Making a Living Off Your Land (Hilo, Kurtistown: for sale, rental, mortgage)

[TreeZoo]

Hello all,

I am new here and am considering a move to the BI, particularly, the Hamakua Coast. I want to be able to make a decent living off of the land I buy and I am looking for advice.

My ideal property would be 5 acres or more of land. Somewhere in the 800-1500 foot elevation, with an ocean view and a running stream. I can dream about getting all those in the same property, anyway. I would like to build a home of approx 1500sq'.

To earn money I would have a few small cabins to rent but also farm crops. Chocolate seems to be an interesting new coming crop. I would also want to have some fruit trees for eating as well as selling in the farmers market. Would some timber crops be a reasonable long term strategy?

OK everybody, tell me how crazy I am.

[Dreaming of Hawaii]

Have you priced 5 acres of land on the Hamakua Coast? I just did a little looking around and found a couple of five acre parcels running around $300,000.

How much money to you have to live on while your crops are growing?

I'm sure that hotzcatz or some other knowledgeable person will chime in about the legalities of your concept of having small rental cabins on five acres of ag land.

[TreeZoo]

It would take a few years before some of those crops start to pay. I know I would need to get a job or start/buy a business to fill the gap. It would definitely be a long term endeavor. As far as cabins, i note there are lots on vrbo doing it, I assumed it would be allowed.

I have seen properties much larger than 5acres for not much more money but I assume they are extremely high elevation. I am looking for that sweet spot of growing tropicals but not needing air conditioning.

[hotzcatz]

Hard to find the running stream, we don't have many of those since the volcanic soil just lets the water go straight down mostly. There's intermittent streams in the gulches. Most any property with a running stream is going to be more expensive than one without. Not sure if you'd want a running stream, though, depending on what is uphill. There's leptospirosis found in freshwater streams when there's cow pastures upstream.

It should be doable eventually, but it most likely won't pay for itself right away. It takes trees and crops awhile to grow, after all.

Chocolate is a good choice since a lot of the world's chocolate growing regions are becoming affected by droughts as well as wars. Adding in koa as timber would be profitable, although koa likes a higher elevation not sure what elevation cacoa likes. Starting around 1,200 feet on up, usually for koa. Someone told me once that up at high enough elevations, there's a koa seed bank already in the soil, he said mostly you'd just scrape away the guinea grass and keep the cattle from eating the sprouting koa. Koa growing out in a field also has more "curly" in it than koa growing vertical in a forest. He also said you'd be able to start limited harvesting in ten to fifteen years and then about ten percent per acre forever after. He'd envisioned logging with mules where you'd drop the tree and snake it out of the forest with a team. Add a small saw mill to that and you'd have some high end product.

I wonder how a campground would be? I've not looked at the zoning required for one, though. But there aren't any around and might be good for the cost conscious traveler. Maybe some sort of wooden platform with canvas sides as a "tent" and a communal eating hall or some such. Anyway, just an idea.

Generally having a diversification of income generating things seems to work the best. As well as a side job until you figure out what actually generates income. Also, depending on what access you have to markets matters. If selling retail, you get more $$$ but have to either pay rent for space somewhere or give someone commission to sell for you. Selling wholesale pretty much cuts the income in half.

Don't worry about the air conditioning, there's not much low elevation land along the coast and normally it's not necessary. We seem to have an Abby Normal year this year.

Once you find the land, ask Planning Department if what you want to do with it is an allowable use.

[smarino]

Keep in mind that how your property would be zoned would determine whether or not you could build additional structures on it. When my wife was trying to sell her properties in Kurtistown. I approached the Hare Krishna folks in Hilo because her smaller property looked well suited for their use. I was also desperate to help her get it sold because her realtor at the time was doing nothing, but that's another story.

The property was sorta remote, which appealed to them. They were also stuck in a smallish place in their current Hilo location and wanted something bigger, so they were interested. However, the zoning would not allow any additional structures to be built because her land was zoned agricultural land. They could have built a structure or two on it if it were directly related to the small Anthurium farm that was in operation on the property, but any housing that was not designed to house farm workers (we're only talking 3 acres here) was not permitted.

To my knowledge, and I could be wrong, most residential zoned property is only permitted to have what is called an Ohana home built on the one unsubdivided lot, and family would be the only people permitted to live in it. If you were setting out to build a commercial enterprise, w/ your business consisting of rental cabins, then you would probably need to look at commercial property and make sure it was zoned for that use.

[hotzcatz]

Well, it depends on what kind of ag zone you're dealing with as to what can be done with it.

Chapter 25 Hawaii County Code

http://www.hawaiicounty.gov/lb-countycode/#countycode

Division 5 Section 25-5-52 permitted uses in RA (Residential & Agricultural) zone - doesn't seem to mention campgrounds.

Division 6 Section 25-5-62 permitted uses in FA family agriculture zone:
(6) Campgrounds, parks, playgrounds, tennis courts, swimming pools, and other similar open area
recreational facilities, where none of the recreational features are entirely enclosed in a building.

Division 7 Section 25-5-72 permitted uses in Agricultural zone:
(7) Campgrounds, parks, playgrounds, tennis courts, swimming pools, and other similar open area
recreational facilities, where none of the recreational features are entirely enclosed in a building.

Division 8 section 25-5-82 Intensive Agricultural zone - no mention of campground but verify for yourself, I may have an old version or not read carefully.

[HonaunauLove]

I used to be in the land buying mindset. With all my looking I can tell you that there is land for sale with plenty of fruit producing trees already on it. Some with full on macadamia groves. Also, dig into the property tax records. There are a lot of people with land who live off island. Some that was willed to them and they have no plans to ever come live or work on it. Make them an offer.

[hotzcatz]

It's best if the land can be paid for before starting the venture. Figure roughly $200K for land, $100K for improvements (and at that price, you're building your own house) and that's a mortgage of roughly $1,500 a month. The land won't be making that much money right away so if outside money can be brought in to pay for the land and improvements up front, then you'd be able to pretty much support yourself since you'd not need as much per month.

[terracore]

Originally Posted by TreeZoo

Hello all,

I am new here and am considering a move to the BI, particularly, the Hamakua Coast. I want to be able to make a decent living off of the land I buy and I am looking for advice.

My ideal property would be 5 acres or more of land. Somewhere in the 800-1500 foot elevation, with an ocean view and a running stream. I can dream about getting all those in the same property, anyway. I would like to build a home of approx 1500sq'.

To earn money I would have a few small cabins to rent but also farm crops. Chocolate seems to be an interesting new coming crop. I would also want to have some fruit trees for eating as well as selling in the farmers market. Would some timber crops be a reasonable long term strategy?

OK everybody, tell me how crazy I am.

You're not crazy so long as you're a millionaire, if you're looking for a 5+ acre income-potential producing property on the Hamakua coast. Especially one with a year-round running stream. Not sure how long it will take to pay off your investments, but your grandchildren might appreciate your decisions. Your spouse if you have one on the other hand.... might leave you while there is still money left to be had.

[hotzcatz]

There used to be someone up around in the Kalopa area who had a dog sitting business. Pet grooming and dog sitting, although her husband also had employment outside of the home. But, she had a pasture with a big chain link enclosure, probably a half acre to an acre in chain link. Inside that area was a concrete pad with a roof and individual chain link enclosures, each of which had a fairly large dog house in it. There were about six to eight of those. The friendly dogs got to run around and play in the whole fenced in pasture area and all the dogs had their own houses at night. Our dogs really liked going there when we were on vacation and would play with all the toys and other dogs in the pasture. The dog sitters moved when he changed jobs though so now there's not a good dog sitter there anymore.

It was $30 a day for the first dog and an additional $20 per day for the second one if they shared a dog house at night. We dropped off their food when we dropped off the dogs, so she didn't pay for feeding them. Sitting six dogs would be enough to pay a mortgage on a property if the kennels were kept half way full. Figure four dogs per night average, so that's $120 a day x 30 days a month = $3,600 a month. Not too shabby.