Traffic, Traffic and more Traffic!
March 31st, 2008 categories: Buying Honolulu Real Estate, Reasons To Sell
This is the second installment in my series on why I am bullish on Honolulu real estate. The key word to consider is “TRAFFIC”.
Every mile one lives outside of Honolulu the greater the amount of traffic you will face getting into and around town (Honolulu). It seems our roads can be congested anytime of the day. Given the jobs, shopping and schooling in the core, I do not see a let up in traffic…ever! With 25,000 new homes projected to be built outside of Honolulu and a bulk of jobs being located in Honolulu and Waikiki, it is a safe bet that you will see more traffic.
You may have read about the proposed mass transit coming from Ewa to Honolulu. If it is approved it is going to make things worse in the mid-term because most of it will be constructed in the middle of existing freeways and roads. Since the construction will take at least one lane going each way for the next ten or more years, guess what is going to happen to traffic congestion.
So, how does this impact core Honolulu real estate values? If a person who lives west of Aiea, works in town and has a child in one of the privates schools in town or at the University of Hawaii Manoa, they could be averaging an hour to an hour and a half drive one way, twice a day! This means they are taking two to three hours a day to make a round trip drive that should be less than an hour. Do this for a few years and you can imagine how appealing it would be to live in town. My recent blog about Honolulu being substantially built out, means there is a very large population desiring to live in an area with very limited supply. This equation has led to an imbalance of demand pressure for core Honolulu properties and, therefore, you can expect area values to do very well over the mid to long-term.
In summation, in the last year and a half we have seen the market move to favor buyers by a small amount (but not much). This is an edge that buyers don’t often experience in this ahupuaa (a little Hawaiian language). Buy now and 10 years from now you may look like a genius.
When Mayor Harris was in office he was going to build a “second city” for people to live and work. Why don’t they continue with that? It is the ONLY thing that would stop the traffic!