Ocean View

2017

Late in 2017, we made a trip to Kona to continue with our journey towards a vacation home/ retirement home/shack on the beach. We met with a realtor from Hilo and toured some interesting locations. We looked at a three acre parcel north and west of Ocean View Ranchos, a sprawling subdivision in a vast lava field with three acre lots and fantastic ocean views. Unfortunately, the week before we arrived, someone had made an offer on this property and the realtor was not keen on us submitting a backup offer. This lot is about 2 miles below the highway 11 along a rough dirt/gravel/rocky road called Road to the Sea. This road goes all the way down to the ocean, but it requires a 4 wheel drive vehicle further down. Also, this lot does not have a deeded right of way access to it. You would need to cross two other one acre lots to get to it. This lot would require extensive bulldozing to create a building site out of the Aha lava. Not ideal.

We looked at property on the other side of the Volcano National Park, nearer to Hilo in Hawaiian Paradise Park (HPP), Leilani Estates, Hawaiian Acres, and Orchidlands Estates. While these lots and this area is on the wetter side of the island and has more vegetation and jungle, most of these lots have no view of the ocean. Not what we had in mind. An ocean front lot in this area would be so far out of our price range to make it an impossibility.

This brought us back to the subdivision/town called Ocean View. We looked at a couple of lots in the area above the highway, or the mauka side meaning away from the ocean in what is called HOVE or Hawaiian Ocean View Estates. These lots are one acre each and have variety of vegetation/trees. We looked at one home that had a neighboring lot that looked like the city dump. It seemed to us that this was pretty common here.

This led us to the Ranchos which are three acre lots and below the highway, or on the makai side meaning towards the ocean. The terrain of most of these lots is mainly rough lava. Like HOVE, the Ranchos has paved streets and power poles at the streets with electricity and telephone available.

But no water. These lots would all require a catchment system where the rain water is collected from the roof and storred in a tank, Then it is filtered and pumped into the house for use in washing, bathing, landscaping, gardening, maybe cooking, but not for drinking. It would require additional purification like boiling before it would be suitable for drinking. This area of Hawaii gets an average of 2″ of rain per month. Some months, more, some months less. In the months when there is little to no rain, people would have water delivered in large tanker trucks, much like I saw them doing in Rocky Point Mexico. Two inches of rain is not a lot of water, but there are many homes in this subdivision that seem to be able to get by with this system. There are even a couple of homes here with swimming pools, however, most every home has very limited landscaping.

What I find appealing about Ocean View – both parts, the upper section as well and especially the Ranchos – is the view. Most every lot has a fantastic ocean view. And that is what I am looking for. I keep picturing in my mind, the home where John Robie (aka Cary Grant) lives in the 1955 movie “To Catch a Thief” with Grace Kelly.

We made an offer on a lot down in the lower sections of the subdivision and returned to the main land to wait for the response. I didn’t offer full price, but I did offer cash. The seller said no. He wanted full price and cash. No counter offer. Just full cash pricing. Kind of put me off. I’m not sure if I was relieved or disappointed, but I decided to look a little further and went back onto the internet , located a few more likely candidates, and booked tickets to return to the Island. . . but for more reason than just looking at property.

Kileaua is one of the most active volcanos on earth. The home of Pele, the Goddess of Fire, Kileauea has been continuously erupting from 1983 to 2018. In May of 2018, Kileauea opened up on what is known as the East Rift Zone with numerous fissures opening up. A yer or so ago, there was lava flowing through the forest in this same area towards the town of Pahoa when it stopped. This time, the lava came up in the backyards of many people in the Lailani Estates subdivision creating a new lava cone some 300 feet high with a river of molten lava flowing to the ocean hundreds of yards wide .

We decided that we might never get a better chance to witness a volcano erupting, so we booked tickets and returned to the big island in July.