Moving to the big island (Hilo: mattress, appliances, house)

[Frankjake]

My other half who’s been posting on here for several months or so now, just received comfirmation the our auction bid was approved. Very long story so I won’t bore you.

A few things I’d like to point out with our buying experience. Don’t trust just any realtor. Shannon Underwood with Hawaii Coast Realty, is very professional. I wish I could say the same for sellers of properties we looked at.

One selling realtor we believe played us to raise the price of the property. Then a second selling realtor never returned calls in a timely manner. Either these people are complete idiots or they simply don’t give a crap.

But we finally found out today that our offer was accepted by Fanny Mae after going to auction. It wasn’t a bit of a struggle but saving over $40,000 on a $140,000 home is a pretty darn good deal.

So my advice to anyone looking to move to Hawaii, investigate your realtor. Ask them if they know the realtor from the other side of the deal. There are deals to be found. Many homes need work but mostly cosmetic. A long weekend, a bucket of soapy water and some good old elbow grease makes a huge difference.

Now that we were accepted, we wait for escrow to close and start the move. Many, many people on this forum have suggested to get rid of anything you don’t use. Numerous items can be bought again. And some older antiques such as I have....well someone is going to get lucky with many of my great grandmothers old dishes. But I’ve used them 60 years and now it’s someone else’s turn to enjoy them. I have no family to leave them to, so I’ll fine someone who I hope will have respect for them as I have.

Furniture...unless it brand new or vey expensive, get rid of it and buy new when you get to Hawaii. We have a quote for a space aproximately 6’ x 5’ x 6’. That’s the size of a small bathroom. Whatever you can cram in there is about 3 thousand dollars. A mattress alone will cost more than a brand new one. And so will most appliances. So be smart in packing. Everyone we’ve met on our house hunt trip said they wish they hadn’t brought as much as the did.

So that’s my 2 cents worth. I hope it helps some trying to make that big decision. Have a good move and even better life once you get there.

Frank

[hotzcatz]

HOVE is dry enough you may be able to bring over older furniture and have it survive. A lot of the antiques are made with hide glue which doesn't survive high humidity. But HOVE gets what, ten inches of rain a year?

But, there's tons of stuff already here. When folks move here, they bring a huge container full of stuff from their mainland house which is generally twice as big or bigger than the house they get here. So a lot of stuff is sold off when they first get here. Then, if they don't make it here after a year or two, usually they don't have enough money to send it all back again and then have another sell off.

[Grassyknoll]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

HOVE is dry enough you may be able to bring over older furniture and have it survive. A lot of the antiques are made with hide glue which doesn't survive high humidity. But HOVE gets what, ten inches of rain a year?

But, there's tons of stuff already here. When folks move here, they bring a huge container full of stuff from their mainland house which is generally twice as big or bigger than the house they get here. So a lot of stuff is sold off when they first get here. Then, if they don't make it here after a year or two, usually they don't have enough money to send it all back again and then have another sell off.

OV has low enough humidity you could bring your antiques. I was actually surprised at the number of antique shops in the Kona area. But be aware, your antiques could very well end up becoming termite food. Termites in furniture is pretty common here.

[terracore]

Not just termites, there are a number of boring beetles that like antiques as well.

[Frankjake]

Thank you for those responses.

[katastroph3e]

Just out of curiosity, who did you use to ship your items out?

[dobanion]

I was just in HOVE a couple weeks ago. Was raining like crazy at the highway.

It's all about elevation there. Some elevations are wet, some dry, some get lots of fog, etc.

[Amadrid]

Originally Posted by katastroph3e

Just out of curiosity, who did you use to ship your items out?

Hey Katastroph3e

I am Frankjakes other half; We used to prime moving. They are located in Los Angeles but they have a local phone numbers for Hawaii in Los Angeles. I would never use them again… Ideally we won’t ever have to :-)
Everything was great, communication was good, everything went well up until the time they picked up the furniture. The guys arrived, they were extremely quick and getting things packed however I had to excess of charges on the packaging and they claimed that it was because they need to “build custom” for two piece of furniture. Their custom create amounted to one sheet of cardboard over the glass panel. I explain to the guy that I had plenty of cardboard I could’ve done it myself. We had lots of moving blankets, we had lots of shipping tape. They charge me to cover a mirror on one item and cover a glass panel on another item and they use my own material and charge me for it. I Kitchen you multiple times to reach out to the customer service people at prime moving and was completely blown off or given an excuse.

The communication with regard to their custom create amounted to one sheet of cardboard over the glass panel. I explain to the guy that I had plenty of cardboard I could’ve done it myself. We had lots of moving blankets, we had lots of shipping tape. They charge me to cover a mirror on one item and cover a glass panel on another item and they use my own material and charge me for it. I continued multiple times to reach out to the customer service people at prime moving and was completely blown off or giving an excuse.

The communication with regard to The actual delivery of the items was poor. They tell you that you need to tell them your first available date for delivery but they also tell you that it takes 30 to 45 days from that first available date for your items to actually show up. We communicated multiple times with the company regarding the timeline for furniture delivery but not everybody in their organization is on the same page and when they call and want you to give them a confirmation on the shipment loading, it is extremely easy for that date to get messed up. They loaded our materials onto a boat much earlier than we anticipated so it arrived in Hawaii almost a month before we were scheduled to come over to the island and a month earlier than we told them we wanted to have the furniture there. The end result was they wanted to charge us additional storage for the items being held in Hilo. I went around and around it with them showing them the documentation that we signed and the dates that we anticipated having the household goods and furniture arrive but in the end they pretty much have you hostage once they have your furniture.

When the guys arrived to unpack our household goods and furniture I can tell you that pretty much every single box that we packed was significantly damaged. All the boxes are crushed. We have not completely unpacked all of the goods but I can already tell that we got some damage. Items where we clearly marked fragile and where the top was and which side was supposed to be up, arrived on their side, the box crushed. They also put a hole in the wall at the house we moved out of and scratch the paint but the claims department was very nonchalant on everything.

We have moved multiple times packing boxes over and over. Between eight homes and we’ve never had a problem. Even the last moving company that moved our stuff across the states didn’t do any damage to anything. I just don’t think these people care. And I don’t think it’s unique to this company either. I mean we realize that they packed everything up and loaded on a truck at our house and take it down to Los Angeles offload it and stick it in the warehouse where it sits for 30 days or so, then gets loaded into a container, tracked down to the port, it gets loaded on the ship, travels across the ocean then gets unloaded out of the container and into a warehouse where it sets. Then he gets loaded back on the track and is taken to your final place so I do expect there to be some things that don’t go exactly as planned but they packed 146 boxes and pretty much everything that was in a box is completely cr I mean we realize that they packed everything up and loaded on a truck at our house and take it down to Los Angeles offload it and stick it in the warehouse where it sits for 30 days or so, then gets loaded into a container, tracked down to the port, it gets loaded on the ship, travels across the ocean then gets unloaded out of the container and into a warehouse where it sits. Then he gets loaded back on the track and is taken to your final place so I do expect there to be some things that don’t go exactly as planned but they packed 146 boxes and pretty much everything that was in a box is completely crushed