Tristyn Kalama said she and Kamohai Kalama were carrying about $80,000 in bad debt before real estate gave them a path forward and before Renovation Aloha turned them into HGTV names. On July 28, they used Instagram to push back on the idea that family money built the business for them.
July 28 on Instagram
Kamahai Kalama said, "I think we hear all the time, or a lot of the critics are always like, that we both came from a ton of money and were given our real estate business." Tristyn answered the assumption with her own line: "[People say,] well, that's why we're successful in real estate. I heard that a lot. But the opposite was true."
Kamohai said the couple were in a dire situation when they found real estate. He added, "We were asking for help for rent some months." That detail is the difference between a business origin story built on capital and one built on survival, and the couple chose to say it publicly while the debate over how they started was still active.
Kailua Arms and family money
The pair also addressed the biggest misconception head-on. Kamohai said he was not a trust fund baby growing up, and that he has never taken a penny from his dad, Corbett Kalama, to start the real estate business. He said his father has not financially invested in the couple's business in any way.
He tied that assumption to his family name and said, "I think the easiest thing is because my dad is super successful, and he is a well-known public figure, and so, everybody automatically assumes that I just had a silver spoon, and it was easy for me to get into real estate because my dad backed everything." He also said, "Growing up, they only see the second half of my dad's life, but we grew up in Kailua Arms, which was the most ghetto apartment building in Kailua. Like, if you're from Kailua, you know what Kailua Arms was," a plain correction to the tidy backstory people projected onto them.
Renovation Aloha in 2024
Tristyn joked, "I'll still take a trust fund if anyone wants to make me a beneficiary on one. But I don't have one. … I'm accepting sugar daddies!'" The line landed because it cut through the polished TV image and pointed back to the same financial strain they were describing.
Kamohai and Tristyn Kalama rose to TV fame with Renovation Aloha, which premiered on HGTV in 2024 and follows them as they transform homes across Oahu and the greater Hawaii area. For readers, the useful takeaway is simple: the on-screen business was not handed to them, and their own account says the climb began with debt, rent help, and a real estate pivot rather than a family-funded launch.
