I'm posting this in "Politicial" because I believe a substantial portion of the (very low) ratings are due to Hawaii's politicians and their "values", which we all know to be of the "progressive" variety.

2017’s Best & Worst Places for First-Time Home Buyers

From WalletHub, Jul 17, 2017

Buying a home for the first time is an exciting and important milestone for many Americans. As such, first-time home buyers must carefully consider a number of factors — what they want and need relative to what they can afford, for instance — before diving to the deep end of real estate.

Often, potential buyers begin searching for their dream homes and drafting their wish lists without a realistic idea of market prices, interest rates or even their eligibility to obtain a mortgage.

To simplify the process, WalletHub’s analysts compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 23 key indicators of market attractiveness, affordability and quality of life. Their data set ranges from cost of living to real-estate taxes to property-crime rate.

read … Full Report [https://wallethub.com/edu/best-and-worst-cities-for-first-time-home-buyers/5564/]


Honolulu, HI

Rank – 268th [Out of 300 ranked. My old hometown, Santa Barbara (possibly more "progressive" than Hawaii) came in at 300!]
Score -- 46.34
Affordability – 274th
Real Estate Market – 187th
Quality of Life -- 218th
Cost of Living – 281st (tied for highest)
Real Estate Tax Rate – 1st (lowest)
Total Home Energy Cost – 253rd (highest in USA)

Other than those few factors, it's all good!

Only reason our TAX RATE is the lowest is because of the high market value of homes.  What we ACTUALLY pay is probably a lot higher than a lot of places with higher tax rates.

Only reason our TAX RATE is the lowest is because of the high market value of homes.  What we ACTUALLY pay is probably a lot higher than a lot of places with higher tax rates.

Another reason is the excise tax supplements property taxes better than a sales tax.  The excise tax is a compounding tax, so the consumer winds up paying about 13-14% on each sale.  Sales tax is only applied at the retail transaction, so even a 7% sales tax is better than 4% excise.

With excise tax income, they can afford to keep the property taxes affordable for people living in the house.  There are exemption amounts to make it affordable (relatively).  For businesses and rental units, no such exemption.

Only reason our TAX RATE is the lowest is because of the high market value of homes.  What we ACTUALLY pay is probably a lot higher than a lot of places with higher tax rates.

One reason our property taxes are not the highest is because our school system falls under the State instead of the City.  Still high overall for city property taxes, but State taxes are one of the highest in the nation.

Only reason our TAX RATE is the lowest is because of the high market value of homes.  What we ACTUALLY pay is probably a lot higher than a lot of places with higher tax rates.

The attractiveness of buying a home here and retiring here is the low property taxes and income taxes. Traditionally, when one retires ones income drops considerably thereby reducing ones cost of living since you are now on a fixed income. Of course this would be lower in other states. However, some states have a very low or no state sales tax with a high property tax like Texas. Hawaii also offers zero state income tax on retirement income. So believe it or not, if you can get past the initial cost of the house itself, the actual cost of living as a retired person in Hawaii can be quite low comparatively speaking. There can also be some other Hawaii specific tax advantages here as well including higher exclusion rates for older people living in their homes thereby lowering their property taxes even more.

I still want to move to Nevada.  Cannot convince the wife.

I still want to move to Nevada.  Cannot convince the wife.

I hear you, same problem,.

Own our home in Kona outright, thanks to favorable real estates conditions.  That does not fix no where to go shoot, threat of more draconian liberal laws.

That said, I am seriously trying to condition the wife to moving to Arizona.  "With or without you"  pisses her off, but she knows I will not tolerate more encroachment.

Moves from California to Oahu then again to the BI have worn her out.  She does not feel the political pressure I do.