Betty Sakamoto: Aloha and welcome to Betty’s Real Estate Corner brought to you by Roy and Betty Sakamoto, Coldwell Banker formerly Sakamoto Properties. We want to talk a little real estate, bring you up to date on a few things going on in the world or things that we think are important going on in the world and that’s going to be about it. Dr. Norman Estin from doctors on call is going to check in with us in about 10 minutes and kind of catch us up again on Maui and everything that’s going on from testing to vaccines and changes.
Roy Sakamoto: And I think he is talking about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and so forth but we will get it straight from Norm.
BS: Yeah. I think that will be really fun to hear again from Dr. Estin.
RS: It is an important day today too. Jackie Robinson Day.
BS: Yes, number 42. I just heard that and I don’t think there could be anybody that’s ever heard of baseball or anything that can’t remember Jackie Robinson or didn’t see the movie about him. What an amazing man, an amazing couple, and he made a difference. The world is going to keep changing hopefully and everything he did and people like him will come to fruition and everything.
RS: Yeah, it’s hard to imagine what he had to go through, all the prejudice and WOW. I mean it’s heartbreaking to even hear about it.
BS: It is. You are right. It is heartbreaking and it goes on and on and on in many ways. It’s not just Jackie Robinson, obviously.
RS: No
BS: It is something that continues and let’s all do our best in our own little ways to not only not be prejudiced but keep ourselves from even thinking prejudice. When something comes up let’s be bigger people. Let’s all take care of this problem and maybe if it starts with “I” all of a sudden that makes a big difference.
RS: Yes, absolutely.
BS: Anyway, so many different things today, one of the things we were going to talk..
RS: A little about philosophy today.
BS: We have a little philosophy. Charley Pride was a good friend of ours, bought some real estate he and his wife Rozene, and recently passed away from the coronavirus very sad awful story. They were High School sweethearts. You just think it never could have happened. He was 80 etc. When I first met him that was kind of fun, one of the first things he told me was I’m Charley with an EY and it took me a while to understand. He is not Charlie, C-h-a-r-l-i-e. He is Charley, e-y and then we discovered something kind of interesting. We both knew this little funny poem of sorts and I’m going to try to spit it out. I think I did it one other time on here but it’s really interesting because he really was into this also. ” I’ve only just a minute, only 60 seconds in it forced upon me. Didn’t we seek it, didn’t choose it, up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute but eternity is in it.” Let’s all think about that a minute can do a lot in different ways in how we think and how we act. Let’s all take care of those minutes. Charley now is gone and this year there will be, we’ve set up for him for this year Charley Pride memorial scholarship at Lahainaluna High School with a plan that will go to one of the kids who’s musically inclined. Doesn’t have to necessarily be planning a career in music but it’s going to be through the Lahainaluna High School Foundation. We are really excited about doing that and music is such a huge integral part of Lahainaluna.
RS: Well, yeah, and Maui and Hawaii.
BS: Maui and Hawaii. Roy again a Luna. Luna for life.
RS: Yeah
BS: Again, we are going to do a little bit of real estate. We are going to try to stumble into that for a bit. Norman Estin should be probably let’s say 5 minutes from now. Let me see if there’s anything else that we were thinking.
RS: People have asked us. Those of you out there who know Roy and Betty Sakamoto or
have heard of us, a lot of times people have said to us “wow, you guys are lucky.” You have lasted a long time. You have done really well so forth. One thing I remember and I’m not sure well somebody famous has said it and I’m not sure who it was but the road to success is always under construction. It is something I remember going way back.
BS: Going way back, yeah.
RS: Yeah
BS: But it is a great line.
RS: Yeah and the harder you work the luckier you get.
BS: That’s true. That’s another one, even talking with younger realtors they might often say to us you guys have gotten so lucky, and you kind of look, and yeah. I mean, we have been fortunate but again the harder you work the luckier you got. There are many Christmases when our kids weren’t here. They were on the mainland and we’d be at the office all day Christmas, all-day New Year’s, and in between because we met a ton of people that way. Often those people were kind of lonely too because they didn’t have everybody here visiting. We were at the time at the Kapalua Bay Hotel office and that was pretty amazing.
RS: It was.
BS: But again could have stayed home.
RS: I think we have Dr. Norm on.
BS: Oh, excellent. Hey there Norm.
Dr. Norman Estin: Aloha! Hi there.
BS: We are good. We did introduce you a little while ago so you’re here and everybody is ready for you.
NE: Well, thank you and good afternoon from the Westside. I’d like to say a couple of words about what’s happening with the covid and the vaccine rollouts as everybody knows the only way to really get a handle on this and get life back to normal is to get the vaccines rolled out and protect us that way. There’s no cure for coronavirus or the disease it causes which is called covid. In the news, the last couple of days is 1 of the 3 vaccine products that we’ve been using in this country, the Johnson & Johnson formulation that’s also known as the Janssen formulation presented by the same company has been put on pause because of a very rare complication. Less than one in a million but a potentially significant complication so the CDC out of an abundance of caution wants to put the rollout on pause not to recall the vaccine but just study it a little bit more. Probably, a couple of weeks to decide whether it’s totally safe to be used or whether we should define the population groups that this vaccine is good for. We have 2 other vaccines. The Pfizer product which is 2 shots and the Moderna product which is 2 shots and they are both out in the market. They have been very safe. We have had no significant complications at all. I personally have monitored about 5,000 vaccinations myself. We haven’t had any significant reactions and people can get those either through Maui Health or the Department of Health. A number of private groups that are putting these on such as our clinic and a bunch of other clinics. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine had a couple of advantages to it. One, it was a little bit less expensive. Two, it was a single dose so you only had to get one to get protected as opposed to having to come back a month later to get a second one. Three, it could be stored in just a refrigerator so it didn’t have to be frozen. It was easier to transport and then store and also use in a lot of countries where a freezer might be difficult to get to. That’s out of the mix here for a while. It should not stop people from getting vaccinated in general because getting vaccinated is going to be the only way to get our life back to normal for 3 particular reasons. One is that it’s the only way to protect the whole population from outbreaks. There still be an occasional case but we’ve got to get up to about 85% now. The population getting vaccinated to protect us especially from the new variants that are coming out from Britain or South Africa or wherever these variants are much more catchy. In other words, communicable and spreadable although the illness isn’t any more serious you just don’t want to catch it in general so that’s the 1st thing. The 2nd thing is you probably won’t be able to travel or go to group events in a few months unless you can show that you’ve had some sort of vaccination. We know that you’re not going to be able to travel inter-island, you are not going to be able to get on a plane. You probably won’t be able to go to big sporting events in the fall unless you’ve got some proof of vaccination. Thirdly that hasn’t been really emphasized enough is the data now and the experience of doctors around the whole world is about a third of the people that do get sick have long-term side effects. They are called long covid or long haulers and that’s about a third of people who do catch coronavirus wind up having either neurological or blood vessel symptoms ongoing for a long time. Some of them are probably going to need ongoing help medically their whole lives. Anything you can do to avoid getting sick from coronavirus or covid is what you want to do now. Again, this illness is not going to be the zombie apocalypse that a lot of people were worried about but on the other hand, it’s a lot more serious than the flu. The flu has a 1% complication rate. This probably has a 1.8 almost double the percentage of the flu but still relatively rare but you still want to avoid getting sick if you can. You can do that with a vaccination.
BS: That’s a lot of information for anyone to digest Norm but I think everybody will at least get a good idea there. Also, I kind of hear that J&J as much as it’s become a problem in the bigger picture it’s been kind of a minor problem and everyone shouldn’t be afraid of vaccinating now because we still have here 2 fabulous alternatives.
NE: Betty, I think that’s a great point. As those of you who have been following this newspaper know there’s another product out in Europe not yet in the United States made by a company called AstraZeneca. That is similar to the J&J product in that the technology involved is using an adenovirus which is a type of cold virus and changing it a little bit in the laboratory to then allow it to protect you against the coronavirus. These 2 vaccines are very similar and the AstraZeneca has had some problems also as a matter of fact it’s not being used in a number of countries. Some of the problems involved have been the sort of blood vessel clotting problems that have been involved with the very rarely again with the Johnson & Johnson product. The Moderna and the Pfizer don’t have these at all. They’ve been very safe and monitored. I don’t know we probably have close to 90 or 100 million people in this country that have already gotten at least one dose of this. We’ve got some pretty good data on these. These are very safe, effective vaccines, easily available and there’s more and more of them getting rolled out now. We’ve gone from a period of time where we didn’t have enough vaccine but we had a lot of demand too. Now, where we pretty much have equivalency between the demand for the vaccine and the amount available, and in a month or 2 I can tell you we’re going to have a stockpile and oversupply of vaccines in this country. We will have to figure out how to send it to the parts of the world that don’t have it as available as we do.
BS: Absolutely and your office in West Maui is doing vaccinations now at the new site right across from where your office is?
NE: We are. Our doctors on-call office in West Maui at Times Market in Honokowai at least a space right across the parking lot on the same property and we do vaccine clinics there. We actually are having one this Saturday and if there’s anybody. We are using the Moderna product and it’s open to people wanting to get either the 1st or the 2nd shot. They can very easily sign up conveniently on our website docmaui.com and they’ll take them to a link where they can choose a time and sign up. Again, any insurance will cover this HMSA, HMAA, Kaiser even any of these Medicare at no charge to anybody who needs a vaccine. That’s true not only at our clinic, that’s true at any clinic all these vaccines are being supplied by the federal government and then administered by the agencies or offices such as ours at no charge to anybody in the public.
BS: Perfect.
RS: Quick question Norm, what about the vaccine passport? A lot of talk about it but no action that I can see.
NE: I think you are right Roy. The idea of a vaccine passport is some sort of proof that somebody’s been vaccinated. That would allow them to get on airplane travel, get on a cruise ship and go to a sporting event, whatever. We are trying to roll one out here in Hawaii and probably it will get rolled out by the summer. I’m going to say for sure by the summer. Originally, the governor wanted to have it out by the beginning of May but I think that was a little optimistic. Ideally, it’s going to be something on an iPhone, something like a QR code that can be shown at an airport. Like a QR code to use as a boarding pass. The probability is that the one that gets developed in Hawaii will not be the same one that gets developed in the rest of the country or gets developed internationally. That’s going to be one of the problems how do you get all the different QR codes and all the different vaccine passports. That somebody might need available on their own phone so they can easily move around the world. That’s a dilemma that’s got to be resolved fairly quickly.
BS: It will come through and again just one step at a time. Just baby steps will get us through this.
NE: I think so. I think most of us remember when we were younger we had vaccine cards. There were these little yellow booklets and you had to have all the vaccines you had especially if you traveled internationally. You needed to have proof of yellow fever vaccination and
most of us kept that in our passports. We’ve gotten away from that now and I think we are starting to realize that these illnesses are contagious and they spread around the world very quickly now with the advent of air travel. We are going to have the document that we were protected.
BS: Absolutely
RS: Yeah, good.
BS: Well, look at now it’s already 12:21:18. I added the 18 seconds for effect. Norm, thank you so much. It’s a lot of information and somebody will be able to find it on our website soon because this does go on our website as something that you can watch what we are doing here. We do dance to Danny Couch and I love Hawaii or I do sometimes whoever’s with me doesn’t do it. Norm, thank you. I think what you’ve just done is such a great service and what you’re doing ongoing has been a major service to Maui.
RS: Totally. Yeah, thanks for all you do for Maui Norm.
NE: My pleasure. Thank you for helping to spread the word and aloha.
BS: Talk to you soon, see you soon.
NE: Bye
Betty and RS: Aloha
BS: Bye. Do we want to do any real estate, something?
RS: Yeah. We are not exactly talking real estate here but I think it’s great for the community to get input from Dr. Estin. Again, this Betty’s Real Estate Corner is sponsored by Roy and Betty Sakamoto. Call us for all your real estate needs whether you are buying, selling, interested in refinancing, whatever. We can always help you, point you in the right direction. My number 870-7060, Betty is 870-7062.
BS: Pretty easy to reach us or our website sakamotoproperties.com which has been amazingly successful because of Meyer Computer who happens to have somebody here right
now filming this so that we put it on our website. It’s been really fun. The number of people that have looked at something about actually restaurants. We were going to come up with a couple of restaurants today I forgot.
RS: Yeah, since we’re off of real estate anyway.
BS: We are running out of inventory so we are going to do a restaurant. I’m going to start with Honu.
RS: Oh yeah
BS: Spectacular. I think that’s the best of the best and they are doing everything they can to keep everything going. It’s hard when you see the number of tables in there compared to what it was. Honu in Lahaina.
RS: Good friend of ours Mark Ellman owns Honu and Frida’s. Your favorite is that Honus. BS: My favorite
RS: Ahi bruschetta
BS: Ahi bruschetta. It’s my most favorite thing I could eat it almost anytime. I’m a little bit of a food something. I was going to say a food snob but it’s not a food snob exactly. It’s just I’m so simple. Peanut butter and jelly works for me almost any time but the ahi bruschetta I just love it. It’s healthy. They have so many really great things in there.
RS: It’s pretty diversified menu.
BS: It is. The other one restaurant which is kind of Mexican almost or a little Spanish flair Latin but everything in there you can get almost anything that you would want from your very favorite Mexican restaurant. It’s really great with the best quality of everything in it.
RS: Oceanfront locations for both of these in Lahaina.
BS: They’ve spread out nicely so that you are separated, you are on the ocean, you are listening to the waves. You can see little turtles popping their heads up to watch you.
RS: Yeah
BS: It’s the best.
RS: Just the ocean side of the Lahaina Cannery Mall where Safeway and Longs are.
BS: And then out at our office, right next to our office the Pour House as in p-o-u-r, not p-o-o-r. It is a great restaurant, Italian. They serve lunch and dinner and they don’t have that many tables because they haven’t been able to put enough inside at this point so they’re trying to spread out in the outside but again for lunch, for dinner. I know recently they actually had trouble with takeout because there was so much takeout that made it impossible to cook for the restaurant. They were trying to I think they had to curtail some of their to-go items.
RS: Yeah, great food. They are located right next to our Coldwell Banker office at 700 Office Road in Kapalua and adjacent to that is Sansei.
BS: Sansei and then the Florist. The Napili Florist, you can get anything you need.
RS: Kapalua Florist.
BS: Oops! That’s right. At one time it was I think.
RS: Yeah
BS: Kapalua Florist I screwed up again there.
RS: Yes
BS: Then what about Joey’s which is in Napili.
RS: Joey’s it’s in the Napili Plaza Shopping Center. Joey’s kitchen local food kind of Filipino style kind food.
BS: Except they do have for any kids or for me. They do have a cheeseburger, they have French fries and they are really great. They serve breakfast which is really good and he starts pretty early for breakfast. If you are looking for breakfast in West Maui the only place to really find something early is to go to one of the hotels. The Montage, the Ritz Carlton but it’s hard to find a nice…
RS: Napili Kai
BS: Napili Kai very nice.
RS: Yeah, the sea house.
BS: The sea house at Napili Kai. West Maui is a funny one so again now we are really getting closer. Do you want to come up with any real estate tidbit?
RS: Well, yeah.
BS: Call us for Kapalua
RS: Call us for anything in Maui, 870-7060 for Roy, 870-7062 for Betty.
BS: And we will be available for you.
RS: What a great time to buy. Interest rates are low. You should hurry up really, inventory is getting to be an all-time low. We have got almost 900 escrows in on Maui right now which is fantastic.
BS: But unheard of.
RS: I’ve never seen a market like this.
BS: It at most times there would have been 500 plus or minus escrows at any given time.
RS: Yeah, that was a good indication of a fairly stable market so we are almost 900 now. WOW!
BS: Yeah, it’s kind of scary.
RS: Yeah
BS: It is hard for anybody looking to buy you know first-time homebuyer but there are possibilities still and there’s good programs still available for someone depending on what you do
and everything that’s going on in your life. There’s military loans still available.
RS: Yeah, people get scared sometimes. They look and the median price on Maui is for a house is almost a million dollars or something and it scares the heck out of people. A median means that half the prices on Maui sold for less than that. Half the home sold for more than that so it doesn’t mean that’s your average. A lot of homes are still priced are very affordable so again call us 870-7060 for Roy, 870-7062 for Betty.
BS: Remember that the interest rate on your loan makes a major difference. Let’s say you were going to buy a house before that you thought was more than $600,000 or $500,000 but the interest rate was 5 to 7%. We remember times when it was worse than that. So, for our last minute we’re just going to say the interest rate matters. You can still think about it, hook up with one of us and let us try to get you through the process. If you can’t do it now we’ll get you into it later.
RS: Absolutely. Danny Couch again.
BS: There he goes and I love Hawaii.
RS: We all do.
BS: We all do.
RS: Aloha
BS: Aloha.
