Everything You Need To Know About The Hosts Of HGTV's Renovation Aloha

For Tristyn and Kamohai Kalama, the Hawaiian island of O'ahu isn't just where they live and do business — it's also where they were born and raised. As Tristyn told HGTV, her husband's family has called O'ahu home for several generations, and he's a familiar face around the island. "You can't go anywhere on Oahu without Kamohai bumping into someone," she said, especially since he has 87 first cousins living on the island.

To both preserve Hawaiian culture and enhance their community, HGTV's "Renovation Aloha" follows the couple seeking out some of the island's most neglected homes and then working their magic, bringing these disastrous homes back from the brink by transforming them into stunning gems within a tropical paradise.

That's evident in the series' very first episode, in which the Kalamas zero in on an extreme fixer-upper in an in-demand location — the Kalihi Valley, situated just a bit north of Honolulu — that's seen better days. Not only has the home experienced the harsh effects of the island's unpredictable weather, but the place is also long abandoned, having been boarded up while trees have grown within the home, pushing their way up through the roof. Meanwhile, they also find themselves contending with an infestation of termites, an unstable foundation, and heaps of garbage and junk throughout the property.

At first glance, a career in flipping houses — let alone starring in their own HGTV network series — would seem unlikely for Tristyn and Kamohai Kalama. As Tristyn revealed during an interview with Logan Lee Manzanares, her background was as a licensed mental health counselor, while Kamohai was a substance abuse counselor.

The journey that would ultimately take the couple to HGTV's "Renovation Aloha" began when Tristyn was watching television, and saw a commercial advertising a seminar on investing in real estate. Intrigued by what she saw, she signed up both herself and Kamohai to attend. While her husband was initially reluctant, they both quickly came to recognize the potential that existed all around them on the island paradise of O'ahu. "Our eyes were opened and everything just clicked — the vision and life we dreamed of for our family, will all be created through real estate!" Tristyn wrote in a Facebook post about their company, TK Property Solutions. That led them to go into business for themselves in 2018, and they haven't looked back. 

"We've always been entrepreneurs; we just hadn't found our thing yet," Kamohai told HGTV. "I was hesitant in the seminar. They were telling me, somehow, I can buy million-dollar houses, but then something clicked, and I said, 'Let's give it a shot.'"

One key factor that sets "Renovation Aloha" apart from the vast array of other series on HGTV is its setting in O'ahu. Not only do viewers receive a televised glimpse at the natural beauty of the lush Hawaiian island, they also get a look at Hawaiian culture and traditions. "There's so much more to 'Renovation Aloha' than buying a house and selling it," Kamohai Kalama told HGTV. "It's about the culture and the people we're interacting with."

The preservation and celebration of Hawaiian culture is every bit as important to Tristyn and Kamohai Kalama as making money from their home renovation efforts. As Kamohai explained in a video interview, there is a bit of a catch-22 situation that can result from beautifying the island by reviving old homes. "People want to come to Hawaii because of the people and the experiences they have, and then they want to move here," he said, noting that these newcomers can wind up making changes that eradicate certain aspects that attracted them to Hawaii in the first place.

That's why preserving the things about O'ahu that make it special remains of paramount importance to the Kalamas, as is assisting their fellow residents in their journey to home ownership. "[We want] to keep local families here in Hawaii," Kamohai told HGTV. "If we can control who the home goes to, then we try to do that."

Baked into the business model of TK Property Solutions, the O'ahu-based company owned by Tristyn and Kamohai Kalama of HGTV's "Renovation Aloha," is their commitment to working directly with local island families, whom they come into contact with via social media and, in many cases, word of mouth. "We try to sell off-market so we can cut out real estate commissions and bring costs down," Tristyn explained in an interview with HGTV. "It helps local families walk into equity, but we still make the margins we need to run our business."

Hand-in-hand with that has been their desire to both celebrate and preserve Hawaiian culture through the home renovations featured on the show. That's emphasized in a special ritual they perform to mark the completion of each project. As she told HGTV, the couple will join together with the family in their new home, with Kamohai's father Kamoa Kalama playing a song on his ukulele that imparts a blessing onto the home. "I have the privilege and opportunity to bless your home," Kamoa tells one family before sharing some history about the area where their new home is (via YouTube). "It's a very nurturing area."

"It's so significant to every part of who we are," Tristyn explained. "Blessing a home prepares a space for the new family coming in, pays respects and shares insight into the historical."

One of the ways that Tristyn and Kamohai Kalama have publicized their services to others in O'ahu has been through social media. As a result, they've become pretty adept at connecting with customers via such platforms as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. While these platforms have been used to promote the arrival of HGTV's "Renovation Aloha," they'd previously used social media as a form of outreach — to both those looking to sell a property and those seeking to purchase one.

That said, their social media following isn't all that big, and there's a good reason for that. For the Kalamas, what they do on social media is icing on the cake of their core business. The way they see it, they'd rather focus what limited time they have on their business — and, by extension, their HGTV series and the opportunities associated with that — than try to build up followers on social media. 

As Kamohai explained in a video posted on Facebook, he and his wife prefer to be in the situation of having successfully built their business, and then adding social media to the mix, than vice-versa. "I'd rather be in this position trying to figure out the social media and influence game to help build on top of what we've already figured out, and what we've already built," he said. "But I wouldn't want to be on [the] other side, with a huge [social media] following, trying to figure out the business thing."

Having achieved a significant degree of success in a relatively brief period, Tristyn and Kamohai Kalama have been quick to point out that they're entirely self-made. The home renovations that HGTV viewers witness in "Renovation Aloha" represent the culmination of the learning curve they experienced during their journey to become the Hawaiian house-flipping superstars they've become. 

As the pair explained in an interview they posted on TikTok, the kind of success they've achieved wasn't given to them, it was something they worked for and fought hard to attain. "Actually being successful in anything is to have that initiative and create the opportunity for yourself," said Tristyn. The couple noted that what people see on social media represents their wins, not necessarily what it took to achieve them. "They don't see us having to fire contractors ..." Kamohai said. "Like all of the hard work behind the scenes." 

As they wrote in the caption of the video: "There is no success without struggle. Don't let social media play tricks on you. Any successful entrepreneur also deals with hardship and struggle."