About Gloria Kobayashi, Realtor Emeritus, GRI RB 10202.

Why I enjoy being a Realtor!

I have held a real estate license for 50 years and became a Realtor Emeritus last year.  The Realtor Emeritus designation recognizes a Realtor who has 40 years of experience and has served his local Board of Realtors as an officer.  After three years of coursework, I earned the Graduate Realtor Institute designation in 2018.  This was an excellent way to keep in touch with new developments in real estate.

I met my husband, Ray Kobayashi, at a Hawaii real estate convention in Honolulu in 1971.  We are both born and raised in Hilo and as this was my first convention, I looked for other participants from Hilo.  Ray had just gone back to Hilo and was a salesperson with Hiromu Yamanaka Realty at that time.  We both had full-time jobs working for the State:  he as a commodities inspector for the Dept. of Agriculture, and me as a public librarian at the main Hawaii State Library.  As our relationship grew stronger, I transferred to the Hilo Public Library as a reference librarian and also joined Yamanaka Realty as an agent.  I tell people that Hiromu was responsible for our marriage in 1972.

We needed a place to live, so he decided to build his first home in Hawaiian Paradise Park for us to live in.  The vacant lot cost $2,500 in 1972 and the HPM 880sf package home cost $12,000.  We commuted to Hilo to work.  The next year, we sold our home for $25,000, realizing a profit of $10,500 or 58% return on our investment.  Ray was hooked.  He became licensed as a building contractor in 1974 and went on to build 600 homes all over East Hawaii.  There is an RK Builders, Inc. home in almost every subdivision in Hilo and Puna!  He enjoyed the challenge of creating a home from vacant land.  In the early 1990’s, we established Ray Kobayashi, Jr. Realtor as our own two-person company.  We specialized in selling spec homes he built, many of them with special touches of koa cabinets or floors.

I retired from 35 years as a school librarian at Waiakea High School in 2012.  Since then, I have spent most of my time as a Realtor, while Ray has branched off to his own local woods and furniture company, RK Woods.  

If you’re looking for a house and can’t physically inspect it, I will preview and FaceTime the home for you.  When you apply for a loan, I’ll go with you to the loan company.  If you’re selling your home, I’ll help you clean it out and even help you hold a garage sale!  Because we have a furniture company, if you’d like to stage it for sale, we can suggest items that you can use.  And I always create a flyer to hang with the “For Sale” sign to publicize it to passersby.

I sincerely believe that God brings me my clients.  I treat my clients as I would like to be treated.  This means really listening to what they’re looking for and returning phone calls and emails as soon as possible.  Buying a home is an emotional experience as well as a financial one.  Most people walk into a home and immediately like or dislike it.  I can point out all its salient features, but know that, in the end, the choice is theirs.  My job is to guide them through the process and do my best for them.

About Ray Kobayashi, Realtor RB7615.

When Ray discovered that he had more fun building homes than selling them, he started RK Builders, Inc. in 1974. Since then, the company has built over 600 homes in almost every subdivision in East Hawaii.   

After he purchased a 100-acre ohia forest in Pahoa, Ray built a 16,200 sf warehouse and installed four kilns to dry local hardwoods, especially Koa. Ray used koa in many of his custom residential homes, but his two masterpieces are his own home in Waiakea Uka and a three-story Japanese castle in Kaiwiki. Every room in these homes features Koa, mango, ohia, robusta, and sugi pine, all locally grown woods from the Big Island. Since the price of Koa and local hardwoods have skyrocketed, Ray doesn’t think it’s possible to rebuild these homes with the same custom hardwood additions.

When the local Fire Marshall told Ray that he had to move the Koa off the floor at his warehouse in Shipman Industrial Park, Ray decided to create Koa rocking chairs, custom cabinets, tables, chairs, panel doors, jewelry boxes, and urns. And that is also how Ray's passion project, RK Woods, got its start. With a CNC router and laser, the product line has expanded to include custom wooden signs and sculptures for local businesses. Ray's designs evolved to use every piece of the precious Koa, mango or monkeypod that he has slowly acquired over the years.