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Originally Posted by Atticus
How would it be through zero fault of their own?
If you're talking about the ones that had a mortgage they could afford but then got laid off or had health issues etc then I agree. But if they knew they couldnt afford the mortgage when they signed the papers or could only afford it if the boom times continued then the blame has to at least partially side with the borrowers.
On a diff subject: What part of Maui did you live? My wife and I love it over there and have considered buying a place. Just curious on your thoughts.
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You're forgetting whole bunches of groups of people. People that lost jobs, people that lost value because their neighborhoods became desolate, people that got fucked by wall street and swindled by Madoff's, people who lost retirement savings.... whole banks went down. Big ones. Mortgage companies went belly-up by the hour. Do you remember any of this? It was brutal. The carnage on Maui was horrific. Pre-collapse there were 1700+ realtors on Maui. That herd got thinned out quickly.
Pinning all this on the few people that gamed the system or whatever is an easy cop-out. The factors that led us to today are more complex than that.
We lived on South Maui in Wailea. It's gorgeous, but it's also ultra super-fuckin-duper expensive. The entry used to be $1 million, not sure what it is today, but you can find whatever you want between Wailea and Makena all the way up to $50 million dollar homes. Only thing that matters is how much you want to spend. Most communites inside Wailea have their own HOAs specific to that particular gated community, but then all are under the WCA HOA as well. So be prepared to live under an iron HOA fist. (I mean it.)
Kihei town on South Maui is cool. It's a happenin' little beach town. I miss Kihei. You can get a place much cheaper in Kihei, in all different styles, without HOAs.... but it's not Wailea. Kihei doesn't have private security patrols or gates.
Maui is expensive all around as well. Consider this: Every single thing they have on that island, with the exception of pineapples & coconuts, comes in on a ship.
Everything. Ships cost money. Ships burn oil. Dock workers are susceptible to strikes. If the California dock workers strike, Hawaii runs out of stuff. The first thing to go is toilet paper, so don't stop, head straight to Costco and grab as much as you can.