Aloha! My name is James. When I first considered moving to the island of Hawaii, I had just gone through a very bad experience with an HOA from hell. For those who aren’t familiar with the acronym, it stands for Homeowners Association. A group of elected amateurs applies myriad rules that tell homeowners what they can and cannot do. I never wanted to find myself in that situation again.
I was surprised to find that the vast majority of properties for sale on the Island of Hawaii had Homeowners Associations. To my relief many of them were relatively benign, others were anything but. I knew from experience that they could go from good to bad in a heartbeat.
Among benign communities I hang hat on Mark Twain Estates and Hawaiian Ocean View Estates. Both have some of the best weather on the planet. HOVE was cheaper, but had no county water, relying on rain catchment instead. It was also suffering from a drought.
So I made my choice and bought a half-acre lot in Mark Twain Estates. I had the lot cleared and graded, and a septic system installed. But before my house plans made it through the permitting process, I was offered a partnership in an intensive gardening project. I considered making the Mark Twain property part of the effort, but distance and the time required to build the house worked against that idea, so I put the property up for sale and moved to Ocean View. In Ocean View I like everything but the community needs trash clean-up.