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Clint Hansen This is Clint Hansen with Maui Luxury Real Estate, mauirealestateradio.com. You can find us at 11:10 AM, 98.7 FM 96.7 FM, the KAOI radio group. You can also-- if you're ever looking for real estate find us at mauirealestate.net. That's the Hansen Ohana. You all know us, the Maui family for real estate. Bob and Donna Hansen are my parents. They've had their license forever. My mom's had her license for over 40 years. My dad's had his for 36. And I've had mine for 17 now. I've been on island 28 years- top agent and we're here to talk about real estate issues. But today is health issues. Want to follow up on our last story, you know, it's kind of a coincidence. I had the - I was going to say real estate agent - but no, we had Insurance State Farm in here, Kit Okazaki and we were discussing some of the issues and pitfalls with insurance. I ended up getting a leak in my house of all things and fortunately, I've had a wonderful experience. We were able to solve the issue shortly and yeah, it's definitely good to have good insurance because I have a lot of drywall to replace and it's all being covered. So definitely, if you want to have some good coverage and you're considering a nice homeowner policy give Kit Okazaki a call at State Farm and you can always find his contact. Feel free to give me a call 808-280-2764. That's 808-280-2764. So the continuing housing problem on Maui-- it doesn't just extend to the people. It also extends to the businesses. I was talking to DOD- Department of Defense for some-- they do a Pacific monitoring for tsunamis and disaster preparedness and one of the things they do is the tech emphasis for Research Park. They were trying to get staffing out here and they have a fairly large budget and they would get really well-qualified people, go through the whole process and then when it came down to the housing and trying to find a place, they turned person after person away. This also extends to Maui Memorial. We do have a shortfall of approximately, I believe 200 doctors or so, on the island that we're trying to get housing for so that we can expand our medical coverage. And today, I have joining us. Mike, you want to tell us a little bit about you and some of your coverage here at the hospital and--.
Mike Rembis Sure. I'm Mike Rembis. I'm the CEO of the Maui Health System. We refer to ourselves as Maui Health because that's what it's all about.
ClintYes sir. I actually have some personal experience at your hospital. Back when I was in high school, I had what's known as a spontaneous pneumothorax. It was a really kind of an unfortunate situation. My lung collapsed because I was very skinny at the time. It's a little bit more common with a New York-ic body type. I've gained weight since then, fortunately, and my lung was collapsed for such a period of time that they had to do a chest tube. I took the Maui air ambulance over to Oahu But Maui stabilized me. I was in the hospital for over a week. They realized that it wasn't going to be able to be solved because it was collapsed- scar tissue form, went over there and then also, both of my children were born. It was a wonderful experience at the hospital, incredible staff, and I just want to thank you for all that. So tell us a little bit about some of your housing issues that you guys deal with. I know that getting doctors here can often be difficult.
MikeWell, we challenge-- we're challenge with housing as everyone is on the island. There's just not enough and is not affordable for a lot of people. We are trying to recruit more and more employees all the time. I have less reliance on employees from the mainland and a lot of our employees have trouble finding housing especially affordable. So we are doing everything we can to help them. But now, we're also recruiting a number of physicians to the island and they-- many of whom come with families and they're trying to find housing too. Many times they rent short-term until they can find something that's affordable for them. But there's just not a lot of inventory and when it comes to affordable housing, it's a different interpretation for everyone depending on where they're coming from. If you're coming from Los Angeles or San Francisco, the sticker shock might not be quite as great. But we're recruiting a lot of doctors from the heartland of America in the Midwest, in the south, and the sticker shock is significant. And the inventory is low. So housing is one of our concerns to recruit good people here that will be part of our Ohana and provide health care.
ClintSo when you're looking for these doctors and you're getting out here, I know you're moving and trying to get more people to establish living on island local people. And from what I understood, you have a bit of a traveling nurse and you're transitioning away from that trying to hire more locally but you have a shortfall with staff and skilled labor. Tell us so about those programs that you're creating to reach out to the local people to train them and whatnot.
MikeWell, we are now a community hospital; no longer a state hospital. When we started this journey, just slightly about two years ago, we had over 250 traveling employees from the mainland staffing our hospital. We're below a 100 now. And our success has been very simply. We're trying to hire people from Maui to take care of people on Maui and the last three nursing programs here on Maui. We've hired every single nursing grad that wanted to stay on island. And I'm happy to say in the last three years, we only lost one to the mainland. So they're staying and we have training programs. When they come out of nursing school, they need some additional work. So we actually put them in an extensive training program at the hospital. We're finding them filling a lot of positions and so we went from about 150 traveling nurses to apply about 75 and going down because we just hired some more new nurses and once they're oriented and trained then we're replacing nurses from the mainland. So our focus is let's work with the local schools, colleges. Let's train them. Let's train people on Maui so they stay on Maui. I think the best care can be delivered by people on Maui taking care of people in Maui. We're also going to the high schools and talking about early careers in health care. We want people to stay on Maui and we need respiratory therapist. We need radiology techs. We need a physical therapy, occupational therapy techs. There's so many needs.
ClintSpecialists especially.
MikeAnd we just don't have enough training programs in Hawaii in general. Actually, we're working with the University of Hawaii to perhaps expand some of the training programs not only for physicians so they can do their residencies here and maybe stay on island but some of the other medical professions that are desperately needed on Maui.
ClintOh, wow. In the transition of getting more people to work here and working towards getting and staffing people from Maui, have you been working on, you know, housing? I know mostly what you do is getting people that do move here like doctors and specialists because that takes a long period of time for them to go through the training. You know often over a decade. So you know-- I know that you do work very diligently to hire locally. Oftentimes, they're coming from other places like you mentioned the heartland. So when they come out here, they are often renting initially and then looking to purchase. I've had a couple of your hospital staff come to me, you know, because we are a long standing family of real estate on the island. We don't do any management. We have thought about it and we've been very happy with the quality of tenants that come from the hospital- very clean, very by the book, you know, totally detailed. So if you ever have the opportunity to rent to somebody in the medical field, all of our experiences have been positive. But that being said we're usually helping people to purchase. And normally, they've already been renting here for a while. So how does that work? Do you guys have a specific department that comes out here and helps find rental situations for people?
MikeNo, we uhm-- it's amazing. Many of the physicians that we're recruiting to the island through word of mouth have already been connected with real estate people--.
ClintOftentimes.
MikeBut we try to have two or three that we can recommend is wrong. The most important thing when someone's coming to Maui and they really don't know the island well is to spend a full day or two just driving the island. We are so blessed to have so many distinct separate communities with a different profile, different feel, different weather. That it's important that when they come here, they really spend some time understanding Maui. So we do try to get them with a realtor to visit our country. Visit the North Shore. Go to the west side if you want. Look at Wailuku, Wailuku Heights Go to We want them to experience the island before they even begin to rent. Because especially a very busy health care professional and some of the surgeons, they need to be quick to the hospital. They understand the roads, the infrastructure, and the climates and most importantly, as the spouse or significant other [laughter] comes with the physician we're recording. Where they live has to be a good fit for them.
ClintAnd their family as well. Oh, they're lending for schooling.
MikeYeah. I was just going to say, "Schools are so critical." I tell many of the physicians, "If you have children, look at the schools first and then kind of spread out from there and look at housing because many times you want to be close to the schools and don't make the mistake of finding a house that's a good hour away from the school. It's going to complicate your life on that one."
ClintAbsolutely. You know we end up having to make the commute. We live down in Kihei and my girls go up at Carden Academy. So we end up doing the 45 up and 45 down. I've actually been talking to the school for [inaudible]. Maybe if we just started a half an hour later, it's amazing the traffic difference. We can literally instead of 45 minutes, get it up at about 30 minutes. And that's over a half-- I mean that's actually an hour of driving savings per day just starting a little bit later.
MikeMaybe someday there'll be a road from Kihei.
ClintThat'd be a blessing but probably not in my life. We'll see how it goes. There actually have been some discussions about that when they were doing the industrial park. Well, it's now going to be industrial park. There is going to be a road connecting between upcountry. But I think those plans fall by the wayside when it wasn't going to be a mall and now they're looking to be a little bit more geared toward local businesses as opposed to a large kind of mall-type structure. There is actually a kind of a plethora of commercial. It's kind of funny and there's not a whole lot of residential land. That's one of the biggest difficulties that Maui deals with.
MikeWell, I tell you now is there a housing shortages and office shortage. I'm trying to recruit-- this year I like to recruit 10 new physicians to Maui to provide care to our residents. And there's not one empty medical office building that I can find to put a physician in on the entire island of Maui.
ClintYeah. Not unless they're going to spend the millions of dollars to build one.
MikeAnd if you take an existing building and try to renovate it given the delays and the process, it could take you a minimum of a year perhaps just to get the building ready for the physician. So it's a real challenge for us to bring in doctors when you don't have any material commercial that can support them.
ClintYou know for housing for the hospital, have you guys thought of thinking outside the box? I mean I notice a lot of the major tech industries are actually creating, you know, specific live work campuses for people. And of course, bus systems that work in conjunction where they literally get into a car, they start their workday and are able to be paid for that process of going through their paperwork and programming on their way to the office for collaboration eye to eye. But the thing that I've really been interested in is many of these tech industries are actually having, you know, these living communities close to where their offices and their campuses are. So that takes a major capital investment of course because they have to get a piece of land. They have to go through the entitlement process which is never easy on Maui. It's about 24 cents for every dollar that you spend is getting that permitting and place in the approvals. So I know that the county really wants to help the hospital flourish to help the people of Maui flourish. Have you guys considered that at all like actually building your own facility and maybe having a shared situation with the doctors that are coming in?
MikeWell, we haven't considered taking that upon ourselves but we are exploring; can we do a partnership? Can we do a partnership with the county, partnership with some of the medical groups with some of the other medical providers to create some housing and maybe some inventory for medical commercial as well? It's kind of very beginning steps. But I don't think anyone of us can take on those kind of projects financially on our own. But in a collaborative effort maybe there's something we can do together. But it's going to take a few years as you suggested to bring our partnership together and try to make something happen.
ClintWell, you're making big. If somebody was to make big plans like that, I would imagine take almost more than a decade--.
MikeAlways.
Clint--because and, you know, you'd probably need grants or investment, you know, in order to make something like that happen not that it couldn't be profitable or possible feasible. It's just, you know, the time involved. There's so many other things and emergencies and unknown that come up. And we've been really happy with the new heart center that you guys have- the cardiac. Tell us a little bit about that.
MikeWell, we're very blessed. We have probably one of the nicest most respectable cardiology programs in the state. Our cardiology program at the hospital has two cardiac surgeons available 24/7. We have two interventional cardiologists that can immediately put a stent or an angioplasty in. These physicians are available always their offices are right next to the hospital. Then, of course, we have a number of cardiologists both at the hospital and throughout the community that support the cardiology program. Outstanding results. If you're having a heart attack, the last thing you want to do is go anywhere but my memorial. Time means everything. It means muscle damage. You need to get there as quickly as possible. And we have our physicians in the emergency room that can evaluate you and literally get you to the cath lab in 20 minutes or less if necessary. So we can do an intervention that will have a meaningful impact on your life.
ClintBarry. I actually have a friend that my neighbor. He was at OGG, you know, the Kahului airport and he ended up having a heart attack right there. And when he got there, from my understanding it's not just one of the best heart centers and cardiac units in the state. It's actually one of the best in the nation. And they said if he was either a) on Oahu on his connection, in the air, or in California, the likelihood of him surviving it in any one of those three situations, it would have been very unlikely. The fact that he was on Maui in Kahului was the only reason that he was able to survive.
MikeAnd we just received two awards from US News and World Report identifying our cardiac program as one of the best in the country. And for heart failure, it's amazing results and we're very proud of that. The fact that we got the [inaudible], the only hospital in Oahu that get both rewards last year, says a lot about our staff and the quality of our program.
ClintOther programs I've been really happy with both like I mentioned my daughters were born in the hospital there. I've had many nieces and nephews born and I was fortunate enough to have my girls born after the improvements right after the improvements. Can you tell us a little bit about that? How many new Maui babies you see on a daily basis?
MikeWell, it's amazing. We have deliveries every day. And we added something that's kind of fun for the hospital. We have chimes that go off now.
ClintOh, really.
MikeEvery time a baby is born. So it's amazing when those chimes go off all the employees start smiling. They know that there's another life coming on Maui. So we see our births continue. We have a great program. We try to provide every mother a private room unless we're extremely busy and what's the time we can accommodate. And we try to provide room for the fathers as well. And we hope to in the next 24 months renovate the whole area cosmetically just to kind of give it a new face and a new look. But OB is very important to us because it's bringing new life to Maui all the time.
ClintSo stepping down to the lower side of the hospital physically and I believe as you come into the main entrance to the right there is like the [Hawaiian] Center for Mental Health. I've noticed that place for a while. My mom was on the mental health board back in I think 2000 and put a lot of volunteer time in there doing pretty well. But from what I understand you guys have been having issues with funding from the State and continuing programs. Some of the concerns people have been having with mental health, you know-- I know that other places in the State have been working and trying to get health funds to help homeless people in Hawaii. And it is a very difficult thing to, you know, prove somebody a danger to themselves. But we've been noticing it. You know people around the island. There's definitely people with mental health situations, walking the streets. And can you talk a little bit about where the program is currently and future developments?
MikeI think mental health is one of the largest issues we have in the country. This is not a Maui problem. This is a national problem. And we're no different than the mainland. We have homeless but we have a lot of patients with mental health everything from psychosis to alcoholism to drug abuse and sometimes, a combination of many things.
ClintYeah, dual symptoms. That's they usually run hand-in-hand. Self-medication is often people look to their own answers as opposed to a professional.
MikeWe do have an inpatient- a small inpatient unit for mental health. It's usually full all the time because you-- something about the need on Maui. There was an adolescent unit many years ago that's closed because of inadequate funding and inability to get physicians over here to staff a small adolescent unit. So we focus on adult inpatient care. We worked very closely with the adolescent unit on Oahu and our emergency room doctors do an amazing job of treating patients in crisis, managing them, treating them, and getting them to outpatient care here on the island and if necessary transferring them to Oahu So I think we're doing the best we can. I think though there's not enough money put into mental health. One of the things I'm working with with the county of Maui is trying to bring all the mental health people together.
ClintAbsolutely.
MikeAnd seeing how we can with the limited resources we all have do a better job collaboratively working together. With the youth services, is there any light at the end of the tunnel. Do you think we're going to be able to get some funding? Could you have help from the people to maybe petition on behalf of Maui to, you know, get a light shined I know with the closing down of the youth services that we have here. Oftentimes, it's really difficult for family have to travel over to Oahu to take care of that imminent need, you know, and oftentimes, people hide it inside their issues because they realize the abnormality of their thoughts or hearing voices or just general depression and I mean again people will often go to substance and if family support is such an important part, you know, we obviously want to have those services here on Maui as opposed to having people sometimes far away from their family. So if there's anything that we can do please let us know.
MikeWell, that's what I'm trying to convene a group together with the county because I think we need to all put our heads together and see how we can improve the services of the limited funds we have. I don't think we're going to see significant increases unless it's a collaborative effort where everyone's working together to tap as much resources as possible.
ClintAnd back to the ER, from what I understand, they're one of the best in the State. Is there any notes you can give to those others, not States, but best in the nation second best in the nation. Isn't that right?
MikeWell, we're pretty excited of our emergency room. We have a physician group that's pretty amazing. Not only have we seen the patient satisfaction scores go up. All of our quality metrics have gone up and now we even have about 30% of the patients with a little iPad asking-- we ask them before they leave the emergency room. How was your care? Do you understand what you need to do when you get home? You understand your meds? And whole purpose of that is to catch it right there before they're discharged because many people when you're in the emergency room, you don't listen; you don't understand everything. They're in crisis.
MikeAbsolutely. And if we can ask you before you leave, do you understand what you need to do? Do you understand the follow-up, the meds you need? And they say they don't. We go right back in the room and spend some quality time with them. But our emergency room is truly amazing. We just recruited two neurosurgeons on that. We did not have a full-time neurosurgeon for a number of years. And these guys are in the emergency room all the time. We, as a trauma center, our emergency room is a trauma center level three. We get a lot of trauma: head injuries, spine injuries. These two trauma surgeons are not only board certified neurosurgeons but they do spine and just in the first month that they were here, there was about 13 patients that would have had to go to Oahu that were treated here on Maui. So we're trying to keep health care here. Improve the emergency room. So when you come in there for anything we can take care of you. Take care of you quickly with great outcomes.
ClintAnd speaking of having to go to Oahu which is sometimes necessary. I mean we have as low population here on Maui and the tourism is a double-edged sword. You know it adds additional resources for us but, of course, you know, we need to have the infrastructure to cover them. So you know it's like having a larger population and being able to fund more doctors and having those specialties here and getting them over to Oahu is often a task. I actually, when I had my pneumothorax, I went over, you know, in the little plane- the little Cessna. And unfortunately, actually you know became good friends with those guys and they passed away when their airplane crashed down at the BMW. It was a really sad day. And I know we have our air systems that's totally independent of the hospital, right? It's like a separate company and they have to apply for their own funding, their own grants and, you know, have you seen improvements there because I've been fortunate of not have to fly on it.
MikeNow, we have a new helicopter with the county and AMR's staffs that's available to transport patients. And it's really improved the response time and the quality of what we can do in moving patients around.
ClintExcellent. Excellent. Now to the double-edged sword that I was saying. How do you-- how does tourism affect you guys? I mean not just serving here in the local, you mentioned a lot of major trauma units that-- or trauma patients that come in- injured spines, probably, somebody in the surf that has an experienced, you know, shore break, had big beach.
MikeNow, we get a lot of ocean injuries: surfing, trying to body surf, and not having-- not done it for a number of years. People going down the mountain and going over on a bicycle. I mean there's so many injuries that can happen to tourism. Tourism is a big part of our business I would say. On an average day, 20 to 30 percent of the people coming our emergency room might be visitors. Now, a visitor could be here for a few days; they could be for six months. But we do have a lot of visitors both as inpatients and outpatients. The good part of that for this community is that it allows us to bring specialists that we could not afford. A neuro-- we have two neuro new neurosurgeons and to keep their skills up, they have to be busy. If we rely just on our own population--.
ClintNot sustainable.
Mike--I don't think we have enough volume to keep them busy and productive and with great outcomes. So the additional volume from our visitors allows our surgeons to maintain their skills and to be available 24/7 for everybody who lives here.
ClintYou know that's that double-edged sword. You know it's like tourism definitely takes a lot of resources but it also adds more opportunities and more people to come here to help service the local population as opposed to having them go to Oahu So you know I've really felt for a long time that, you know, as difficult as, you know, our infrastructure is strained, tourism is a major net benefit to the island. Obviously, there's negatives but the biggest plus is, you know, that those services are expanded because as the population grows, you get more of those options.
MikeThere's no question. I think we are able to provide a much larger breadth of services because of the volume that our visitors bring to the hospital and that benefits our whole community.
ClintMm-hmm. So I know you guys have about a half an hour here. We're getting close to that. And when you're expanding the services of the hospital you're getting new doctors here. You're getting nurses from Maui. You know always it's constant battle dealing with housing and whatnot. What are some future goals that the hospital has right now?
MikeWell, one of things I would really like to focus on is developing a true comprehensive cancer program. We provide outstanding cancer services right now.
ClintExcellent.
MikeWhether it's chemotherapy and our infusion center whether it's radiation oncology and PCI. Some great services but putting together a comprehensive cancer program goes beyond that. It's really making sure we have the latest in clinical drug studies. It's making sure we have all the specialties you need. I'm very happy to share with you that we just recruited the first oncological surgeon on Maui.
ClintNo kidding.
MikeThis is a surgeon whose whole training has been doing cancer surgery and he's already just in the last couple months done probably a dozen significant cancer cases that would have required patients and their families to go to Oahu and they no longer have to leave the island and get great care, fellowship-trained great surgeon. So we need to do more of that. We need to bring in more specialists to elevate our cancer program so patients can stay on island and get all the care they need. We also are trying to increase new services as well. Just recruited another vascular surgeon on island that's offering vascular procedures. So the more we can bring in new surgeons with new opportunities, new techniques, it elevates the care for everybody on Maui.
ClintAbsolutely. So with those future services and goals that you have coming out here, are there any pie in the sky things? You know one of the things that I've always wanted to see here to as destination location is, of course, cancer treatments. I know a lot of the medical tourism industry is not something that Maui is really known for. You know you get people from other countries, other States that come here but it's usually happenstance. Do you think, you know, with some of the experimental technologies and treatments I know that the mental state is really important for a lot of people and Maui is one of the most beautiful places that you could possibly be? So I mean have you thought about actually as a destination location, you know, providing a better net set of services for people actually looking for unique or specifically targeted treatments that they can't get anywhere else. More importantly, have, you know, that opportunity to live the last bit of their life and do something that can really make them live and future people live. If it's successful I mean I know that there's a gene therapies and whatnot that they're coming more into. So do you ever think that Maui might be a medical tourism destination?
MikeWell, absolutely. I can't think of a more beautiful place to recover and move forward with your life. I think our comprehensive cancer program will give people an opportunity to come here, get the chemotherapy radiation surgery and recover. I think we can look at bariatric surgery. We have a great bariatric surgeon with great results. A lot-- you have bariatric surgery; you lose a lot of weight. You need some plastic surgery after-- to recover. You need to take a lot of time to kind of rebalance your system after a large weight loss. I think of joint replacement. We have two great joint replacement surgeons where you can have your hip or knee replaced and go home the same day or the next morning but you then you need recovery. You need a lot of rehab. And this is a great place to rehab. You can go outside. You can walk with a therapist. You can really regain your full mobility. So there's a lot of services I think in the next three to five years as we continue to grow our abilities and communicate with the community. I think people will hear that you can come to Maui, get the surgery you need, the care you need, recover and it's a great place.
ClintAre those custom joints that you're creating? Are they like 3D scanned or is it-- what's the materials? Is that titanium, neodymium?
MikeIt's the latest. A lot of titanium. But it's just changing so quickly. There's no question 3D is right on the cusp. But some of our doctors are very involved now with looking at DNA and looking at some of the very latest in technology and molecular opportunities. We're not quite there yet. I would say in another three to five years, you're going to see a whole different level of sophistication in medicine not just in Maui but throughout the country. Gene therapy is huge.
ClintAbsolutely.
MikeAnd everyone is looking at it. But I don't think it's ready for every community at its academic institutions that are really-- but it's going to move quickly.
ClintIt's only starting to just roll out right now. It's all in the experimental stages for most things from what I understand.
MikeAnd we're trying to really work very closely with the University of Hawaii and some other academic institutions, someone that new technologies available; we can introduce as quickly as possible here on Maui.
ClintAnd if somebody wanted to go into the medical field here in Hawaii or Maui specifically, would you recommend them going to MCC, the UH system actually now? And go through the training programs that they have there.
MikeOh, absolutely. And the most important thing when you get into the training programs here on the mainland, come back home. We need you here. We have so many people from Maui especially physicians but other medical professionals who get trained here. Then they go to the mainland for extra training: a fellowship, a couple of years of specialized training. And they don't come back and we need them back here. We desperately need as many talented people from Maui in the medical field to come back here as possible. I would say that there's almost always a job in the medical field. We have such a need. It pays well. And you're making a major contribution in a difference in people's lives. So we'd love to see people.
ClintVery rewarding. Yeah. And that is the difficulty of being here on Maui that high cost of living. You know people go and they see those other opportunities to get paid well maybe not as well as they could here on Maui but that cost of living is significantly less. I mean Maui for the last two years, we've actually had a reduction in population. You know we've been almost dropping 1%. I mean that's a big change and some see it as a positive but really it's a result of negative outside pressures and mainly that's come from the high cost of living out here. So I mean it's pretty tough. There is a shortfall of almost 10,000 homes on the island and we need about a 1,000 homes every single year. And we're only able to build about 400 without quick permits and entitlement gets passed. So we're at this big shortfall and unless there's a big project that comes out that doesn't impact the infrastructure that has community support which is probably one of the most difficult things that anybody has to deal with on this island. It's not only getting the county support but getting the community support to have something get done. In many situations, they do have the direct community support- small town Oluwalu did and they worked with them for whole geez, close to seven years, spent over three million dollars on the research and the studies and they were not ready for the large amount of people that came there in protest of it and it got shot down. We may never see a big project like that on the island. A lot of people will find that as a positive. But you know there's definitely a lot of negative impacts with that lack of inventory.
MikeWell, I think that's our biggest challenge that balance between growth and preserving the beautiful life we have here on Maui. We just don't have enough labor to continue to grow and provide services and many of our industries. I mean ideally, we'd love to have another 200 people hired in Maui tomorrow from the mainland who would live here and not go back and forth. But they don't exist here right now. Unless you have the housing, they're never going to probably all end up moving here and housing is a big need. You know we talk about expanding our economy and going back to some farming. All those people are going to need housing. Where they're going to-- where they're going to live? You wonder if it's going to be full circle where maybe some of us need to provide housing for our employees. In order for us to--.
ClintThat's what I was thinking. You know it seems to be a-- what a lot of the tech industry is having to do over in those big housing crisis areas in San Francisco and Woodside. You know it's just--.
MikeBut we've got to work with the county. There has to be a quicker process to get the permits and entitlements. Otherwise these projects many of them just die because it takes so long. You know people whose interests where the financial people are not there when the project finally is ready to go forward.
ClintBecause there is economic cycles, you know.
MikeOh, yes.
ClintBy the time something goes out, it's like is it really the right time or are they going to be able to build? Are they going to have that financing available? You know so I've support that 100%, it's really tough to get stuff done here and there's a lot of-- and that's part of the big reason that most properties that come into usually have something that's not permitted. You know I'd say over two-thirds of the homes that I come across can be the littlest of things to a water heater. Most people don't even realize you need a permit to replace a water heater but you do. You know you've got to make sure that the new standards are met. And it is even more difficult when it comes to actually building a home. And I know a lot of people they look at the land. They see the opportunity. There's enough meat on the bone but when they take the two-plus years to build a place they, you know, they step back. You know that's a significant amount of time. An average person only owns a home for about five years before they decide to sell and if two of them, they're building it, you know, life changes. It's gone up. There's about eight years now that people are typically living in a place. But you're right.
MikeAnd I'd like to get a physician that we relocate here in his own home as quickly as possible. The quicker the sooner he is a homeowner, puts deep roots into this community. Chances are going to stay and be part of our Ohana.
ClintA lot of people that go into my children's school are doctors and nurses and you know, they have-- they feel as a part of that community. But you know, it's one of those regular conversations I have, "Hey, do you know of a rental coming up. Hey, do you have housing?" And it is a process to learn where works for them on the island, where they want to be, you know, there's homes on Omapio that they don't realize. It's only like 10 minutes away from the hospital. 15 minutes. You know Maui Lani is just absolutely fantastic location for people who want to be near the hospital and a live-work situation. You even walk or ride your bike to school. Ride your bike to the hospital. So yeah, there's definitely opportunities out there. But it's about that, you know, that life because people aren't just coming here to work. They're coming here to live. They're bringing their families and--.
MikeWhen you recruit people to the hospital, one of the things we're looking for is the right individual and lifestyle interests so they will stay on Maui. You know you want someone who loves the water or loves being outdoors and wants to be part of this community. And you got to be careful that you don't get someone who comes to Maui who likes to vacation here. It's different vacationing and living here. And it's the best of both worlds. But you've got to make sure you get the people coming here who understand that there is a difference.
ClintIn some of the work we've done with the homeless, you know we've noticed that a lot of people come here to live and they're like, "Hey, I got 2,000 dollars in my pocket which is barely enough for first and last. You know they get into a situation with a roommate that might be abusive or strange or whatever stealing their stuff and they leave. They're broke. They don't have a place. They don't have any family here. They're stuck on the island. They can't even get a ticket home. You know it's one of those situations people self-medicate for a variety of reasons and some of those are stress. Maybe they're borderline mental issues. You know there's-- and it's that housing situation, the lack of opportunity out there to move into another home. Fortunately, I have noticed great strides for programs available for homeless to help them get those tickets back home, you know, to the family, you know, or get them into housing with family that's locally here has been coming to fruition but we're still a lot to do.
MikeAnd I truly believe the housing problem contributes to health care issues. If you have three or four generations in one family, it's going to create issues with depression. It's going to create-- they don't have their own space. It creates tremendous problems for the family that I think resolves and other health issues coming out. So health and housing are very well connected.
ClintAbsolutely. Thank you guys so much for coming today. I really appreciate your time.
MikeAnytime.
ClintAnything else that you wanted to expand on for the hospital.
MikeNo, I just share with you that if you haven't been in the hospital recently, we renovated all the public areas. It's a new hospital.
ClintIt is.
MikeIt's your community hospital. It's no longer a state hospital. I worked [inaudible] constantly upgrading the care. I can tell you the care is great. At my memorial at Kula and Lanai Community Hospital. But it's only going to get better each and every day because we're bringing in great caregivers, great physicians, and our focus is to make health care so good in Maui that you come here for all your health care. There's no reason for you to have to leave Maui for health care. And we're going to strengthen everything we do to provide the very best care.
ClintThank you so much. I'm happy to be a part of your Ohana. I'm so happy that my kids were born there and thank you for really providing amazing services to Maui.
MikeThank you.
ClintAloha. So this is Clint Hansen, Maui Luxury Real Estate. Thank you so much for joining that discussion. I want to go a little bit on the personal part of real estate. You know as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, I've had my license for 17 years now- a broker-in-charge of Maui Luxury Real Estate. But most people know us as the Hansen Ohana. We're a long-standing family here on Hawaii. My mom and dad have had their license forever. Back in the day, they were working with microfiche much before computers. You know it's amazing how technology has changed and we have changed with that technology. We have our real estate website: mauirealestate.net. We actually have close to 55,000 unique visitors that come every single month to our website. And that's in large part as a result of the experience of coming to our website. It's easy to use. We don't require you to sign up so, you know, make sure when you're going, you definitely check out mauirealestate.net. It's pretty easy to find. You can just google Maui Real Estate. We're the top result which is part of the reason that you're going to see us and why we have such a large following. We have a lot of buyers that are coming to us looking for a variety of homes and one of the big issues we've been dealing with is the lack of inventory. You know normally we have about 30 listings. Actually, now we've actually had as many as 60. And right now, we are down to about 16 listings and a lot of those are even pending right now. And one of the reasons people like to list with us is because when they do, we get them primary position on our website. Usually, at the top, we're using professional photographers to come in. We're not one of those people that are just going to be taking photos with our cell phone and putting it up to get it sold. We put every bit of our effort and knowledge, you know, I think we're close to 80 years of combined experience between my family. My brother actually, Daryl, he owns Maui Pacific Energy. He does photovoltaic. He was the one that designed our website and he-- we call him the family genius. Unfortunately, he's taken that title from me. And throughout that process, we have been very targeted in how we do our advertising. It's not just the print advertising which we spent between all of our forms about a quarter million dollars a year, 250,000 dollars that we're spending to help sell homes and provide information to people that mauirealestate.net is a tremendous resource and people like to be able to go from, you know, place to place and get that additional information from the county flood maps, statistics, you name it. And when it comes to our own listings, we understand what Google's looking for. They're looking for more databases that they can pull from that builds into that one particular listing. And that's the reason our listings are not only, you know, in primary position pulling ten times as many views as any other listing on our website. It is actually focused on the web as a whole. We have YouTube links to it. We have, you know, the county. We have Matterport. And if you've not heard of Matterport, you are sorely missing out. It doesn't just help you sell your home. It also, you know, for people who are looking maybe they lost their plans. We actually have a 3D camera that uses light-emitting radar. We scan the entire home and it helps people understand the layout of the property in advance. But you know I thought when we got this, it would be just as cool a little feature helps us sell it. It has made my job a lot easier and that way we're not disturbing the homeowner or the condo owner. You know a lot of times when we have condos out there, you can't get into it because it's rented out. You know you have this Matterport- this virtual tour that's all measured out and you can look at it as a dollhouse. It's basically allows you to orbit from above and like get the full layout of the property. People understand that they can take measurements from this virtual environment. If we, you know, have their information provide them those privileges. So having that feature has really made the impact to the owners and tenants dramatically less. Oftentimes, let's say I get somebody that's interested in a home or a condo. They're coming in. They're looking at this house and they say, "Hey, thank you so much." They want to come back. They want to come back and then they eventually, they put in an offer. Maybe they get accepted and they want to come back another time. We're trying to figure out something. Measurements. They want to know how things are laid out and just that takes time. I mean it's a really important decision. It's the biggest financial investment that most people are making in their life and having this has really allowed people to take that in-depth view and alleviate a lot of the congestion and issues that those tenants and owners have to deal with. So you definitely want to have and be working with an agency like our office that has their own Matterport camera. In addition to that, I actually have my drone license. The drone license is an important feature. You know people want to get to know the outer area. They want to know the home, how it's situated. Get those aerial shots. So I actually have my FAA 107 Certification. You know with Amanda, unfortunately, the hiker that's been missing up on Piiholo. You know I've volunteered my time and we're actually looking to create maybe a new nonprofit here on the island. We're just in the initial phases. But one of the things that we are lacking is a fast response thermal drone, you know, with a flare camera. So you know it's not just that I have a drone and I use it for real estate. I'm oftentimes volunteering and you know, helping out people that is part of the community. Their family and friends are, you know, in this unfortunate situation that we're all finding and hoping for the safe return of Amanda. Aerial shots to help with the mapping and figuring out where the search needs to be located. So hopefully, we're able to get some of those funds and a grant and have aerial patrol Maui as a new feature to get out there and when those unfortunate situations because there is a lot of missing people on Maui and it's really takes the community together because people that are out there searching, you know, they're at every walk of life. You know we have doctors. We have firemen. You know we have buzzers. We have you name it. Realtors myself are out there every day. You know up to 120, 150 volunteers that are putting in the time. And as a community, you know we come together and that's what we are, you know, the Hansen Ohana. We volunteer a lot of our time and a number of things. They mentioned previously to this show. You know my mom has put a lot of time into the mental health board here on Maui to help in those facilities. She's actually thought about going back into it because she's been out of it for over 10 years now. She does and I do as well put a lot of time into the Friends of the Children's Justice Center. Those are there to help the abuse and abused and neglected kids of Maui. It's specific to Maui County. So if there's funds that you're looking to help specifically donate to benefit the community. Definitely consider friends of the Children's Justice Center because, you know, there's a lot of red tape and the police have a situation, an unfortunate home relocation that needs to happen. They can't drop it off at grandma and grandpa's unless there's some necessities in place that includes food, that includes a separate bad with clean sheets, a change of clothes, backpack things of that nature. And when the police are, you know, needing those resources, they're not going from some county-sponsored, they're going to the nonprofit Friends of the Children's Justice Center. They can call them. They're there within hours. You know they're providing them a little stuffed animal and in addition to all that difficult and expensive red tape, they can just circumvent, you know. If they were going to go through a county program or a state program, they have to actually put in applications. They have times that they're looking to pull that funding from so-- you know it's important that you support those local nonprofits and we do a lot to donate, you know, beach cleanups and all that. Back to the listing, you know I mentioned that I have my drone license and went off on a little tangent there and how it's helped us and some of the community. But there's other things that we do, you know, what are very unique to listing properties, you know, professional photography as I mentioned is really important. We do magazine ads, of course. It's kind of a standard. We had four pages in Homes & Land. But as mentioned, we've cut that back to the front two pages now because we are needing more. I just sold all three of my listings in the Maui Lani area in the beginning of this year. So we're always looking for new ones. If you want, definitely owe it to yourself to just come and interviews. You shouldn't just be interviewing us. We encourage you strongly to be talking to other agencies throughout the island. And most times, you know, unless there's a personal relationship, people are choosing us. And that's because of our long breadth of experience. Again, you can find us at mauirealestate.net. If you want to go and listen to this podcast or any of our other podcasts, you can find there, mauirealestate.net or if you want to go directly to the page, it's mauirealestateradio.com. So if you go to mauirealestateradio.com, you can get a copy of the transcript which is also very nice. It's a searchable thing. So if you're on Google and you're looking at it's often bringing people in. We've talked to people about the difference between renting here on Maui, what a 1031 Exchange is, insurance inspections. So we're a tremendous resource not just on the ability to search and not have to log in. Give us your email or anything like that. We always make that voluntary. Voluntary. The only thing we're pulling from people is their ISP number and they can always just go and make that inactive, you know, drop their cookies and-- but the ISP is really nice. It's important, allows us to target people that are specifically searching for property. With that 55,000 people, you know, we know what they're searching for. We know what they're looking for and we understand-- I mean we-- it can be annoying with the amount of advertising that we get on a regular basis. And you know we don't want to by bothering everybody on the Internet with this barge blanketing of advertising. We have a laser targeted to the specific demographic. You know if somebody is looking for a particular price range, if they're looking for a particular location and we have a listing in that area, you know, we're pulling from it. In addition, to actually pass clientele, you know I've worked with over in my career 240 or 220 clients and that's a lot. That represents over 600 transactions between those 200 clients which again to my own horn people are wanting to work with us again. I mean they have got to know our experience, got to know our knowledge and our ability to help them find the property that they're looking for or sell the home that they live in or that condo. I've actually had people come to me and they have 1031 funds that are going to be coming due. You know I've helped them you know put that money to work for them. You know typically Maui is not the best investment in the world but there definitely are opportunities out there to get a decent rate of return. And you got to have an agent that knows what to do. So if you're looking for experience, definitely feel free to give me a call, mauirealestateradio.com or my cell phone, you can text or call 808-280-2764. That's 808-280-2764. This is Clint Hansen with Maui Luxury Real Estate- the Hansen Ohana, broadcasting at 11:10 AM, 98.7 FM. That's our biggest channel and 96.7 FM, the KAOI radio group. Thank you so much for joining us today. It has been a pleasure to be talking with you. And we're always looking for radio topics [music]. So definitely go to our website. And feel free to get that additional information in there. I'm Clint Hansen and this has been Maui Real Estate Radio. Aloha.