Order your survey before you find a buyer

The Hawaii real estate purchase contract allows for buyers to review the survey of any single family home or land for a number of days agreed upon by the buyer and seller. If you wait until you find a buyer for your home, the buyer can take a look at something on the survey and decide to cancel the transaction, especially if he is already looking for a way to cancel.

Here is what the Hawaii contract actual says:

No later than days prior to the Scheduled Closing Date, Seller shall, at
Seller's sole cost and expense, have a registered land surveyor (a) stake the
Property even if the stakes are visible and, (b) if improvements exist along the
Property line, provide Buyer with a map (with surveyor's stamp) and accompanying
report to show the perimeters of the Property and the location of any improvements in the vicinity of the perimeter Property lines. This survey and map may not address whether improvements on the Property are in compliance with State and/or County requirements, and/or subdivision covenants, conditions, and restrictions. Boundary Encroachment. If an encroachment onto an adjoining
property or onto the Property by an adjoining owner is revealed or discovered,
such encroachment either shall be removed or Seller shall obtain encroachment
agreement with the affected adjoining owner(s) which is acceptable to Buyer. If neither occurs within ______ days of discovery or by the Scheduled Closing Date, whichever occurs earlier, Buyer may accept the encroachment(s) or elect to terminate this Purchase Contract and the termination provisions of Paragraph C-30 shall apply. Under Chapter 669Hawaii Revised Statutes (deminimis), certain tolerances for discrepancies involving improvements built along the boundary line of the Property for specific zonings are established, and such improvements shall not be considered encroachments.

It's the blank in the 2nd paragraph that you have to pay attention to. The property lines of Hawaii real estate are very often a mystery when you view them for the first time. Since our topography is so hilly and roads tend to be windy, lot lines are frequently curved and odd shaped. You rarely see just square lots anywhere, even in the new home tracts, because our land just isn't square and flat. Imagine trying to build a bunch of evenly spaced square houses on an island shaped like this.

So when walls and buildings are built, it's very common to have encroachments over boundaries of a house, especially in older areas of Kailua, Aiea, and Honolulu (town). I'm not sure if it's because of the surveying practices from the early days, but newer homes in Oahu have far less issues with encroachments. I rarely see problems in Ewa or Kapolei, and even Hawaii Kai, which was mostly built in the 60's and 70's.

So what you don't want is - you don't want your buyer to back out of a transaction 20 days into it because he sees that your land has a couple encroachments. It's better to show them the encroachments up front while they're still in love with the property. You can even demand that they sign off on the survey on the day of acceptance, so it doesn't become an issue at all. This is just plane smart. Even though the survey costs around $850 for a flat lot of about 7000sqft, it's money that you're going to need to spend anyway. Plus, the survey doesn't expire or need to be updated unless new walls are put up or old ones are moved.

So if you want to save yourself some headache when selling your home in Hawaii, get the survey done before your buyer shows up.