To validate Balad1 's reason for staying: yes Hawaiian real estate in general has taken a big dump. The cheapest houses are now on the BI. Places in Oahu are still way tooo expensive. He would probably stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if he sold while the market was down.
As for my reason to staying in Hawaii, i've been dating a white guy for three years who was born and raised on the big island. He refuses to leave because he grew up here, has a job, and has family and friends here. I tried to reason with him:
1. He hates the beach and never goes, ever, i have to drag him, he splashes around for 15 min and then demands we get back in the car.
2. He never speaks to his parents save for the holidays
3. He doesn't like his job
The only upside is he has a great group of friends he grew up with here.
I argue, if he moves back to Texas with me we can have the luxuries a good city can provide, i always took them for granted, including free trash and recycle pick up, paved roads, our kids will have sidewalks to play on
and decent public schools to attend, museums to visit
, water that doesn't come from a catchment tank (this is highly unsanitary b/c most ppl don't have the $ to clean these tanks every yr like they should thus sometimes rats fall in and die or birds bath and deficate in the covers., which is why you only bathe in this water and don't drink it, your drinking water you have to haul in yourself from spigots located on the side of the road provided by the city.)
As i said before this is the reality of the puna district on the big island. Hilo has running water, but no sidewalks. Most people can't afford to buy a decent house in hilo, which is why they look for places in puna, the people who do live in hilo are mostly elderly people who bought their houses back in the 50's or 60's. Or children who have inherited their parents houses.
Hawaii is behind the mainland as it did not recieve statehood until 1959! It seems stuck in that era and the new generation of hawaiians are holding fast to their culture which is good but it means don't expect big changes anytime soon.
To adress ppl who are accusing me of bashing Hawaii inorder to discourage ppl from moving to these beautiful islands, i have no secret agenda of keeping these islands all to myself. i was not born nor raised here and have little attachment to these islands, i do however have pity on people of hawaiian decent who have little say on what will happen in the future as their islands become overrun, i hope they don't all end up looking like Oahu.
As for me, my boyfriend is the best man i've ever met (aside from my father) and i hope he decides to embark on a new adventure with me, we don't necessarily have to move back to my hometown but perhaps to a new place where we can both be happy.
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Just because he's vertically challenged doesn't shield him from the truth! 
