Kapilina Beach Homes

Kapilina Beach Homes: The Slum by the Sea

I moved into Kapilina 6 months ago with high hopes, excited about the everyday resort style living they advertise. Six months later I am paying them an extra $5000 to break my lease and move out early. Instead of an everyday living resort experience, my time here has been spent in what's more or less a slum. The scenery is nice, and they have some good amenities, but the actual houses are almost unlivable, equipped as cheaply as possible, suffer from frequent problems and poor maintenance response times. I saw all of the negative reviews before I moved in, but for some reason I thought it would be different for me. It wasn't. Details below if you need more information:

Pros: Nice location, Beach is pretty, Dog Park is nice, Good place to take a walk, management personnel are professional but understaffed, underfunded, and not really able to help much.

Cons:

Heat - Our house was not equipped with Air Conditioning. Prior to move-in we were told that the breeze kept the house reasonably cool. In reality it was usually about 5 degrees hotter than the outside temperature. Do the math ... if it's 85 outside, like it is most days, it's 90+ degrees inside. Not really livable. Our neighbors who had air conditioning were afraid to turn it on because of the outrageous electricity bills. My bill with no AC for a normal family of 4 was around $350 ... with AC I don't want to imagine how expensive it would be. One of my sons friends got grounded for running the AC without permission...it's like that.

The Beach and amenities - The beach is very pretty, and it's a nice place to go chill for a few minutes and enjoy the scenery, but that's about it. The sand is more rocks than sand, and there is nothing but reef beyond the sand. Whether you like swimming, surfing, kayaking, or whatever, you'll end up driving to a better beach to do it anyway. Trust me. The lagoons are likewise pretty, and a good place for a stroll, but that's about it. People fish there, despite a large sign warning of health hazards from eating anything you catch there since it's so close to Pearl Harbor. Maybe they are doing catch and release?

Location - Add 10-15 minutes to your drive time for anywhere you are going, every time you leave your house. On Oahu this turns into a big deal very quickly.

Overall floorplan - The "Master Bathroom" has a shower that is just about unusable. It's a 3 foot by 3 foot square. If you drop something, you either have to be a yoga master to retrieve it or else step outside the shower. The washer and dryer are located in the middle of the kitchen, which means that you can't do laundry and watch the TX, or have a conversation, or pretty much do anything else at all because of the noise.

Building materials - The floors are a cheap plastic material that they call "laminate", but it feels like walking on ridged plastic. Take your shoes off and imagine walking on it barefoot for a year and you will see what I mean. The windows and screens are old and have gaps that let in bugs and geckos. the closets have old sliding doors that continually fall off, much like the rear screen doors continually fall off or get stuck. Overall everything is pretty much just run down ... like a slum, not like a resort at all lol.

Blinds - These are the bane of my existence and deserve their own section. The blinds are cheap vinyl hanging blinds. You leave them open because you are trying to catch as much breeze as possible. When you do catch a breeze, the blinds click and clack very loud, sometimes loud enough to be heard over the din of the washing machine and dryer. If you want to sleep, and you don't want to sleep under a wide open window, you have to close the blinds, which doubles the amount of clacking noise. When we moved in the helpful staff advised us to use hairbands to tie the bottom of the blinds together to avoid the noise problem ... which is helpful, but can't be done with the blinds closed. I didn't sleep for a month until I finally broke down and went out and bought curtains to put up. These blinds are horrible, and the staff knows it, and no one does anything.

Appliances - The refrigerator is tiny and old, and does not have an ice maker. Doesn't seem like a big deal at first, until you are sweating in the living room wanting something cold, and there is no ice. Using ice trays takes up half of the tiny space allotted for the freezer, so there is not really enough room for use by a normal family. The stove is extremely base-level, doesn't have a timer or a clock, and makes the kitchen so hot that we often ate out in order to avoid having to use it. Our dishwasher is likewise small and looks like it was teleported straight out of 1978. I've already covered the noise the washer and dryer make. I'm pretty sure the old *** appliances were the major reason for the $350 electricity bills.

Maintenance - Over the six months period I lived here we had multiple issues with these breaking down. The average response time for maintenance was about a week. The washer leaked when we moved in and it took over a month to get a replacement washer. The main toilet broke and I spent 5 days sharing the tiny master bathroom with two teenagers. "Resort Living" my *** ... quite literally.

Grounds maintenance - The yard was all weeds 50% of the time. It got mowed about once a month. I complained frequently, it never got better.

Summary - No matter what your situation is, there are better options out there. If you are military, stick with base housing ... the free utilities and professional management make it a no-brainer. If you are not military then find a nice modern house in Ewa or elsewhere for the same price. You'll be glad you did.