buy lots in Big Island (real estate, houses, to buy)

[happyamandas]

I have a friend who wants to purchase a lot in big island, we want to build two or three houses on the lot we bought, and it is better if we can grow some plant on the land. on the big island I know many places are too dry to have plant on it, cause the lava by the volcanoes. our max price can pay for the land is 1 million.

another ideal island is Maui, if on big island we can not find such lot, we also like Maui island, and if any chance is possible there, we would also like to take it.

[Jungjohann]

Just what 'plant' did you have in mind?

uuuurrrrpppp,,,,,,,

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Sorry, one house per lot. In some agricultural zoned areas, you can put a house plus a small agricultural workers house.

If you have 1 million and want land to grow on The Big Island, look on the Hamakua Coast. If you want multiple houses, you will have to buy several smaller lots; one per house.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Also, since it appears that English is not your first language, if you are a foreign national, make sure you can get a resident's visa before you buy land.

[OpenD]

The Hawaii County Planning Office publishes zoning maps showing what kind of use different plots of land are approved for. Some are reserved for commercial use only, some for residential, some for agricultural, and some are reserved from any development at all.

To put two houses on a property you would need an RD (Residential Double) zoned lot, and for more than two you would need an RM (Residential Multiple) zoned lot. Looking at the Zone maps you will see that your choices for this kind of building are limited. You can't just buy a big agricultural lot and build houses on it. Of course you can always apply for a zoning change or a variance, but that tends to be costly and time consuming and with no guaranteed outcome. So you may wish to limit your search to properties that are already zoned for the type of development you have in mind.

Here are the zoning definitions: http://www.cohplanningdept.com/wp-co...Definition.pdf

And here are the zoning maps: Zone Maps | County of Hawaii Planning Department

[terracore]

Heck for a million dollars you can buy most of Puna or all of HOVE.

[CyberCity]

Originally Posted by terracore

Heck for a million dollars you can buy most of Puna or all of HOVE.

Well, maybe not ALL of HOVE, but at a guesstimate of $10K per acre lot, for a $million, someone could buy 100 acres. Plenty of space for houses and gardens!

First time poster. A "million dollars" to spend on land. Coming to an anonymous internet forum for advice... here we go again.

[KaraBenNemsi]

In Ka'u they have a program for foreigners to invest $ 500K. in a parcel, which will then be turned into a coffee farm, which in turn will give the absentee owner a US green card. The program is run by a S.F. law company.

http://www.htassetholding.com/projec...%20website.pdf

[oregonwoodsmoke]

The investor's visa has to be money spent on a business and does not include money spent on a residence. A coffee farm would probably qualify, but it would only be good for visas for the investor, the spouse, and minor children. It would not provide visas for extended family. It certainly will not provide a visa for "friends"

Note, if the coffee farm included a residence, the value of the house would be deducted and not count towards the investor's visa.

However, an investor's visa is one way to get into the USA, for people with large amounts of cash who are interested in starting a business.

[KaraBenNemsi]

The attached pdf file explains this pretty clearly. They are really stretching yet not violating immigration law, which is written to create US jobs with the aid of foreign money & business know how.

This seems to be an operation where a wealthy realtor can get top money for otherwise hard to sell land, and the S.F. law company gets a stream of new wealthy foreign clients who want residency without doing a real investment. They don't advertise here on the B.I. and I only found it by chance.

Don't think it will do any good for the Ka'u community. Ka'u Coffee or the county but drive real estate up artificially.