An abode of one's own

I'm deep into my first house hunt. Deep as in almost a month into it and hardly anything has come up. The problem is that house prices here haven't really backed off from the huge spike the market experienced awhile back. Compounding that is the fact that there's a slight décalage between when economic events strike the mainland and when those events are felt in Hawaii; almost as if the news travels by boat across the Pacific to get here (actually that might be too speedy a timeframe), but for some reason it takes forever.

When I first set out for Hawaii, I was set on buying a house. I found a few on the Internet and figured finding a home would be easy. Unfortunately, when I came to the island the first time to check out said houses, I found that they were in the worst parts of Honolulu--information not quite conveyed in the ad. So I've settled on buying a condominium.

What is a condominium? Even the word sounds strange. Apparently it's a hodge podge of Latin meaning joint ownership and the word was not widely used until 1962 to mean "a privately owned apartment."

Aside from price, location is the most important decision to make when buying. In Hawaii, and depending on your budget, you have the choice of living in downtown or out in the hills far from bus routes and other signs of civilization. Since I'm trying to avoid buying a car, I'm trying to live in town, near bus routes, grocery stores and work. That means Chinatown, Kakaako, Punchbowl (stretching it) or Makiki. That's a large swath of area that has many condos, but few in my price range.

So, I'll keep looking and keep hoping something good turns up.