 Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Navigating the journey. And I am Marcia Joyner. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices in life and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about what we want to talking about it. It's time to share the way we want to live our lives and to communicate about the kind of care we want and what we don't want. This is especially important when you are a member of the military family and living in Hawaii and having moved year after year and saying goodbye to old friends from a million places and meeting new people, new customs, new cultures. One cannot envision what it's like being in constant state of flux. Move after move after move. In fact, we moved four times in my last pregnancy which was in the dark ages. Now in Hawaii, you're going to stay put for about three years or more. Can you imagine attempting to find a house when the street names you can't pronounce and the highways all begin with K? Soldier to soldier, real estate firm. As this is the name implies comforting soldier to soldier. It's like someone who knows what your life is like. All the moves you've made all the misgivings saying goodbye to your children's classmates. And our guest today is Celeste Thomas and veteran of 20 years of service who truly understands military relocation. His company is soldier to soldier. A Hawaii realty company. Full service real estate company on the island Oahu. And I love his motto. If you're not happy with me and my service is fire me. Isn't that wonderful? Hello Celeste. It is so wonderful to meet you at last. I see you on the television all the time. If you don't like me just fire me. That is a great idea. The thing about it is that line almost got taken out at the very last minute when I ran my first TV commercial. And the TV station at that time they kind of ran it before their crew and they were like no, no tell them don't take it out. So I kept it in. And now that has become something bigger than I ever thought it would be. I think people who don't like to be held hostages if I may use that term loosely to a contract or something. So I'm glad I kept it in. So tell me about Celeste. Where are you from? How long have you been in the military? Tell us about you and how you came to be soldier to soldier. Well I'm a veteran of 20 years as you did during the intro. I'm originally from South Carolina but I haven't been to South Carolina. Where? In South Carolina. Florence, South Carolina is really Lake City but nobody knows Lake City so I always use the term Florence. But it's just about 20 miles west of Florence. I'm about 60 miles east of Columbia. A lot of people are familiar with Columbia. That's inland. Inland, South Carolina. We know a lot of the sea islands but nothing about inland. So you were in the military, you said for 20 years? I was in the military for 20 years. I joined originally in the National Guard. Got out, went to college, said you know what, behind us we didn't feel like looking for a job. Said, you know what, I'm already doing this military thing. Just keep it going and see how long it takes me. 20 years later it's like, I guess it's time to move on to something different. Got out, retired, only 3 years ago. So my company is very, very new. You have to be in real estate for 3 years in order to open your own firm. So Lurie, the day I was testing, my TV commercial was coming out the very next day. So I had no options but to pass that test. So I burned all bridges saying, hey, you will pass that test. You must pass that test. So that's how I ended up with the company. The name in itself, I was looking for something to attract the military client because I knew the military. 20 years, joined when I was 17, retired, did all the moves. I knew the military. So there was a comfort level making them comfortable with me and my service. That's what it implies, that comfort level of, like I said, we have moved, my husband retired a long time ago, before you were born. But the idea of moving and moving and moving and just when the children make friends in school it's time to move again and so what I got from just watching the commercial and your name was at comfort level, I would have been really comfortable if we had a realtor that understood all of the issues that military people go through in all of these moves and what you're looking for. It's a difference. Somebody is showing up one time. Everybody knows the traffic. To me there's no excuse to show up late. You know the traffic's bad. So if you've got to leave an hour and go sit in a coffee shop to get to a point where that's what you do. One, because the military ingrains it into you. And I'm very respectful of people's time. If I say six o'clock and we agree on six, then guess what? I should be there at six o'clock. No later than six o'clock for sure. So that's just my life and the way I live it and the company values. So now you've been in business for how long? I've been in business on my own with soldiers and soldiers for a little over a year and a half now. But I've been in real estate on this island for about three years. I did a lot of flipping houses in Oklahoma when I was stationed in Oklahoma and I still have a lot of rentals back there. What do you mean by flipping a house? Well, buying a foreclosure, fixing it up and then selling it for a profit. Oh, okay. Now you are in this market, which is crazy. Yeah, tell me about it. How do you take a notice active duty which we know don't get paid a lot and we look at the cost of these houses? How do you wrap your head around that, taking this person into that? I mean my first home when I first got here, man, I'm not going to age myself here. I think it was 1998, 2000 maybe. It was a little three bedroom, two and a half bath condo in Mililani, Navio, matter of fact. And I'm like 146,000 for a condo. You know, the house I can get in South Carolina Oklahoma for the whole day. So I'm like, man, that's expensive. But you know, I made the jump and bought the house and I was literally sitting in Iraq and one of my lieutenants at the time came through with the Hawaii magazine and said, hey, let me take a look at that magazine you had done and I'm opening it. Man, the house was in my neighborhood. $300,000, no. So I called home and said, hey, call our realtor. So I called the realtor and said, hey, how much can you get for our house? She told me, I said sell it. I'll be going to PCS when I get back anyway. And from then on out, I stopped looking at price and started looking at the market. So that's the biggest thing. It's not necessarily about the price. And a lot of people when they come here, especially people that are used to coming to Alabama or the mainland, they're not used to come from New York or a high expensive state. These prices are like, whoa, what? $2,500 for rent? For two bedroom condo? I mean, so if you look at value versus price, then I think it makes a huge difference. I was just, now tell me about this military and the VA loan. Is it VA loan? What is a VA loan? A VA loan is offered to a veteran that is a no money down. You can put money down if you want to. Loan is offered them in order to purchase a home. So if you're doing no money down, that's a big monthly note. Yes, it does raise your payments, of course, if you're not putting any money down. But what I found out in Hawaii is with the appreciation rate being where you're getting your money from, you know, it's well worth that appreciation. And I've had clients that literally bought last year and are selling this year and they're walking away with $40,000, $50,000 in a year with no money down. That's not a bad deal. Now, that's not everywhere, but here in Hawaii, it's very, of course if you buy in the right place, there's still places in Hawaii that, you know, can put $20,000 down and still be in a bad position. So like they always say in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Well, so now we look at people that are, I hate to say homeless. Yeah, that's the right word. Where we have three and four families in one place because everybody's working, but they can't pay $2,500 a month. So how do you handle those people? Or do you? Or are you exclusively with soldiers or soldiers? Nope, we help everybody. I get calls all the time, hey, are you only military? No, no, we help everybody. Now, again, that was the gamble when I came up with that name. When I put that name out there, most people are going to think it's exclusive military. But we've had tons of local families that are not military. And sometimes they try to even justify like, hey, you don't have to justify, you don't have to be military. Hey, you know my great, great, great, great, great, great granddaddy's cousin was in the army. So like, no, you don't have to justify. We help more than military. But military is our focus. Like I said, you got to have a niche in something. And military is our niche. So applying for the military for the VA. Now, if you, say I bought a house 10 years ago on a VA loan, now, and I still have it, and now I want to buy something else, can I use the VA loan again? Or is it only for one property? No, you can use it again. But of course there's a higher percentage you would pay. So in other words, say if you bought a home in Alabama for 100 and some thousand dollars on your VA loan, then you moved to Hawaii. And your VA eligibility here is $721,050. So you literally subtract that $100,000 from that $721,050 and that's what you have allotted to buy a home. Ah, okay. So you still have your eligibility. You still have your eligibility. Even if you're still paying for that other house? Yes. I have a client right now. Matter of fact, he just talked to the lender and that's what he's doing. He's had the house in Texas. We're buying another house here in Pearl City. And it's, what's the top number? $721,050 is the limit, but there's something called a VA jumble loan. So anything over $721,050 all the way up to a million dollars you can buy, but you pay, you pay the difference of 25%. In other words, say if the limit was, the limit is $721,050, right? Say if it's $800,000. So the difference between $800,000 and $721,050 you pay that 25% difference, which is still great, which is still way less than paying 20% down for a conventional loan. Yup, quite a bit. Right. Now what we mentioned about soldier to soldier and a comfort level and understanding what the military goes through, tell us I do know, you know I'm one of those that goes back to the Civil War, had every generation in the military and having moved a lot of my life but a lot of people don't understand and so I can't take it for granted that everybody does. So what we should do is go to break and when we come back, tell us about the comfort, what we're talking about in reaching out to the military and offering a comfort level. Okay? This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Aloha, I'm Carol Mon Lee, Think Tech Hawaii's Volunteer Chief Operating Officer and occasional host and this is Minky. For the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Dear thanks, Think Tech will run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so Think Tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website, www.thanksforthinktech.cozvox.com On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30-plus shows, thank you Mahalo and Sheshe for your generosity. Aloha, and we're back. Our guest today is Celester Thomas and he is the principal broker and owner of the real estate company Soldier to Soldier. And we're talking about the vast moves and upsets and adjustments that the military makes in the course of their kids. So tell us when we talk about your company providing the comfort level what does that mean exactly to people coming to Hawaii for the first time and looking for a home? What is it that one soldier provides to another? That means understanding the little things that most people may take for granted. As we kind of mentioned earlier, just showing up on time is like a great first step and not being on what they so-called Hawaii time. Showing up on time, understanding the sometimes discomforts of moving with kids or moving over without a spouse and needing assistance maybe a car ride from the airport or showing different restaurants and stuff like that. All of my agents are prior military. I do have one or two that are not but they're married to military. So they're quickly learning. Hey, this military life is a little different than civilian life. So it's just understanding. Understanding the why, understanding the moves and being able to talk a language. When I can talk your language then it provides a certain level of comfort. So when people are transferred into Hawaii, do they still have TLA benefits? Yes. I know when all the wars were going on. Well, we came during Vietnam. So we had all of those. But now, well, this is still a war. Afghanistan is still a war. But it's not declared a war, is it? I guess that's what we want to call it. I'm going to wave them home as a war. It's a war. Now before, and they changed the requirements. There used to be six days when you fly on island, your TLA benefit will last you six days. So you already had six days to go find a house. Now they've brought that all the way down to 30 days. So when families fly in, they don't have a lot of time to mess around. It's a little different here than finding a place. You go on the mainland, you go to one place, say, can I see all these houses? And they show them to you. Here, you may have to call Craigslist, you may have to call this individual company, that individual company. So it's an adjustment that military people have to have. So a lot of times people contact me on my website and say, hey, can you help me find a house? And I do it, not for profit or anything, just because I understand that they're not going to understand where to go, just because it's different. Of course. When you can't pronounce the street name. Yeah, exactly. Of course. Yes. You look at the word lique, lique. That doesn't sound like what that looks like. Yeah. And a word like ha-a-ula. It's like all those A's, you know. So just reading the street names becomes an issue. Exactly. If they tell you where they found a house, where you found a house and you try to get them to see it, and they can't find it. Well, at least Google Maps is good. Yeah. Yes, sometimes. I get Iwa beach all the time. I'm looking for a house in Iwa beach at Kapole. I got in Kapole a lot and I'm like, Kapole, where is that at? And they started describing things. I was like, oh, Kapole, you already got it. I had to think about that one. Yeah, exactly. I'll move you all. Yes. Well, these are actually men's at Kapole, Iwa. Iwa, I figured that one out, but Kapole, I had to think about it. Yeah. I'm looking for a house in Kapole. Okay. You're right, Alan. Okay. Yeah. I guess that's to me that would be the biggest issue was just the language. And what about the food? All the different foods and restaurants that they're new to, they're on TLA. Do they have a special place for TLA or can you stay anywhere? There's a few places and you got to actually apply to have your places considered a TLA place. It's normally a couple of apartment buildings downtown. And then a couple of hotels, you have to literally apply because I tried to apply for a couple of single family homes and they're like, no, we don't do single family homes. It has to be apartment building and you have to own at least a couple of units in it so it can't just be one. And of course you have your hotels and stuff there on Schofield Barracks and on bases and stuff like that. But there's a few places. Yeah. When we came, it was in Waipahu and it was a whole apartment building and everybody in the building was on TLA. And this was of course the Dark Ages when we got yesterday's news the next morning. I'll tell you how long ago that was. But that's like I said during Vietnam. And every day you had to say where you looked for a house, where you had to every day account for what you were doing in terms of looking for a place to stay. And because it was during the war and active duty, I was pretty much on my own and, yes, Ewa Beach. Ewa Beach little more places. Yeah, because that was close to where we were in Waipahu. So those are the kinds of things that I remember about those early days. That home search. That home search, yes. I know I initially came over without my family and of course, so he gave me 60 days. Me and the front of mind that I stayed with, I actually met at the house and we're like, man, we got 60 days. You know, we're going down to the beach every day. We don't even look for no house. We were about that later. Little did we know 59 days came for like we don't have a place to stay. We need to find somewhere. So that's my first Hawaii experience as looking for housing. So now you help them with, do they contact you before they arrive? You know, the fun thing, a lot of parents contact me. They worry about the young son or daughter, hey, you know, I saw your website, you know, my son is flying to Hawaii next month. You know, can you help him find a place? I've gotten, I make it 10 or 15 calls a month just from parents. Do you do rentals as well as selling? Yes, we do. We do property management. I do have a property management division that works out of Cal Poly also that does property management. So that if, like you said, the parent calls, finds your webpage and they call from the mainland and my young ones are moving to Hawaii. So you can have something ready by the time they get there. Yes. You meet them at the airport and say, hey... Exactly, because I know the air and I know parents don't want to put their kids in, you know, that location. This is paradise, but paradise has some areas that, you know, not so paradise. Okay, all right. Okay, we'll deal with that. So you meet them at the airport, do you? Or do they have the families that, they used to have a family that was dedicated to meeting you at the airport and kind of... Like USO? Yeah, a lot of times... Well, that was, like I said, this was the Air Force and... But they still do that. They still do that. When I first flew over, they called a sponsor, I guess it was the same thing. And the sponsor would pick you up from the airport, help you with your bags and stuff and then kind of get you settled in to find a place. Yeah. Do they still do that? Yes, they still do it. What? And that's on the individual unit to do it. Oh, okay. So now what branch of service were you in? I was in the army for 20 years. Oh my... The army. The army, yeah. What did you do? I started off as a few large women and then I became an L&O officer for Auscray my last couple years. What's that? It's like the... I linked the US military with the Auscray army. Oh. So I traveled back and forth from Auscray my last year but... So those are kind of my ties to some of my friends that I have in Auscray. Oh, that's wonderful. Do they... Do you still maintain those relationships? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I have some Auscray friends down there now that own a gym. And Capole and Kailua call any town fitness. Capole. Capole. And Kailua that own a gym call any town fitness. I mean, so... I go to still the Auscray at some time and getting invited to their house for dinner and Christmas and stuff like that. I'm very good friends with their mom and dad also. Well, that's wonderful. So that you still... And that was by... Wait a minute. You said you linked the American army with the Auscray army. Yes. How does that... How do you do that? How do you make that connection? What's the link? So in other words, without you know, talking to detail because of course there's some... Of course. Some level of security to it. Larry the middle man between two different countries military on training and educational stuff. Oh. So when we're writing plans and stuff, you know, what is Auscray and army doing? What do they think about this? I'm the guy that answers all those questions for the American army. Oh. Okay. So you're not bang bang and shoot them up? No, but I was at first as a young pop, but I moved away from there as I moved up in the race. No, that's dangerous. You don't want somebody shooting at you. No, no, no. There's a better thing to do. No, you don't get to be this age when people are shooting at you. I don't want to gamble. Were you ever in the war zone? Yes. Deployed three times. Oh my. Deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. It's amazing how your mind and your mentality changes. Your alert has become very, very alert. I was very fortunate that I didn't have any issues with PTSD or anything like that. You know, so you had to find a place where you could go and think normal in a sense. I mean, think about it. If you've got to constantly be on the alert for possibly, I mean anybody that goes to combat zone and don't think of death is something wrong with them before they went over. Yeah, no death is real. We walk out here, outside of the screen, we don't think about death in that sense, but there, I mean, every time you get in the vehicle or just walking from your sleeping quarters to the tiny facility, I mean, it crosses your mind. But like anything that's beautiful in humans, we're just, we're a doubt. It's amazing that you did twice in Iraq and once in... And once in Afghanistan. Is it very different from Iraq to Afghanistan? Yes and no, only because I was in a different capacity. So when I was a captain, I commanded I was more out on the screen going through the neighborhoods, down doors versus when I made major that I was more in a protected environment. You know, so only because of the job. Yeah, well, so now the higher up you go, the further back you are. Yeah, you can say that. And the poor private is paid less and that's the one up front. When and how that works. You know, in the old days, the dark ages, if you kept the king always road in front of the army, even in the Civil War, the commander road in front of the army and if you captured the king, you won. And chess, if you captured the king, you win. Now it's the other way around. Well, it was out front, but you know... Sure they are. We have run out of time. You will promise to come back and visit with us again. It's been a real pleasure getting to know you. We look forward to seeing you again. Aloha.