Tony Kawaguchi, M.Div., R.A.
REMAX 808 Realty
The best Real Estate office in Hawaii!
808-395-5776
alohatony@gmail.com
Ewa Beach
If money is a factor and you would like a nice new house, consider
Ewa.
On the southwest tip of Oahu is a huge plain of newer subdivision homes
in an area called, Ewa. It's pronounced with a short "E" and "V" in the
middle, so it sort of rhymes with "forever". As in, "I'm driving for-
Eva"
Ewa plain consists of Ewa Beach, Ocean Pointe, Kapolei, Westloch,
Gentry, and a bunch of smaller developments. If you go there in the
middle of the day you'll think to yourself, "Wow, this is pretty nice!
New homes everywhere!" To people visiting Oahu from the mainland, it's
surprising to find a giant area of newer homes all together in Hawaii,
for a reasonable price. You can get a nice new 3 bedroom 2 bath
1800sqft house in the Ewa area for about $600k. The same house would
cost about $800-$900k in Hawaii Kai, on the opposite side of the
island. Why is Ewa Beach real estate so affordable?
In Oahu, just as everywhere else, location is everything. So I'll just
say it, Ewa beach has the worst traffic on the island. You get more
house, newer house, nicer house, for less money, but it takes you an
hour to get there in traffic. In fact you can still buy brand new homes
from 3 builders in Ewa Beach right now for under $500k. Of course they
have upper level homes up to about a million bucks.
So how bad is the traffic? Well Ewa Beach is currently connected to the
freeway by a single road with 2 lanes in each direction. That means
that during rush hours, all 30,000 people in Ewa have to get to and
from the freeway in those 2 lanes. It till take 20 minutes with no
traffic to get from Ewa to anywhere. But there is hardly ever no
traffic. However, things are going to change.
First, The city and county of Honolulu just approved a new courthouse
to be built in Kapolei, which by the way, is the west end of the Ewa
plain, and has far less traffic and more amenities. Kapolei now has
Home Depot, Kmart, Kaiser Permanente, and a bunch of other stuff. Soon
they will have Target. Back on point, the courthouse is to be built in
the next few years and should alleviate much of the traffic going to
town. Thousands of people everyday head for that courthouse, so the new
one will be greatly welcomed by all.
Second, there is a road widening project that has just been approved so
that the drive from Ewa will be easier. Third, the mayor has been
trying for some time to get an elevated train built from Ewa Beach to
downtown, and that supposedly is coming in the next 15 years. The legal
fights aren't over on this one, so we may all be dead by the time it's
running, but hey it's supposed to help traffic for our grandkids.
The thing is that since much of Oahu is so expensive for crappy homes,
Ewa Beach offers something that people really like in spite of the
traffic: new affordable homes. There must be a few hundred new homes
being built at any given time in Ewa, and you should seriously consider
living there, if you don't mind driving an hour to town. Yes it will
take you an hour to go 20 miles to downtown. Do that math, that's
20miles per hour.
But when you get home, you'll have a nice house to sleep in. Now a lot
of people who contact me are coming from DC, San Diego, or New York, or
even Orange County CA. These places have such terrible traffic that
driving an hour to get home is actually quite an improvement. For these
folks, the idea of having a nicer, newer home is well worth an hour
drive versus a 30 minute drive.
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