The professor of the Kona market.
Harry Pritikin has bought, built, and brokered across the Big Island for decades. Homes, condos, land, and Kona coffee farms, read by someone who actually knows the ground and sends the whole island's market to your inbox every morning.
He learned this island by living it, not by reading a brochure.
Before he was a broker, Harry was an investor, an owner-builder, and the guy fixing up the place himself. That is why the questions that trip up mainland buyers, chain of title, Bishop Estate leasehold, a 203K rehab loan, a permit that never got closed, are the questions he answers before you think to ask them.
He does not chase the quick commission. Clients describe someone who tracks a property with them for years, returns messages the same day, and tells them plainly when a listing is not the one. That patience is the whole reputation.
- Broker, Koa Realty Inc.
- First-time buyers and financing
- 1031 exchanges
- Investor and owner-builder
- Homes · condos · land · farms
A working knowledge of the things that only bite you here.
The topics below are why buyers keep his office number. None of them show up on a mainland listing sheet, and every one of them can change what a Big Island property is really worth.
- Leasehold vs fee simple
- The Bishop Estate and land-lease questions that quietly change what you actually own in Kona.
- Catchment water
- How a rain-fed home water system really works when you live off the county line.
- Vog and lava zones
- Reading the volcanic hazard maps before you fall in love with a view.
- Ohana permits
- What a second dwelling on one parcel actually requires, and what it does not.
- Kona coffee farms
- Buying working agricultural land on the coffee belt above the town.
- Condo complexes
- The good points and the bad points, building by building, up and down the coast.
- 1031 exchanges
- Rolling one investment property into the next without handing the gain to the IRS.
- Owner, VA and 203K loans
- The financing paths that open the island to first-time and rehab buyers.
The Kona Knowledge Index
Pick a district for the professor's plain read on it, the character of each place in the language he would use on the drive over. A field guide to the west and north side of Hawaii Island, not a sales pitch.
Kailua-Kona
The island's west-side hub, sea level, sunny nearly year round.
This is the busy, walkable heart of the Kona coast. Alii Drive runs the oceanfront past historic Kailua village, the shops and the small-boat harbor, with a dense mix of condos, oceanfront units, and hillside homes climbing the slope behind town.
If you want to be able to walk to coffee, a beach, and a grocery store, this is the stretch. It is also where the condo market is deepest, and where knowing one building from the next matters most.
Holualoa
The coffee village on the mountain slope, just above Kona town.
Climb ten minutes above the heat of the coast and you reach Holualoa, cooler, greener, and quieter, strung along a single main road of galleries and old storefronts in the heart of the Kona coffee belt.
It draws people who want country calm within reach of town. Harry's own office sits up here, which is a fair hint at how well he knows the parcels above the highway.
Keauhou
Resort-residential, a few miles south of Kailua town.
Keauhou is more planned and more contained than the town core, a marina, golf, and condominium communities set along a lava-rock shoreline. It feels calmer and more resort-like while staying an easy drive from everything in Kona.
Buyers here are often after a lock-and-leave condo or a quieter home base without giving up proximity to town.
Captain Cook & South Kona
Higher, cooler, and greener as the road climbs south.
South of town the land rises and the air softens. This is farm country, coffee and fruit parcels, country homes, and the historic waters of Kealakekua Bay below, rather than resort condos.
People come here for acreage, elevation, and a slower pace. It rewards anyone who wants to grow something or simply spread out.
Kohala Coast
The dry, sunny resort coast north of the airport.
The Kohala Coast is the island's postcard resort strip, Waikoloa, Mauna Lani, and Mauna Kea, where green golf and luxury oceanfront are laid over wide black lava fields under some of the most reliable sun on the island.
It is the high end of the market and the vacation-rental heartland. Knowing each resort's rules and fees is half the job here.
Waikoloa
Two very different places that share one name.
There is Waikoloa Beach on the Kohala Coast, resort condos and homes by the water, and Waikoloa Village upslope, a master-planned community of homes at cooler elevation and a gentler price than the beach.
Which "Waikoloa" someone means changes the whole conversation, so it is worth being clear from the start.
Waimea (Kamuela)
Cool, green ranch country up in the saddle of the island.
Waimea is paniolo, Hawaiian cowboy, country: misty pastures, the historic Parker Ranch town, and a mix of ranchettes and homes far from the beach heat. Mornings are cool and the hills stay green.
It suits buyers who will trade oceanfront for space, weather, and a real town with schools and a hospital nearby.
Hawi & North Kohala
The lush, wet northern tip of the island.
Up at the top of the island the land turns green and wet. Hawi and its neighbors are small former sugar-plantation towns, historic storefronts rolling down to sea-cliff coastline, rural and slow-paced.
It draws people who want the least crowded, most old-Hawaii corner of the west side, and who do not mind the drive to a big grocery run.
Want the read on a district that is not listed, or the honest downside of one that is? Ask Harry.
Every Big Island sale, in your inbox by morning.
For years, Harry has sent subscribers a free daily email, the Big Island Real Estate UPdate. It reports every transaction across the island in the last 24 hours: new listings, price changes, back-on-the-market properties, and sales statistics, from Hawi in North Kohala to Pahoa in Puna.
It is the same data local agents see, delivered to you the same day, at no cost and no obligation. Buyers use it to learn a market for months before they ever make an offer. It is free because Harry would rather you be well informed than rushed.
Ask Harry to add youBuyers who let him track a property with them for years.
Harry was fantastic handling our Condominium purchase in Kailua-Kona. He was very helpful and thorough every step of the process.
Harry knows everything about every condo complex in the area. He could tell me exactly the good points and bad points about each and every unit on the market.
Harry Pritikin is a realtor with integrity. His consistent personal service gave me the confidence to make my home purchase.
Ask him anything about buying here.
No form, no funnel, no drip campaign. Email or call Harry directly and you will reach the person whose name is on the sign. First question is free, and so is the fiftieth.
This is a redesign concept. Every link below points to Harry's own real contact channels.