Local Market Update for Homes
Aloha, this is David Buck with Harcourts Island Real Estate. I'm here to give you the local market update for May of 2022. Let's start off with the single family product and there we saw Wahiawa (which we have Lake Wilson in the background) have the largest increase year over year for sales, which were up 67%. That was at 6 sales/trades just a year ago and we saw 10 just this past month.
What we're starting to see in the single family home market is the velocity or numbers of sales are definitely slowing down. In 14 of the 23 major neighborhoods that the Honolulu Board of Realtors tracks, were actually down from May of last year to May of 2022 in regards to the numbers of sales. In 2 of those 23 neighborhoods saw no change whatsoever. So, that's just 7 neighborhoods that saw an uptick in transaction volume. That is something we want to keep an eye on and something that is quite contrary to what you'll see here shortly in the condo market.
Ala Moana-Kakaako saw the largest increase in median sales price, which was up 71%, year over year. That was going from $841,000 to $1,437,500. Now, you might not think Ala Moana-Kakaako has detached single family homes, but believe or not there are. We've talked about it in previous market updates. You can see in the backdrop behind me that the bulk of that product in those neighborhoods are going to be condominiums. You will some single family product as well as multi-family product in that neighborhood.
Jumping into overall appreciation across the board, the good news is (even though transaction volume was down), the median sales price was up in every single neighborhood on Oahu except for Hawaii Kai, which was down 3%. If you can think back, even though the market feels like it is softening in the last couple of months, it's still relatively strong compared to a year ago.
Local Market Update for Condos
As far as sales go, the North Shore saw the largest increase in sales year over year, which was up 300%. Keep in mind, there was only 1 trade a year ago, now we've had 4 this past month. So, that's a 300% increase. Quite contrary to the single family home market, which I mentioned earlier where there were 16 neighborhoods that were either flat or down. There were only 4 neighborhoods where transaction volume was down for condos.
If we think back a year or two ago, the condo market was in the pits and the single family home product was on fire. Now, you're seeing that single family home market tapering off a little bit. It's still strong as far as prices go, but as far as volume, there aren't as many buyers in the marketplace. The condo market is relatively quite strong and we've only seen 4 neighborhoods on Oahu that were down.
As far as the median price goes, the North Shore almost took out that top spot as well. They were up 251% for median price. That was going from $410,000 a year ago to $1,440,000. Now, keep in mind there's a broad array of condo products on the North Shore, which probably accounts for that major triple digit swing.
It was actually the Windward Coast of Oahu that saw the largest year over year increase for median price. It was up 319% and we've talked about this in previous sessions where that data can get skewed because there's a product on the Windward Coast called Hanohano Hale in Punaluu and you can get condos there close to $100,000. They are fee simple on the ocean, but they have higher maintenance fees. Regarding he 319% increase, keep in mind a year ago, that median price was only $97,500. So, that's factoring in the Hanohano Hale product. Then, it jumped all the way up to $408,450 just this past month.
Summary
In summary, rural condos have on fire this past month and it's kind of spread across the board as far as the single family product. Seeing Wahiawa, which is considered rural and then Ala-Moana-Kakaako, which is Metro were both seeing some strength. I hope you're having a great summer! We're just about toward the end of June and I'm glad I could finally get you caught up on May's report. We'll probably be just a week or two out catching up on the initial data from June. Aloha!