Housing miracle

Yay! I got a place to live!

In coming back to Hawaii, one of the things I was worried about was being able to find a place to stay during school. JAIMS has a housing registry, but I knew that a lot of those place are geared toward foreign students who were merely looking for a room with a host family. Being a designated Hawaii resident, it would be a little hard to convince anyone that I needed to do that.

Plus, real estate prices have shot up incredibly in the past five years, after slumping over the previous ten. Here's a chart of median real estate prices from 1978 to 2005. Prices have been on the rise since 2000 (click for the bigger view).

After seeing that, and reading this article about problems finding a place to rent, I started to panic. I imagined having to pay $1000 a month for a shared, two bedroom-one bathroom place.

But, by the hand of God, my roommate M and I were able to secure a new lease for the apartment we're in now. When W moves out after his impending wedding, we'll be able to stay in our two-bedroom, two-bathroom for the same monthly rent of $1300.

Though I still think that's expensive, it's because I remember the 2/1 I stayed in during 1997 went for $800. But when you consider the landlady hasn't changed the rent since at least October 2002, you have to admit we got a miraculous deal.