You’re not imagining it. Hawaii really has changed in the last few years.

Traffic is worse. The hot days are hotter and there are more of them. You can’t see the mountains from Ala Moana Beach Park. Only a fool wouldn’t lock their door.

And lots of people from elsewhere are buying houses here, the kinds of places most local people can’t afford.

The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism just released a first-ever report on trends in residential home sales from January 2008 to September 2015. When you take this report and combine it with Census data that show Hawaii’s population grew about 5 percent over the same period, we now have numbers that confirm anecdotes and observations about the rapid transformation of our communities into places where only the street names are familiar.

The state study found that nearly 33,000 homes in Hawaii were sold to mainlanders over the past six years, many of them apparently undaunted by the recession.

On Maui the combined number of sales to mainlanders and foreigners exceeded the number of sales to local buyers. Maui, which has long cultivated an image of being more sophisticated than Kauai and more boutique than Oahu, is actually evolving into an enclave of Southern California, with all its conveniences, congestion and sameness.

Nearly half the Kauai home sales were to mainlanders. If you think that doesn’t alter the sensibilities, politics and culture of a small rural community, you haven’t been following the news.

Hawaii island attracted the most mainland buyers, though the data don’t take into account how many sales might be from one mainland buyer to another, which is probably the majority in places with lots of condos. Kona, the Kohala Coast and Puna attracted 2,500 to 3,200 mainland buyers during the study period.

The report found that the largest number of mainland buyers of Hawaii homes came from California. They bought 12,624 homes, or an average 1,629 homes per year. Did you ever notice all those Range Rovers in traffic with California license plates and wonder, “What’s happening here?”

This is what’s happening here.

The reality is that for as expensive as our houses are, they’re still a bargain compared with many places. Homes that foreign buyers bought were 64 percent more expensive than what local residents bought. Mainlanders paid about $150,000 more for their houses than the average paid by locals.

We’re a state of immigrants, though our history tells the story of people looking for a better life, not a 1031 real estate exchange. But we live in an era where any resistance to outside influences is politically and socially dangerous. It gets called provincialism or xenophobia or even hate — hey, where’s the aloha?

Newcomers assume they’ll get a smile and a lei, not a sigh of resignation.

Southerners can tell newcomers to git with the program or git. New Yorkers can roll their eyes at rubes in the big city. In Hawaii we’re expected to make room and be happy for the company.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.