We first dabbled with apartments abroad while in Buenos Aires, where we were lucky find this colorful one bedroom in the trendy neighborhood of Palermo Soho. We were hoping for similar luck in Honolulu, especially because, unlike BsAs, where we stayed for seven weeks, we planned to live in Honolulu for at least a few months.
And to our good fortune, we were lucky again. But there’s a back story to all of this. So, let me back it up, back it up.
While in Cartagena, Colombia the last week of January, I realized, “Crap! We need to start looking for an apartment in Honolulu if we really want to move in mid-February!” So the Craiglist search began.
And it wasn’t promising. Rent was too high. Apartments weren’t furnished. Landlords/agents wouldn’t accept short-term leases. We were even willing to share with random roommate(s), thinking it’d be a fun way to meet new people, but many didn’t want couples and others only wanted females. Also, I just can’t get on board with being 420 friendly. Sorry.
We extended our search to Airbnb, which is how we found our BsAs apartment and VRBO, but the prices were ludicrously high.
Just a day before we left Honolulu, it was looking pretty grim. Sure, we had accommodations for the first few days in Hawaii, thanks to the wedding and the accompanying hotel my parents booked for us. But what about after that? Would we have to say goodbye to the islands and head to Asia sooner than expected?
Well, we ended up getting one positive response, and it was for a “HUGE” studio apartment in Kaimuki. My cousin Pratt and her new husband, Craig, who live in Honolulu and had been giving some of our Craigslist picks a once over, had given us a list of neighborhoods to live in, and fortunately Kaimuki was one of them. We set up an appointment for the day after getting to Honolulu and prayed that it wouldn’t get scooped up before we arrived.
So in between wedding festivities, we saw it. And loved it. It was perfect, not only because it was a beautiful furnished apartment, but because the tenant was going to the mainland for 3-4 months and just needed someone to occupy it short term. We knew immediately that we wanted it, so after going back to our hotel, we reiterated to the tenant via email how much we wanted it.
He asked us to come back the next day to meet the landlord. You see, the apartment is kind of, sort of the basement — a baller one at that — for the main house that sits above it. (This is apparently a common apartment set-up in Hawaii.) The owners of the home are a lovely retired professor, his wife and their son. We met with the couple — the wife even made us some fresh guava juice — but it was more like a “here’s what you need to know about the apartment” than “let me check if you guys are mentally insane.” They told us about how the mail works, what the neighborhood was like and whatever else we’d need to know about the apartment. So I guess we got it?
YES WE DID. We were thrilled — mainly because it was the only response we got from Craigslist so we didn’t really have any other options.
Check it out:
We live up a mountain in a quiet, very residential neighborhood. And yeah, the walk up that driveway at the end of the day isn’t fun.
