like I mean, it's bigger. I mean, it's a big island, but at the same time, there's only like two or two hundred and fifty thousand people. Is that right, Maui? Compared to your walk, there's a little bit like... Well, I think you're better with population stats than I am. OK, that's OK. But I know in terms of population, Maui is, you know, much smaller in terms of numbers than Oahu and I always feel the community involvement. Is there like a favorite neighborhood that, you know, that you love, that you would recommend or is it just too difficult for you to choose? Yeah, people ask me this a lot. What's your favorite place on Maui? Where would you want to live? Well, I live where I would want to live. But it's not for everyone, though. So my husband and I, we live in a neighborhood called Piholo. It's upcountry. The lots up there are larger. There it's more ag, more rural. We just got internet a couple years ago. That's how rural it is. We have a little, a little less than an acre, and that's considered a small piece of land where we live. So that's definitely more country. You have Kula. Kula is this beautiful area where you also have some really large lots, but the temperature is lovely. Most people have fireplaces in their home. You get this beautiful, expansive view of central Maui and often, you know, expansive ocean views as well. If you like the beach, Kihé and Walea are probably for you. You're probably no more than a five minute drive to Sandy Beach, no matter where you live in South Maui. That's one of the awesome, awesome things about the Kihé and Walea area. Central Maui, you know, this is kind of the hub. So we have just a lot of families that live in central Maui, right? You have your county buildings, your courthouses, your main shopping in terms of Target, Costco, that sort of thing. And then let's see West Maui. Oh, West Maui, you kind of have a little bit of everything. Still lots of hotels, a little touristy, but you also have some great beaches, some great snorkeling. So I if I could pick a favorite, I think it would be where I live. But I don't think I have a bad thing to say about the rest of the island either. Hey, Erin. OK, so am I pronouncing Maca wow, or is it with them? Well, what's the correct way? Oh, that's such a good question. It's actually a common question. Do you pronounce the V as a W or do you pronounce the W as a V sound or a W sound? There's not really a set set of rules necessarily, but it's Maca wow. So with a W, you're correct. All right, I got it right. So one point for you. Because I wanted to kind of just go back to Hawaiian language, because, you know, if I say Hawaii, you know, with a V, you know, is that I feel like sometimes maybe that's am I saying it correctly? Or is that offending, you know, the Hawaiian language? I mean, yeah, sure. You know, say with, you know, saying for me to say or anyone, you know, like a visitor saying Hawaii. Yeah, so what do you think about that? Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't speak for everyone, but I could certainly give you my own opinion, and that would be that if you were trying to pronounce it, if the intentions behind you trying to pronounce it were respectful and you were doing it with the intention to honor the culture and the language, I'm all for it. I don't think I would be offended now if you were making a mockery of it or, you know, doing it with some sort of negative energy, maybe not so much. But if you were really making an honest effort to to do your part and to play a positive role in it, 100 percent, I'm for it. Yeah. And actually this is just complete. Off the cuff question. But, you know, our kids, when we do shaka, it's our kids that are saying, you know, hey, you're kind of doing it wrong, you know, so you're saying hi or bye to someone. How do you do your shaka? So, well, this, did you not prep on this question? OK, I don't shaka. I think I have the worst shaka in the world. My husband mocks me all the time. So I don't shaka like this is my shaka like the front forward. My husband will just laugh at this. So I don't think there's a right way. I think as long as you're showing shaka with Aloha, you can't go wrong. Thanks for that question. Well, and so what is the Maui real estate market? Like, Erin, can you tell us about that? Yeah, absolutely. You know, during COVID, like a lot of places, particularly here in Hawaii. We saw some unbelievable price points. It was sort of the perfect storm with the low interest rates. We saw quite a few people relocating to Maui because they were coming from areas on the West Coast where they were stuck inside LA, a lot of people from Colorado moved here. They were like, we're stuck inside. We can work from home. Why wouldn't we want to be stuck in a place like Maui instead? So they saw just an astronomical increase in price. And, you know, while that was great, if you were a realtor, it wasn't it's not the best thing. It's not my favorite thing, right? It's not that we don't want to welcome people to Maui, but it's the price has significantly increased. I do have a couple of slides. We can bring up that first statistic slide. Yeah, thank you, single family home. So the July stats were not out yet, but this was from June. So the median sales price for single family homes last year, twenty twenty two was one two five two million two hundred and fifty two thousand. And then you can see there was a little bit of a decline. So the median price for single family homes for June twenty twenty three was a million seven thousand. And then year to date, it kind of evened out a little bit more. So year to date at this time last year, one one seven seven five hundred. And then year to date this year, million one hundred and fifty thousand. So single family homes prices, you know, dipping down just a little bit. But if we take it to the next slide, we have some statistics on the condo market. So you can see that the median sales price for the condo for last June over this June increased quite a bit, as well as the year to date from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three. Now, what we're seeing South Maui and West Maui offers quite a few condominiums that allow short term rentals. So what happens a lot of times we get a lot of snow birds that come in. They have been coming for years, whether they spend just two weeks of Christmas or whether they come from January to March. They come enough where they eventually think, you know what, why don't I just buy a place here and rent it out when I'm not here? So we do have a pretty hot short term rental market. So on average, I normally see about 50 percent of the condos in both South Maui and West Maui offer or automatically allow short term rentals. And that's a really big part of the median sales price on the condo side. And why I think that number is still so, so strong compared to the difference in pricing on the single family home side. Yeah, the condos on Maui, the median sales price is about five hundred thousand. So on Maui, it's I mean, close to a million dollars for condos. Yes. Yes. But when you say short term rentals, you know, that's definitely a hot topic here on Oahu, you know, there's talks about trying to extend the short term anything, you know, below 90 days. What is the kind of the status on Maui? Is it still 30 days or less is considered short term vacation rentals? Actually, anything below six months is considered a short term rental. So if you were looking for a lease of five months and 15 days, that would be considered short term. There's no minimum necessarily. So you could do one month, one day, one week, one month, but anything under six months is considered short term. Now, there are a couple of complexes that have different regulations that they've self-imposed. So there's a couple of complexes that while they allow short term rentals, they don't allow anything under 30 days. But there's no hard and fast rule across the board on that. I would say for those ones, it's complex by complex. Oh, OK, that's that's a little bit different. So that's good to know. Always learning something new and challenges. When you're looking at short term rentals here on Maui, there are a couple of areas that are dealing with some sea sea line, sea shore erosion. So that's one big sort of red flag that we always talk through with our buyers, anybody interested in purchasing oceanfront. There's a lot of diligence to be done. Complex by complex, you know, how well prepared are they for the work that needs to be done in the future? Some complexes have been, you know, collecting from their owners for years in preparation for the adjustments that needs to be made and others haven't. And so, you know, each of these is in sort of a different financial state, as well as some of these complexes were built in the 70s and 80s. So we're kind of coming up on, you know, a natural time in life where there's some major renovations and major upgrades that need to take place. So definitely important to do your diligence and to sort of work with a realtor who understands the caveats of each of these different complexes and what they entail. We definitely see that here in the Wahoo market as well for the condos that are a little bit older and there's special assessments and things like that coming up for those major repairs that need to happen, namely like plumbing or swallowing and things like that. Is that what you're seeing over in the Maui condo market too? Yeah, exactly, exactly that. Major plumbing work usually needing to be done and just the big ticket item is usually some sort of seawall, repair, remedy, something having to do with the seawall in front of all these complexes. Very awesome. So if there were if there was someone that was looking or interested in investing in Maui real estate, what would you would you have any advice or guidance for them? You know, I think at this time in the market with the interest rates being where they are, you're pretty much in it for a long term hold. It's, you know, you can certainly find something that will maybe allow you to break even, but if you're looking for something that's really, really golden cash flow, those aren't quite as easy to as easy to find as maybe they were a couple years ago. So I would say if you are looking for something, be ready to hold on to it for a little bit. The equity is certainly inevitably going to increase over time. And so because overall, you're seeing pricing is still kind of holding at the higher levels for properties and Maui. Yeah, absolutely. We're not expecting to see any significant decrease or decline. The market is still pretty strong in terms of buyers. You know, for a lot of my sellers, if they price things well, the it'll move if they're if they're priced fairly and accurately and according to sort of where the market is, but for the sellers that are shooting for, you know, 300,000 over the last sale, those are a little harder to find buyers for. So we're seeing buyers being realistic, but still willing to pay what they feel is fair market value for the property. But, you know, if you're in the market, I would encourage you to be patient, know what you want, be able to have a little bit of flexibility. But when the right property comes up, be ready to move. There are certain things where we're certain circumstances where we're still seeing multiple offer situations. In terms of the buyer profile, do you see a lot of people from the big island, you know, Oahu, Hawaii or mainland, you know, foreign countries? Well, what's like the general buyer profile, you know, over the last couple of months, especially during the summer? Yeah, it kind of depends on what you're looking for, what type of property, you know, we don't get a whole lot of buyers from China or Korea or Japan, not nearly as many as you folks see on Oahu. But we see a lot of west coasters relocating. We see a lot of Canadians, actually, the numbers for Canadian buyers have gone a little bit, but traditionally they've been pretty strong. I still do have a lot of local buyers that are just doing well, where they bought a condo to start and they're ready to move into something bigger. So selling their condo and up sizing into a single family home. So, yeah, we're kind of seeing not so many outer island relocation, though, it's a lot of on island just getting ready to move up into something bigger. I just heard today, too, that is it some of the resorts over on Maui, are they actually building housing for some of their employees and things like that? Have you heard that? I haven't heard that. I know there's a lot of different construction plans that are happening, and then there are quite a few that are attempting to happen, but our county council isn't giving them the green light just yet. Oh, I see. And, you know, affordable housing has been a hot topic everywhere across all islands. And are there any just just generally speaking, you know, are they still building affordable homes or condo units on Maui? Absolutely. I think in the last several years, there have been several different neighborhoods that have come up, particularly single family homes, which is incredible. I know there are a couple projects on the horizon. There's a little delay, but there should be a few actually released by the end of this year, where at least the reservations will start being taken and applications will be released. So I would say, you know, if you have a local buyer out there that can qualify, if they need more information, please, please, please have them call someone. They're welcome to call me, but please call a realtor because there's some really, really great opportunities out there. It's crazy here that there are great opportunities for affordable housing because that's so needed and it's such a huge issue for our whole state, you know, for every island they feel like, yeah. But, you know, thank you so much, Erin, and I just, you know, we're coming towards the end of our time and just wanted to ask you if you had any final thought that you would like to share. Yeah, thanks, Leonie. Thank you and Will for having me today. You know, I just wanted to encourage you, whether you're buying or selling or whether you're new to the islands or not, just a friendly reminder on how important it is to not take for granted that we get to live here. You know, I try and wake up every morning grateful that I get to, you know, spend another day on Maui. So I would encourage you all to be cautious of that and be grateful for that and just that, you know, encourage you to play your part in your community. So learn your street name, show Aloha to your neighbors and just encourage you all to be just a really, really great community member. Wow, you've been so awesome. Thank you so much, Erin, for joining us on Inside Hawaii Real Estate. You're amazing, Erin. Thank you so much and Aloha. Aloha. Thank you guys. Mahalo. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.