BY KELLY A. LEE, R – How does Hawaii’s real estate market compare to what is going on nationally? Who is buying on Oahu?
We hear statistics everyday about the real estate market and how bad it is, but in real estate, it is very much neighborhood based. Some neighborhoods are selling faster and for higher prices than others. Sometimes, you will have no activity for weeks and then all of a sudden, several homes get snatched up quickly.
On Oahu, our real estate market really is a world unto its own. It is the melting pot of the world and our market is like no other. We have a large and thriving local economy as well as year-round tourism and foreign investment to stimulate our economy. That being said, Hawaii real estate loosely follows the trend of the mainland U.S.
Even in our industry of real estate, where we are dealing with buyers and sellers everyday of every month of every year, we are sometimes taken a back by the weekly trends that seem to occur in our market.
Take a look at these luxury properties that recently went into escrow—they are all above $5 million and all went into escrow fairly quickly—15-75 days—that is darn good for this market. Looking at these price points, it is apparent that money is flowing into real estate more and more.