Aloha Kauai Lovers:

 

My goodness, there's only two days left in the month and I haven't gotten my newsletter out yet.  Panic!  Panic! Panic!  I soon realize the only way I could possibly redeem myself is to tell you a funny dog story, so here goes:

 

So I call my emergency contact person, Phil, the other day and say "Honey, I'm afraid the inmates have taken over the asylum".  Phil says calmly, "Sweetheart, what are you talking about".  "The dog, I say, the darn dog!  I can't take it anymore.  Mikey has got to go to the kennel this minute!"   Phil again calmly says "Tell me what happened"?  So I go on to tell him how I came home from work that afternoon walked in the house and there's Bruiser, Max, Mikey and Indie all chasing each other around the living room coffee table barking and sliding and having a jolly good time.   There's three puddles of doggie pee on my maple wood floor precariously close to my C.S. Woo couch, the sliding sceen door to the outside is wide open, the curtains flapping in the breeze and there's a empty torn bag of Texas Red's Doggie Jerky Treats on the floor.  So before you label me a lousy dog trainer and a worse housekeeper let me just say in my defense that our lives were not always like this.  We used to come home and things were fairly normal.  But we've had a house guest lately that's turned our world upside down.  His name is is not really Mikey. I've changed it for this story to protect the innocent.   He's a cute little dog with a big personality and really bad manners.  We've agreed to watch him for two weeks while his owner was away.  I thought I could handle it.  I was so wrong.

 

Mikey is so incredibly cute, loveable and funny that it almost  makes all of his bad habits bearable, but not quite.  He's not house trained completely.  We found this out the hard way.  You know what I mean.  It was in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom.  Ugh!  I thought the first time it happened, "Oh, poor thing, he probably just couldn't wait for his walk.  I'm sure it won't happen again".  Wrong.  The minute I brought him back for his walk the next morning, he walked into the house, stuck his little nose in the air, passed the doggie pad I had kindly put out for him, lifted his leg and whizzed right there on my mahogany baseboard.  Arrrgghhhh!!  His other bad habit is he snores really loud.  So loud in fact Phil and I have to wear earplugs at night to sleep.  Did I mention this is a 10 lb dog?.  He sounds like he could probably give a 300 lb sleeping man a run for his money.  He tries to bite  people he doesn't know.  This is very embarrassing especially when they are small children that walk up to him with a big smile and wide eyes and try to pet him..  Let me just quickly say that no small children have been harmed by him, but it's been close enough that I've beefed up my personal liability insurance policy to $1M.   Enough said about that.  He how do I put this tactfully: he tries to make whoopie with my male Bichon Frise, Max, Sometimes to the point of exhaustion.  I won't elaborate but it's not pretty and I think Max is getting traumatized from it.  When he's really happy which is usually when he's at the beach sitting with us watching a beautiful sunset he'll start to bark, and bark, and bark some more.  For absolutely no good reason.  He just sits there with a big smile on his little face and woofs at the air, non-stop  Which doesn't make for a very romantic relaxing experience when you can't get this dog to stop barking and then the other�
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����lZb people on the beach start giving you these "looks" that say "thanks for ruining our lovely Kauai romantic sunset with your stupid barking dog"..  I'm so sorry, I really am, but he won't stop.  I can't make him.  He's not my dog... Really.  Oh gawd, I want to die.  Let's just go now, please.

 

So the day before we were completely fed up and were just about to take him to the boarding place I decided to tie him up outside in the backyard under a tree and wouldn't let him in the house all day.  Oh the pain of it... Mikey cried, and cried, and cried some more.  Looking at me so forlornly thru the glass slider door, begging me to let him in.  He was so miserable and sad.  I almost weakened and then I remembered how he marched past the pad and whizzed on my wood floor right in front of me and I toughened up.  He stayed out there all day.  When I finally let him in for the night, he looked like a different dog.  He was so happy and so..err... humbled.  That proud little arrogant look he had when I put him out was certainly softer.  And miracle of miracles, when I brought him back in he did a complete turnaround.  It's been 4 days now and he has not made a booboo in my house once.  He's not perfect, believe me.  He still snores and he still tries to bite strangers but his nasty little bathroom habits have been completely cured  That's when I realized how smart the little bugger is.  He knew exactly what he was doing was wrong and he did it anyway, When there were dire consequences to his actions he stopped.  I wish some of my relatives were this easy to train.  Well today is his last day at our house and his owner is coming to get him this evening.  And just like the smart little fella he is, by cleaning up his act just in the knick of time, we've decided that he can stay here again because he's just so goshdarn cute and we really do love the little bugger..  What a smart dog or what a poor gullible dog lover?  Oh well, guilty as charged I guess.

 

How is real estate doing you ask?  In April we had 64 total sales, in May we had 54, so a slight dip.  Houses dipped from 37 sold in April to 27 in May.  Vacant land down to 7 from 11.  Condos were up to 18 from 16.  Units sold were down on the North shore in all categories, East side was down except for condos which were up, Koloa/Poipu was down, West side (Waimea) stayed steady with 7 house sold each of the last two months.  We are still up over last year's unit sales YTD by avg 60% overall (70% increase for houses, 30% for vacant land, 65% for condos).  We certainly couldn't say that this time last year.  As a matter of fact all our unit sales numbers are in big positive territory except for east side vacant land is down 20% from last year... interesting..

 

Sales Volume a big drop for April to May ($47M to $28M).  Wow! What happened to cause a 40% drop?  It looks like almost all of that volume was in houses $35M vs $14M.  Perhaps it was the homeowner tax credit expiring but buyers have until July 1st to close.  They just needed to have the contract signed by April 30th so hard to believe that would cause such a big jump in April.  I honestly don't have a clue.  Vacant land volume and condos volume stayed steady,   East side and North shore both showed a 50% drop in home sales volume.  Koloa/Poipu showed the biggest volume drop in houses from $11M to $2.5M.   Overall, our YTD Volume numbers are also in healthy territory over last year 35% increase overall.  70% increase in vacant land volume, and 43% increase in condo volume.

 

Staying with the down trend for May, our median home price dropped from $577K in April to $420K in May, stopping a 3 consecutive month winning streak of increasing prices.  Vacant land was down from $600K to $525K, condos down from $298K to gulp! $164K!  Cheap Kauai condo anyone?  North Shore houses median price dropped from $867K to $519K, North shore condos dropped from $421K to $308K.  It's almost as if the Great Recession God in the sky said "Things are getting a little too rosy down there for you hopeful little Realtors, so let's put the cabosh on your hopes and lower median prices by 30% for May!  Tee! Hee! Hee! Hee!".  So mean.

 

Overall, the YTD numbers on Median Price are still below last year's prices to the tune of about 10%.  But our May 2010 median price dropped 30% from last May.  I guess when prices increase over last year we can officially call it a recovery.  until then Buyer's are still on top.  Vacant land prices are up 50% from last year this time.  Condos are down 50% from last year.

 

So that's all the real estate news I have for you.  Have a wonderful memorial day.  Take a moment to remember our service men and women all around the world in dangerous, scary, unkind places and pray they can all come home safe and soon.  Be kind to your pets even when they don't deserve it.  Be patient, be forgiving, be thankful.

 

Until next month (which is coming up soon!) from the ever so fabulous St. Regis Hotel in Princeville, Your Island Realtor, AnnMarie Hamilton BIC, Princeville Realty, 808-652-3511