Moving to the islands can be as easy as putting all your most important items into a few hockey bags and jumping on a plane like we did, or an intricate experience where you are moving an entire house hold over with pets and kids. Each person creates their own journey based on what they have to do to tie up their old lives and prepare for their new lives.

A current client of ours wrote this when I asked her to share a moving checklist she created: “Oh Julie, had I known what I was getting into, I am not sure I would have had the courage, but now I am happy to be where we are in the process! We are closing our house tomorrow at 12:30 and then it will be a matter of running out the clock here. So happy and nervous and excited and so many emotions right now. I cannot tell you how much we have appreciated yours and Eric’s help!”

I will tell you..having the advice from others is VALUABLE INFORMATION!  I asked members of my private homebuyers group for input on THEIR move RIGHT before they made the leap and they provided some fantastic insights. Check list at bottom!

Real Life Advice From Folks Who Moved to Hawaii Island

Sue Ellen C: I think lining up a place to land is probably the #1 thing that we did that helped us to organize everything else around. Once we had a move in date, it helped so that we could do things like get airline tickets, and figure out dates for vet visits and when to sell the house and pretty much everything else that had to flow backwards from that. Getting rid of clutter early helps both with just the cost of moving but also getting house ready for sale. Selling higher value items also takes more time so if not bringing, probably starting that early. I will think of more. We also started talking to the car shippers and shipping companies. It’s hard to plan shipping if you don’t know what you are taking.We also had to make sure that we had the rabies certificates and titers uploaded to Hawaii quarantine program and had a plan for how we were going to get the fur babies to Hawaii. That was so hard to figure out because of plane sizes and crate sizes and flight restrictions, weather temp, all that.

J. Berg: I’m exactly six weeks out. Yesterday I spent the entire day getting everything ready for my tax appointment next month. I also made a list of every business I need to contact about my address change, and worked on that. I have been getting ready for a yard sale, which is being postponed a bit due to my fall last week. I start Medicare the day after I arrive, so I am about to go to Kaiser’s website, to see if I can get in there. I have already taken care of my car, and moving pod situation. What I still have to do is go through my stuff, other than furniture, to figure out what stays, and what goes.

Stephanie P: At about 6 weeks out I was arranging our POD to be dropped off, sending dept of Ag my papers for animals to be direct released, arranging animals cargo flights, making appointments to drop off cars at port to ship. Deciding what stays and what goes. Making multiple trips to goodwill.

Heather W: About 6 weeks out I was just finishing up vet visits for my dogs arrival and visiting family and friends before our flight to our forever home! Although my decision to move and moving all happened within 3 months, I planned everything in the early stages to make it as smooth as possible and it paid off

Kristen J: About 6 weeks out I was making sure all the documents and paperwork was ready to go for moving my 3 cats over! That was tough also trying to land renters in my mainland home when I moved to Waikoloa I still had not found renters for my house in seattle! I was tying up lose ends with the kids school in waikoloa and also packing up our 5 suitcases. ( that’s all we came with, we rented a furnished home) what I wish I had been doing is making sure the home was properly rented for Bug infestations. And that a regular bug guy was maintaining the property.

Nicole M: If you don’t already have a place to buy or rent be ready for the docks to call for your destination address. They have minimal storage and want to move it ASAP! They found space for out stuff but because it takes a while to close and erratic shipping times (they quoted us 6 to 8 weeks but got to us in 4) be ready to scramble if you can’t move in yet or have an alternative option.

Cindy H: We were purging everything in our 3-story house in Washington and buying suitcases and bins to bring the bare essentials on the airplane. We were also finishing up the dog paperwork — this was the hardest part. We were listing our home and planning on some last-minute improvements to up our sale price. We were watching the Real Estate market in Kona and just hoping there would be a great house for us when we got here. We ended up buying land to build and luckily we have a condo to live in until it is finished). We were finishing up doctors and dentist appointments and filling prescriptions as we didn’t know how long it would take to find doctors here. We were giddy with anticipation. Best decision ever to move here ahead of schedule thanks to virtual work.

MOVING CHECKLIST EXAMPLE:

If you would like a PDF of this checklist, email me at Julie@Ziemelis.com

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