Honolulu Real Estate Statistics

November 6th, 2008 categories: The Market

The Honolulu Board of Realtors released the October Monthly Statistical Report (CLICK HERE FOR A COMPLETE COPY) earlier this week. In general, I would like to see more positive numbers, but in no way should anyone be overly negative. There are three sets of numbers that can be encouraging depending on the market segment you are viewing.

1. Median prices. Median prices rose to $625,000 for houses and $325,000 for condominiums (from $590,000 and $296,000 respectively last month). This shows that values are not plummeting! I believe that values are declining in an incremental fashion, but we will not see quick declines in price (barring a catastrophic economic failure). This slow decline could result from moderate levels of inventory (see #3 below).
2. Median days on market. Houses that sold were on the market 52 days and condo’s lasted 53 days. Traditionally in Honolulu, 60 days on market or less means that the market favors sellers. Given how close the number is to 60 days on market, one could say that the market may be leaning toward favoring buyers. It is not, however, a large enough number to justify thinking one is going to get significant discounts on properly price property.
3. Moderate levels of available inventory. There are 2,107 active house listings and 2,663 active condominium listings. These listings are not evenly spread across Oahu’s market areas. So there are some neighborhoods (Ewa Beach and Waikiki as examples) where there is a lot for sale and therefore really goods buys can be had. However, core Honolulu has very low inventory in most segments and it is still getting good prices. Sections of the market that would be considered in the sweet spot of affordability are staying strong. And on the flip side, once you get above certain prices you will see more flexibility in the price.

Today’s picture is of my daughter’s cat. It was taken this morning. She likes to sit on the table while I check email and prepare for my day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under The Market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.