Aloha! This is David Buck and today I'm on the corner of South Street and Queen Street in Kakaako and the reason I'm here is I want to point something out to you. So often in my business (in real estate) you get asked "is it necessary to do a termite inspection on a high rise condo?" There's 2 stories I'm going to share with you today. The first of which is why you want to get a termite inspection on a high rise for resale or possibly even new construction. The second reason is I'm going to cover real life stories of ground termites and drywood termites.  

Drywood Termites in Condos

Directly behind me and the reason I came down to Kakaako is the building behind me is called Keola Lai. This building was built and developed by Alexander and Baldwin in 2008, right near the peak of the market. It's a beautiful building that has views out towards Honolulu Harbor. 

What happened was, as they were building this building, all the cabinets were stored in a warehouse and in that warehouse there were termites. By the time all the new homeowners were moving into this building, they were finding termites in their units in a high rise concrete building. So, that's story #1 and those were drywood termites by the way. Next, we're going to cover another building closer to Ala Moana and I'm going to share with you a first hand experience with ground termites here in a high rise concrete building here on Oahu.

Ground Termites in Condos

Another reason why you want to consider doing a termite inspection on a concrete or high rise building is several years back we sold a penthouse unit up above at 1624 Kanunu St. (Kapiolani Townhouse) over near Ala Moana and Holiday Mart. There were ground termites in the unit. This is a concrete building and there were ground termites that climbed up between the CMU tile and got into the furniture and cabinets. Thats the first time that I've ever seen this.

This is the 2nd reason why you might want to consider doing a termite inspection for a high rise condo here in Honolulu (even if it's concrete construction). Now, keep in mind, that unit we sold through Harcourts Auctions. It needed a ton of work, we got it sold and we disclosed everything.

Summary

People always ask me why would you want to do a termite inspection on a concrete building. Well, there are several reasons why in which we pointed out today. If you have questions about real estate here in Hawaii or buying a condo on Oahu, feel free to give us a call at 808-371-3509. Mahalo!