• Downtown-Chinatown
• Kalihi-Palama
• Moanalua-Salt Lake
• Nu'uanu
• Pacific Heights-Punchbowl

For convenience to the heart of the city, Downtown Honolulu and Chinatown can't be beat, with condominiums and apartments for rent or sale in a wide range of price ranges.

Kalihi and Palama are well-established, neighborly bastions settled by Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians in the early 1900s. Small shopping centers, popular local eateries, mom-and-pop shops and fast-food places dot this area of affordable to medium-priced homes.

Moanalua and Salt Lake are mid-priced neighborhoods woven around bases and military housing. Salt Lake is the high-rise condo owner's and renter's capital of the area. Both communities are pleasantly convenient to the airport, H-1 freeway, Aloha Stadium and major big-box discounters in the area.

Up the Pali Highway, Nu'uanu has a few chic apartments, but mostly it's a lovely old neighborhood long preferred by wealthier kamaaina, especially those with headquarters downtown.

Pacific Heights and Punchbowl are on-top-of-it-all, close-to-town with fabulous views from the valleys to the sea . Most home prices reflect the priceless perches on which these communities sit, but some good bargains and affordable rentals can be found.

ZONE 2

• Ala Moana-Kaka'ako
• Kapi'olani
• Makiki
• Manoa
• McCully-Moili'ili
• St. Louis Heights

Ala Moana and Kaka'ako are predominantly high-rise communities with big rent and sale prices. Ala Moana Center, the State Capitol, federal and City/County buildings, the historic main branch of the Hawai'i State Library, Iolani Palace and the Blaisdell Center are all here. Kapi'olani is another area filled with condominiums, office buildings and big-ticket auto dealerships, plus the fabulous Hawai'i Convention Center.

The lower levels of Makiki can be depended on for nice rentals if your house search bogs down. It's a convenient location and loaded with medium- to high-rise apartment buildings and condos. At its upper elevations, Makiki Heights is a high-priced community of ritzy homes.

Manoa Valley is known as the Rainbow Valley because of the proliferation of these most beautiful of nature's sudden surprises. It's also the main campus of the University of Hawai'i. Manoa is blessed with incredible vegetation. A few new, high-priced homes are being built here, but it's mostly filled with older kama'aina homes in the mid- to upper price ranges.

McCully and Moili'ili were once wall-to-wall rice fields, where the largest concentration of Japanese in the islands lived. Rice paddies are the last thing you'd think of now as this area is teeming with all sizes of reasonably priced apartment buildings and older homes convenient to the University of Hawai'i, Chaminade University, Waikiki and downtown.

St. Louis Heights is also convenient to the universities and Waikiki. It climbs up 483-foot Wa'ahila Ridge, providing marvelous views of the blue Pacific, Manoa Valley, Waikiki and the elegant neighborhoods of East O'ahu.

ZONE 3

• 'Aina Haina-Kuliou'ou-Niu Valley
• Diamond Head
• Hawai'i Kai-Portlock
• Kahala
• Kaimuki-Kapahulu
• Palolo
• Waialae
• Waikiki
• Wilhelmina Rise

'Aina Haina-Kuliou'ou-Niu Valley are tranquil, mid- to high-priced communities tucked away in and up the ridges of the Ko'olau Mountains far eastern foothills. This is the sunny, drier side of O'ahu which is accessed by Kalani'ana'ole Highway. The highway is wedged between some of the island's most upscale shopping centers and lovely Maunalua Bay.

Diamond Head is O'ahu's largest and most famous natural landmark, the backdrop of decades of Waikiki postcards, and one of the island's priciest neighborhoods. Less expensive condominiums and apartments can be found on Pualei Circle off Leahi Avenue.

Hawai'i Kai and Portlock are two of O'ahu's premier suburbs. Hawai'i Kai was the sunny California marina-style concept of the late billionaire industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, who began developing the area in the 1960s. Many mid- to high-priced homes, duplexes, condominium complexes and townhomes are built around a series of canals developed by Kaiser. Attractive rentals are also in abundance here. Portlock is an ultra-exclusive oceanfront community built around the craggy base of Koko Head crater.

Kahala is O'ahu's answer to Beverly Hills. Farther inland from the sumptuous oceanfront homes, there are a few nice rental apartments around trendy Kahala Mall.

Kaimuki and Kapahulu have long been attractive to upwardly mobile young people, many of them now older and still living there. Downtown Kaimuki looks like 1940s-50s Main Street U.S.A., and Kapahulu Avenue's plethora of restaurants is the happy grazing ground of both locals and visitors alike.

Palolo Valley is the most affordable neighborhood in this area. It is a multi-ethnic, unpretentious working-class neighborhood tucked away in a beautiful valley. Mom-and-pop shops have been here for years and are passionately popular with local folks.

Waialae is the home of the affluent Waialae Country Club, scene of the annual Sony Open golf tournament.

Wilhelmina Rise is a hillside neighborhood above the hip community of Kaimuki. It offers a mixed bag of older and newer mid-priced homes brimming with charm and personality.

ZONE 4

• Kahaluu
• Kailua
• Kaneohe
• Lanikai
• Waimanalo

Kahaluu is in an area so lovely that it's like living in a tropical paradise. Rain is plentiful here, which makes the breathtaking plant life grow like beautiful weeds. Homes range from mid-range to expensive.

Kane'ohe, next-door neighbor to Kahaluu, covers a larger area, and is not quite as populated. Windward Mall, the major windward-side shopping center, is here, along with Windward Community College and the Kane'ohe Marine Corps Base.

Kailua is home to 58,000 people who are happy as clams to be on this side of the island away from downtown Honolulu, to which they commute in rapturous beauty every day. This beautiful windward community features a drop-dead gorgeous Ko'olau Mountain backdrop and is like living in a small town. Lanikai is one of Windward O'ahu's most affluent, prime beachfront communities.

Waimanalo, next to Lanikai, has a longer beach that is almost as lovely, and is light years away in terms of traffic and lifestyle.

ZONE 5

• Hau'ula
• Ka'a'awa
• Kahuku
• Laie
• Punalu'u

Hau'ula, like all of the communities in Zone 5, is a sparsely populated sleepy little beachside town — the kind that people think of when they dream about Hawai'i. Most of the citizenry of Hau'ula is housed in affordable single-family residences, although there are a number of condominiums in the area.

Ka'a'awa is larger in community spirit than some towns ten times its size. Through the years, the 1,100 or so residents have pulled together in their efforts to retain the small country village atmosphere of their little corner of the world. Kahuku was a working plantation town from 1890 to 1971, with a sugar mill that converted sugarcane into molasses. Today, the colorful sugar mill houses a shopping center with a post office, bank, popular restaurants, Kaiser Kahuku Clinic and other local enterprises. The community retains its small, warm-hearted plantation village personality in the midst of a glorious topography of mountain and sea.

Laie is where one of Hawai'i's most popular tourist attractions is located. This is Polynesian Cultural Center country. It's also Mormon territory and home of Brigham Young University-Hawai'i.

Punaluu shares with its neighbor to the north, Hau'ula, the longest stretch of ocean-hugging land on the windward side of O'ahu. Salty seawaves are so close that they practically spray Kamehameha Highway, the only access to the rest of the island.

ZONE 6

• North Shore
• Waialua

The North Shore of O'ahu is the world's mecca of professional big-wave surfing. Waves in the winter months of November to April can reach from 20 to 40 feet along the well-known surfing beaches of Sunset, Waimea Bay and Banzai Pipeline. Haleiwa is the biggest little town on the North Shore. Actually, it's the only town here, it's on the nation's List of Historic Places and it's chock full of neat places to eat, shop and ogle art and surfboards (at the surfer's museum). Housing on the whole North Shore is mostly single family and mostly high priced.

Waialua seems light years away from the North Shore because the waters that lap up on the shore here are calmer. A former sugar plantation town until the sugar mill shut down operations in 1996, Waialua is undergoing a metamorphosis. The Waialua Town Master Plan is a well-documented concept to help the community excel into the future and retain its unique country character.

ZONE 7

• Wahiawa

Wahiawa has some of the coolest temperatures on the island because it's way up there in elevation. O'ahu's tallest peak, 4,000-foot. Mt. Ka'ala, is part of Wahiawa. Set right in the heart of the island between the Wai'anae and Ko'olau mountain ranges, it's just 15 minutes from here to the North Shore and 15 minutes to Pearl Harbor. A former pineapple plantation town, Wahiawa has a wide variety of affordable places to live.

ZONE 8

• Makaha
• Nanakuli
• Waianae

Located on the Wai'anae Coast, the driest area on O'ahu, the 8,000 residents of Makaha reside in single-family homes, condominiums and apartments that range among the lowest-priced on the island, although million-dollar properties with unmatched ocean views are also available.

Nanakuli is one of the most colorful of O'ahu's unique communities. Life in this first town after you round the bend on the Wai'anae Coast is about as close as it gets to the way Hawai'i used to be. Unpretentious, close-knit and intimately connected to the family and the sea, Nanakuli is a place where Hawaiian values are nurtured and celebrated. Most Nanakuli residences are two- and three-bedroom affordable homes built between 1970 and 1979.

Currently, the population of Wai'anae stands at nearly 38,000, roughly half female and half male. Local residents feel that today's Wai'anae is "the closest thing to an unspoiled Hawaiian place on the island." Indeed, it's a stronghold of proud, resilient and independent Hawaiians and other Polynesians. Most of the mainly single-family homes were built in the 1970s, and about 42 percent of Wai'anae's homes are occupied by renters.

ZONE 9

• Mililani

Mililani Town officially came into being on June 21, 1968. This was O'ahu's first master-planned community and it's still one of the best. Built by giant landowner Castle & Cooke, the real estate development was conceived at a time when the company was faced with a shrinking demand for the pineapple and sugar cane it cultivated here on the Leilehua Plateau of west central O'ahu. Today, Mililani is a self-contained community with outstanding homes, townhomes and condos in a great variety of price ranges.

ZONE 10

Waikele
Waipahu
• Waipi'o

Waikele can lay claim to a number of things: First, it's home to O'ahu's only premium factory discount shopping outlet, with more than 50 stores. Second, Waikele has new homes priced to attract young first-time homebuyers. And, third, the whole shebang is all built around the lovely Waikele Golf and Country Club.

Waipahu is a former sugar town in transition. Instead of growing sugar, today, it grows people. The 60,000 people who dwell here live in a great variety of housing, from low-cost apartment buildings to condominiums to single-family residences of all sizes.

ZONE 11

• Ewa
• Kapolei
• Makakilo

These three communities are Central O'ahu's hot-as-a-firecracker neighborhoods. The scene of more new construction projects than Las Vegas at the height of its building frenzy, it's hard to imagine the as-far-as-the-eye-can-see sugar fields that once grew here. With the demise of sugar production came a sweet life that now attracts droves of homeowners here. Ewa is the oldest neighborhood, yet it's suddenly new again, with Ewa by Gentry homes springing up all over the place and Haseko's new Ocean Pointe community complete with a marina. And, there are more golf courses around here than on any other part of the island.

Kapolei is hands-down the most exciting community ever to be built in Hawai'i. The 32,000-acre, master-planned City of Kapolei won for Campbell Estate the prestigious National Developer of the Year award in 1998. The master plan alone took 30 years of preparation, and calls for a city that rivals Honolulu in size and scope.

Makakilo should probably be called upper Kapolei, except that it was here before the first infrastructure for Kapolei was ever dug. Actually, this perch on the southern end of the Wai'anae Mountains was one of the earliest residential developments in the Leeward area, begun in the 1960s. There are some fabulous views of the Pacific Ocean, Wai'anae Coast and vistas to Diamond Head from the upper elevations of Makakilo. The temperatures are cooler up here, and homes come in the middle to upper-middle ranges.

ZONE 12

• Aiea
• Pearl City

Aiea covers almost 11,000 acres from Aiea Bay northward to the Ewa Forest Reserve. Within Aiea's city limits are all of the amenities of a self-contained community, including comfortable and attractive mid-range to affordable homes, schools, churches and a public library. For convenience to other parts of the island, you couldn't ask for a better location. H-1, Kam Highway and Moanalua Road (Highway 78) take you anywhere you'd like to go and bring you back home again.