From New Jersey to Maui: A Journey to Paradise and Real Estate Insights

Dylan Silver (00:01.474)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest has spent the last decade selling real estate in one of the most breathtaking places on earth, Maui, Hawaii. He’s passionate about helping others call the island home and thrive in Hawaii’s dynamic, ever-evolving market. Please welcome J.C. Chikino. J.C., welcome to the show.

JC Cicchino (00:24.704)
Aloha, how’s it going?

Dylan Silver (00:26.262)
It’s going great. Even that greeting, I told you before hopping on here, I’m willfully ignorant, but just aloha sounds like the best way to welcome anybody, right?

JC Cicchino (00:33.92)
agree. Say aloha also means goodbye. So I’ll use aloha at the end as well. Thank you and goodbye.

Dylan Silver (00:38.112)
it’s got a- alright, hello and goodbye. Are you- do you have family that’s from that area or how’d you end up in that area?

JC Cicchino (00:46.112)
No, so I don’t have family that’s from here, but my grandparents, so I’m from New Jersey originally. My grandparents bought a house here in the late 80s and about 94, 95, my mom came to us, my brother and I.

and said, you want to move to Maui? And we said, we’ve never been. So she brought us out here. We fell in love with it as well. And then in 1995, we actually moved over here. Since then, almost all my family’s moved over. I have two uncles, a bunch of cousins, my little brother. So most of the family’s now moved to Maui. My grandparents passed years ago and my mom currently still lives in that house that my grandparents own. She inherited it. Yep.

Dylan Silver (01:15.526)
my gosh.

Dylan Silver (01:25.304)
So, was it kind of a collective, we’re all gonna move out there? Or was it they saw you doing real well and then they said, hey, let’s go move out there?

JC Cicchino (01:32.96)
It’s kind of weird when it was always my grandparents dream to move out here. So my mom moved and then kind of, yeah, kind of just everybody kind of followed my aunt.

moved first after my mom. They lived with us for a while and then slowly more and more family members moved over. was, it’s, I don’t know, it’s just, Maui’s always had a special place in our hearts. So I think that’s in my grandparents’ house, which kind of passed hearts, which passed down to my rest of my family. So it’s just been a slow move over, but yeah, my, mom’s side’s almost all here now.

Dylan Silver (02:05.496)
So I am willfully ignorant on Maui, Hawaii in general. Walk me through what it’s like being down there. What’s the culture like?

JC Cicchino (02:16.682)
Super relaxed. If you’re in a hurry, you’re in the wrong place. So it’s a very relaxed community. You know, we put in, my girlfriend and I run a couple of businesses together. So we put in long days, but we always hit the beach. So we go to the beach all year long. And it’s kind of a good way to restore the soul as being in our wonderful saltwater here on Maui. that’s, but relaxed is probably the best way to describe Maui. Very relaxed.

Dylan Silver (02:43.256)
That’s a good thing though, that’s a great thing, right?

JC Cicchino (02:45.8)
I love it, I love it. There’s a two-fold to it. You gotta slow down, which is good, but it also leaves a lot of opportunity, because if you’re quick at answering your phone and you’re on top of stuff, you can get a lot of business done here on Maui, which is really nice. And that’s all businesses across the board.

Dylan Silver (03:00.952)
So we’re actually from the same state originally. We’re both from New Jersey. And I told you before hopping on here, I feel like I’m from the Mecca of being like Italian American suburb of New Jersey. And I’m now in Dallas, greater Dallas area, greater DFW, to a point where people will line up outside of Olive Garden. And I’m like, no. I’m far away from home now. You know what I mean? Is there anything that you ever think or reminisce about New Jersey?

JC Cicchino (03:03.614)
Yes, we are.

JC Cicchino (03:24.926)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (03:30.658)
Missed it at New Jersey.

JC Cicchino (03:31.402)
Well, it’s the same thing. It is the Italian food. I grew up in a half Italian, half Puerto Rican neighborhood. And now Maui, it’s very tough to get good Italian food. We found a few pizza places that work, but they’re not the same thing as our old school Italian food that we have in New Jersey. So we work around it and start to make our own sauces and stuff like that to help bring the little Italian back, right?

Dylan Silver (03:34.222)
Hahaha

Dylan Silver (03:40.502)
It’s tough,

Dylan Silver (03:58.774)
Now forgive me for being so ignorant on Hawaii, but does Maui have a distinct culture from some of the other islands, or is it a very central culture in the islands?

JC Cicchino (04:08.223)
Culture loop, probably about the same. Oahu’s our major city. So we have about 1.6 million people on Oahu. That’s probably our, that is our busiest island. But in land mass, it’s slightly smaller than Maui. So we only have about 160,000 people here on Maui, 140 to 160. So it’s not a lot of people compared to Oahu. So the culture’s slightly different. Maui’s a little more laid back.

The Hawaiian culture is very much in our fabric of Hawaii in general, but we have a very mixed group of people. We have a huge Filipino population, a huge white population, Hawaiian population, Samoan, Tongan, mean literally a true melting pot here, which is really cool. So we get a lot of cultures.

Dylan Silver (04:55.918)
My… my family’s part Japanese. Is there good Japanese food out there?

JC Cicchino (05:01.578)
Japanese food’s fantastic. We’re only a nine hour flight to Japan, so it’s awesome.

Dylan Silver (05:03.542)
Okay, now I have

Dylan Silver (05:07.926)
Yeah, that is less jet lag than going from New Jersey. want to ask you about what it’s like being an agent on the islands. there’s multiple, mean, there’s regionality in all real estate, but if you’re hopping and going between island to island, how does that work logistically speaking? Is it like boat rides? Is it flights? How are people, how do you conduct business?

JC Cicchino (05:33.642)
So it is flights. So I only sell in Maui. So I know Maui really, really well. So I refer all my business to Oahu, Big Island, or Kauai, because I don’t feel comfortable selling over there because I just don’t know it well enough. Maui, I know really, really well. So that’s why I only sell here. Now have friends that are agents that are born and raised on Oahu also live here. So they’ll actually fly over. It’s about a 40 minute, 30 to 40 minute flight between islands.

Dylan Silver (06:00.43)
I’m curious to get your perspective, pivoting a bit here, JC, on the kind of regionality of real estate. So we’re doing this, we’re having a podcast on the Riverside platform on the internet right here. I think it’s like 4 a.m. where you are there and it’s like 9 a.m. for me over here. And so I’m seeing a lot more of, I would say, this kind of remote type of workflow and lifestyle in real estate, but I’m still kind of a firm believer in the regionality element of it and that it’s kind of

JC Cicchino (06:14.687)
it is.

Dylan Silver (06:29.41)
difficult to detach yourself from an area in that regard. And I think probably you feel similarly based on really specializing in mouthing.

JC Cicchino (06:40.318)
Yes, yeah, totally. Yeah, to me, if I can’t be a full service to a client, I’m not gonna sell the area. So for me, yeah, it’s definitely, Maui is my thing. But yeah, regionally, I know this region really well. Maui itself, outside of, yeah.

Dylan Silver (06:58.882)
I want to ask you as well about you started a business, a cleaning business, and how did that business come about? Are you doing maybe a lot of short-term rental cleaning or where is the primary avatar of your client?

JC Cicchino (07:03.646)
Yes, we did.

JC Cicchino (07:13.152)
So it’s, you know, I’ve been in residential real estate for 10 years. I’ve been a broker for seven. And then I’ve been always wanting to start a vacation rental management company. It’s kind of why I got into real estate to begin with and then I ended up doing it. So about four months ago, my girlfriend and I, my partner of 19 years, my girlfriend, we decided to start a management company. It took a little bit of getting going to get the management going, but so we decided, why don’t we start the cleaning company at the same time? And so now we run both of them at the same time. That way, as we get more units,

the cleaning company can come in and clean our own units. And what we do for the cleaning company is we specifically go after other management companies and we also go after self-managed. So that’s the business that’s been really pumping. Of course, real estate’s gone well as well. I’m about to pick up four more listings, which is nice.

Dylan Silver (08:03.426)
You were mentioning before hopping on here that the average Asian out there may sell a handful of deals a year, one to three or something, and you’ve got a bunch of listings right now. So that’s a good thing, right? But we’re also seeing, even in DFW, things are sitting on the market for longer. Are you seeing any, and I’m asking this because I’m a creative finance guy, I put these type of deals together.

JC Cicchino (08:12.777)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:29.334)
Are you seeing any investors coming in and making creative offers? Are people receptive to that out there? Is that not really happening?

JC Cicchino (08:36.212)
We’re seeing them. People ask me to do them. I obviously submit them. I have yet to have a client.

do one. most of my clients are heavily cash flush. So they’re fine with waiting for the market to turn, hopefully turn on the upside. So we also have a situation on Maui that a lot of investors are holding in general. So we have a lot of short term rentals here on Maui and they’re holding in general because our county has decided to try to get rid of short term rentals. It’s called the Minatoia Act. then the Minatoia Act is an act that they put in place to allow 7,000

vacation rentals that our apartment zoned to stay vacation rentable and that was in the 90s and our council is currently trying to overturn it. So because of that it’s kind of fully slowed down our market where people are neither buying or selling they want to sell but they’re not selling and that’s hurt all of our condos throughout Maui not just that 7,000. That’s the very short version of the Minatoia.

Dylan Silver (09:37.016)
So I’m curious because when I think of people getting rid of the Airbnbs or the short-term rental type of thing, normally I think about it from the perspective of, the big hotel industry doesn’t like this, and they’ve got deep pockets, and they can fight back. But I’m also curious, is it also a thing where maybe there is some type of housing crisis, in a sense, where people are thinking, well, there’s too many investors and not enough homes for, you know.

residential single family.

JC Cicchino (10:08.062)
Yeah, I agree on a normal scale that yeah, across the board we need more affordable properties throughout the US, 100%. On Maui County, it’s interesting because these 7,000 units that I’m talking about were built in the 70s and 80s as short-term rentals. They were always short-term rentals. Very few were actually not to be short-term rental. So they were supposed to be grandfathered in.

But since then, over the last 20 years, we’ve had five or six hotels be built. So they’re going after the short-term individual, but not stopping the hotels from being built. So that’s the issue that we’re having right now. So yeah, they’re going after them to create more housing. But to me, that’s not the right way to go about it. We should be building more affordable homes and not taking away property rights from other owners, even if they don’t live here. So most of the owners that own vacation rental, I think we have, I think it’s like eight,

Dylan Silver (10:53.42)
Yeah.

JC Cicchino (11:03.74)
I might be wrong, seven to 10 % of vacation rental owners are out of state.

So that is hard for Maui, but most of that money does stay back in the state or stays here on Maui because they’re hiring cleaners from here. They’re hiring maintenance people from here and that money stays here on Maui. So it’s an interesting thing what we have is we do have a housing crisis across the US, especially on Maui. So we do need more affordable homes and our county is just very slow at building those homes. But to me, you shouldn’t go after the short-term rentals.

Dylan Silver (11:26.862)
Yeah.

JC Cicchino (11:37.096)
to make up for the housing crisis if these are built in the 70s and 80s.

Dylan Silver (11:42.616)
So is that already done? basically these cannot be used as short-term rentals any longer?

JC Cicchino (11:48.66)
So right now they’re allowed to be short-term rounded. We’re on our fourth council meeting, third or fourth council meeting so far. They’re supposed to vote on it at the end of the month. My understanding that voting is supposed to put it to full council. And then they’ll actually make a decision. They’ll either modify the bill, which is what I think will happen, or they’re gonna try to get rid of them over the next five to 10 years.

I think they’ll modify the bill so that way it’s only a select few. They’re thinking 2000 units, not all 7000. The problem is, is that we don’t have a lot of other ways that Maui generates income. tourism, tourism is our thing. When I moved here, we had sugar cane and pineapple, but that’s gone. Sugar cane is now sugar beets in the Philippines and elsewhere. Pineapples grown elsewhere as well. The labor is just too expensive. So we don’t really have an export

Dylan Silver (12:28.589)
Yeah.

JC Cicchino (12:44.804)
anymore to make money for Maui. So our export is tourism in a sense.

Dylan Silver (12:51.842)
I’m a man. This is an interesting. wasn’t thinking about going to Strout, but you know, I hope you don’t mind if we get a little granular on the tourism thing. So I’ve spoken with quite a few people and by quite a few, would say like 10 to 20 people on the podcast and then outside who either have family in Hawaii and we’ve had kind of a longer form conversation about.

JC Cicchino (13:00.0)
I’m down, let’s do it.

Dylan Silver (13:14.69)
you know what what it’s like financially and people talk about all this it’s really only tourism the only thing you can do is tourism and this makes it difficult but I also think that on the flip side. It’s a huge real estate opportunity that’s of course what it’s going to continue to be but also as we’re seeing growth with a I as we’re seeing growth with kind of the remote remote vacation if you will of of employment and workforce in general.

There could be more people who are thinking like, hey, I want to go live in a remote area where I’m going to be surrounded by water, where I’m going to be basically chilling. And I think that I would not personally be shocked. think other people might be shocked, I would not personally be shocked if there was a lot more people who maybe had type of remote work who started thinking like, hey, if I’m going to put myself down in one area, what better place than a Maui, right?

JC Cicchino (14:12.51)
Yeah. And I agree with you. We saw that during COVID. So we saw a huge spike in real estate sales right during COVID. All the remote workers started moving to Maui, which was good for them, but hard for the community because we, like I said, we don’t have a lot of housing here. So when the remote workers worked here, they were taking up a lot of the housing. And that is part of how we have a housing crisis now. We’ve technically had a…

housing crisis for almost 10 years here in Maui. Shortage of homes. But yeah, we do. We still have a lot of remote workers moving here.

Dylan Silver (14:46.062)
Do you think that they’re, I mean, I’m from Northern New Jersey, and so you’re from New Jersey as well. The homes that I grew up around aren’t affordable to college graduates. Like you can’t, you’re not getting into an $800,000 home probably five or even 10 years after graduating unless you have a very specific niche that you’re in. I think you need a combined household income of $220,000 a year to qualify for like the very middle class homes that I grew up around. And so, you know, there’s a reason why I’m in.

JC Cicchino (14:55.572)
No.

JC Cicchino (15:12.158)
Yes.

Dylan Silver (15:15.618)
Texas, right? But, but, know, I’ve heard about like modular homes and different alternative housing that people could potentially start doing over there. I don’t know a whole lot about that. But I’ve batted around ideas like what can people possibly do? I’ve also thought about, you know, it’s very centric to that area. Northern New Jersey culture is like very much those people.

JC Cicchino (15:17.193)
you

Dylan Silver (15:38.646)
I don’t think they’re going to move. Most people are not going to do what I did and move to Texas or move to the Midwest and so on and so forth. Do you think taking that kind of that same type of set of issues and extrapolating that to Hawaii, do you think that there’s any fixes or any problem solving that can be done to address the housing crisis? Maybe not necessarily in the short term, but

in some type of mid to long term scenario.

JC Cicchino (16:09.47)
Yes, and it’s starting to, I believe it’s starting to happen. So I’m sure you’re aware of Maui had a massive fire two years ago. What that’s done is obviously destroyed a lot of homes, but the Maui, Maui County has sped up.

some of the permit processes. So permit process to buy to build a single family home is over a year. So it takes you a year to build here, which slows down our growth. could take eight to 10 years to get a development up. So the county is speeding that up. Don’t know why they take so long. I think they’re heavily short staffed for one. I think that’s also possibly a purpose purposefully.

slowing down the growth of Maui because we don’t want to turn into a wahoo of 1.6 million people. that’s one. Number two, when they build affordable homes here, you have to only hold them for eight to 10 years. And to me, that should always stay affordable, go up naturally with the affordable prices. But if they stay affordable, then we always have affordable. That’s another solution. The third solution is to build more condos because we’re on limited land here on Maui.

So to me, they should go up, not out.

and getting people to understand that sometimes buying a condo and using that as a step stool or step up to get a house and then a bigger house if they need a bigger house. I also grew up where my mom and dad’s first house was only two bedrooms, one bath. And I think that’s something that we should be bringing back. We don’t need these massive three, mean, massive on Maui is 2000 square feet. We don’t have huge, huge homes. We do have some, but the average home is about 1700 square feet.

JC Cicchino (17:51.262)
So maybe we build some smaller homes that can get people in and get single people in or even couples in. And then that would help. And the more they build, the more inventory we have and the more people can live here that can stay here. I’m sorry. That’s a big thing here too, is getting people to stay on Maui, generational to stay on Maui. Because a lot of people have to move off island because they can’t afford to stay here. So those are things that will help.

Dylan Silver (18:13.09)
The permitting thing, I’ve noticed that. I don’t know what it’s like in northern New Jersey, New Jersey in general, but I’m in Texas, we’ve got so many investors from California. Probably you had a bunch of California investors out there as well. And the thing I’ve noticed just in talking with them is the permitting is in many cases, like if you talk about LA and areas like that, it’s a long, arduous process. And you compare it to out here, and it’s not like that.

JC Cicchino (18:39.615)
It is.

Dylan Silver (18:42.816)
almost at all. And I mean, I know investors who I think I would say this is common in Texas, when they’re going in and they’re doing flips and this type of thing. It’s like, ask for forgiveness, not permission. So they’ll go especially with flips and they’ll just do everything and then sell the home, make sure it passes inspection. But I think when it comes to the new builds in the subdivisions, it’s way, way easier.

It’s way, way easier. I don’t know, maybe because maybe in California it’s again, maybe max population. But, and it makes sense out there in Maui that they might not want to expand so much. But it also puts such a pressure on housing in general. think to alleviate that you have to speed up the permitting. And I’m surprised that they can’t. I’ve thought about this quite a bit. Like, why does it take so long in some of these places for the permits?

because that’s like the main impediment. If it’s taking so long for a new subdivision, like let’s figure out a way not to have that. I do want to pivot a bit here, JC, and ask you about the businesses that you’re involved in. You mentioned rental management, cleaning, of course, residential, real estate. In all of these businesses, would you say that the average client is…

An investor, would you say that a lot of it is single family residential people looking for their primary housing or is it kind of a mix of different avatars?

JC Cicchino (20:16.17)
So for sales, I’m probably 60 % residents, 40 % investor. Investor being VRBO or Verbo, Airbnb. I still can’t get past saying VRBO to Verbo. It says it’s VRBO. Anyway.

Dylan Silver (20:31.566)
I didn’t know there was one or the other.

JC Cicchino (20:35.008)
They call it Verbo, so it’s just weird for me still. So Verbo, Airbnb, Booking.com, most of our clients are people that are going to rent it out either through a management company. So about 40 % of my business is probably that type of investor, but a majority, 60 % of my business is going to be…

Dylan Silver (20:37.761)
Okay.

JC Cicchino (20:54.214)
the residential, either residential condo or houses. I also do commercial, but commercial only makes about two or 3 % of my business. For the management company, we only do short-term management, so it’s only investment management. Same thing with the cleaning. We decide to specialize only in vacation rental cleaning. So we don’t do residential homes. We do only vacation rental cleaning for the other company.

Dylan Silver (21:20.184)
We are coming up on time here, JC. Where can folks go if they’d like to reach out to you or maybe learn a little bit more about your business?

JC Cicchino (21:28.114)
Luckily I scored the website TheMalleyLife.com a couple years ago. So I own TheMalleyLife.com so you can hit me up there. I’m also MalleyLife Team on Instagram. So please follow me on Instagram. I’ve got about 10,000 people on Instagram. I shoot a lot of drone footage, a lot of beach footage, and that type of stuff. A little bit of the houses as well, but I try to focus more on lifestyle. So that’s MalleyLifeTeam at Instagram. TheMalleyLife.com if you want to

my website and my cell number 808-281-3121.

Dylan Silver (22:04.162)
JC, thank you for coming on the show here today.

JC Cicchino (22:06.974)
Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.