2011 Housing Planning Study - County of Hawaii

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Table 14. Sustainable Lease Considerations by Once they understand how a sustainable lease County, 2006 and 2011 works, many people will be willing to take State of i County advantage of a sustainable lease to get into their Hawaii Honolulu I Hawaii Maui Kauai own homes. Would consider a lease if... ...there was nominal monthly paymentfor the lease. 2011 41.4% 37.4% 56.9% 41.9% 57.1% LOT SIZES ...the lease term was 60 to 99 yearsand renewable 2006 54.4% 50.8% 67.9% 58.0% 57.0% In the 2011 Housing Demand Survey, only 2011 52.3% 49.4% 62.7% 54.6% 59.7% residents of Kauai County who are planning to ... could passthe home to heirs with new 60 to 99 year lease 2006 64.1% 58.5% 81.5% 71.0% 77.4% move in the future, and residents of other islands 2011 62.3% 57.1% 78.1% 69.3% 77.2% who plan to move to Kauai, were asked If all above were true,would buy your next home sustainable additional questions concerning the relative leasehold or fee simple? importance of lot size and the unit type (single- Prefer sustainable lease family or multi-family). The question posed was: 2006 48.9% 43.8% 64.5% 64.4% 64.7% "One way to bring down the cost of a single- 2011 46.9% 41.8% 64.2% 48.8% 68.2% family house is to use smaller lot sizes. If you Would consider sustainable lease had a choice between a house on a smaller lot 2006 10.3% 11.0% 4.7% 4.9% 11.8% or a multifamily unit like a townhouse, which 2011 10.3% 11.2% 4.8% 11.8% 10.2% would you prefer?" Respondents who indicated Still want fee simple that they would accept a smaller lot in order to 2006 44.8% 47.0% 30.1% 30.4% 23.6% have a single-family dwelling (SFD) were then 2011 42.8% 47.0% 31.1% 39.4% 21.6% Base 2006: Asked of potential buyers who were not asked to specify the smallest lot size they would interested in leasehold property, even if fee simple property consider. was unavailable in their price range. Base 2011: Asked of all potential buyer households planning to purchase a unit in Among the 6,751 households questioned, about the State of Hawaii. 32 percent (2,191 households) plan to purchase Further analysis showed that those households their next home. Among these prospective most likely to find sustainable leases appealing buyers, 92 percent currently live on Kauai and were the ones who most need them. the remaining eight percent reside in one of the Sustainable leases appealed to more renters other three counties. than current owners, to those who were not sure they could come up with a down payment. They When Kauai County's 2,191 prospective buyer appealed to households that were crowded and households were asked about their preference had strong support among households earning for a single-family dwelling on a small lot or a less than 120 percent of the County AMI. multi-family dwelling, 85 percent opted for the Finally, sustainable leases were attractive to small lot SFD (1,869 households). Close to disproportionately high numbers of households eleven percent expressed a preference for a that were doubled up, crowded or included MFD (233 households) and the remaining four "hidden homeless" persons. percent (89 households) were unsure. The results suggest that there is a role for the Nine percent of prospective buyers who reported sustainable lease concept in developing a preference for a small-lot SFD originally stated affordable housing for Hawai i. Leasehold their intention to live in a MFD when they moved. arrangements can be used to produce more When presented with the small-lot SFD scenario, affordable housing units and maintain them in however, 168 households changed their the affordable housing stock indefinitely. These preference to SFD. This suggests that the idea data show that, even where leasehold property is of living in a SFD is highly appealing to many unpopular, the sustainable lease appeals to a Kauai households, in spite of the small lot substantial number of potential homebuyers. condition. Hawaii Housing Planning Study,2011 Page 32 0 SMS, Inc. November,2011