"Hawaii Life"
Airs at 8 and 8:30 p.m. Thursdays, HGTV
Joining HGTV’s lineup of reality shows is a twofer for the staff at Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers: They get to help clients find that perfect island home while publicizing their work.
The new show, "Hawaii Life," debuted Jan. 1 and did well in its time slot, according to the network’s ratings.
Launching the show during the chilly winter season certainly helped bring in curious mainland viewers, said Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers principal broker Matt Beall, speaking by phone from the main office in Hanalei, Kauai.
"HGTV was set on doing a lifestyle, real estate show, so they hired a production company out of New York," he said. "After a search the company reached out to us, which led to interviews via Skype with myself, my two partners (Justin Britt and Winston Welborn) and a couple of our agents. The company then sent a crew out here to shoot an eight-minute teaser that met with success with the network. Shooting started last summer and went through the fall, wrapping in October."
Fourteen episodes were shot and those that have already aired all involved clients looking for homes on Kauai. Two of the most recent focused on a family from Wasilla, Alaska, and an Indianapolis couple looking to relocate to a warmer climate. Future shows will include Maui, Oahu and Hawaii island properties.
The half-hour shows do an effective job of combining the requisite shots of beautiful scenery with footage of the prospective buyers and agents checking out homes and sometimes undeveloped property. The two couples recently featured fell in love with the Garden Isle on previous visits and were looking forward to the outdoor and ocean activities offered with the move.
The Alaska family wanted a house big enough to accommodate six home-schooled children, and the Indianapolis wife wanted a place within minutes of Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihue, where she was hired as an on-call nurse.
Beall said Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers is one of the largest realty firms in the state, working with about 10,500 properties and 130 brokers in nine offices. (Both the company and the clients were not compensated for their appearances in the series.)
After finally seeing the episodes, Beall is pleased "it’s a feel-good lifestyle show with no trumped-up drama. Viewers get to see the different real estate locations on four islands, and for someone speaking from inside the industry, the show does good in cramming in a lot of information in 22 minutes."
"Even if our office wasn’t involved with it, it’s a show I would watch. It’s intriguing and fun, even for us living here, because you get a sense of different communities around the state."
Beall was hoping to be able to show more affordable properties to dispel the notion that "it’s really expensive to live in Hawaii," but was at the mercy of what the particular clients featured were looking for.
Even still, "‘Hawaii Life’ is all about basic real estate and what a home search is like on any given island," he said.
And, yes, the two couples found their dream Hawaii homes.
