Hawaii Real Estate Resource

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Small park in the Kehalani Mauka community nestled on the slopes of the West Maui Mountains.  Terraced terrain gives many of the homes unobstructed views of the city below with ocean beyond.

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NEWS FLASH--Maui Land & Pineapple Company has just announced that they are shutting down pineapple operations on Maui by the end of the year. 

Maui Land & Pineapple Company has been sustaining heavy losses for many years and was unable to define a viable plan to continue operations.  Several hundred workers will lose their jobs and fresh Maui-grown pineapples will be a thing of the past except for some small farmers.  The island of Oahu went through this last year when Del Monte abruptly stopped pineapple production.  Dole still produces pineapple on Oahu but has significantly scaled back operations over the years.

Agriculture is taking a heavy hit throughout Hawaii.  Just last week Kauai ended their sugar cane operations after harvesting their final crop (see my post HERE).  For now, sugar is still a big crop on Maui and thousands of acres of it greet incoming passengers who pass over the valley fields prior to landing.

Tourists can still get fresh Hawaiian pineapple to take back to the mainland.  But those wanting to do so would be wise to visit now rather than later.

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Gay and Robinson, our last sugar producer on Kauai, clebrated their final harvest yesterday.  They had been producing that sweet stuff for over 100 years and the celebration was mixed with saddness.  Two other sugar producers had exited the business in previous years and now there are none.  Kauai still maintains extensive agrucultural lands and hopefully a new use will be found so that they don't just grow up in weeds. 

Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

Visit www.KauaiRocks.comfor Hawaii real estate information 

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No room for guardrails, just drive, don't look, and don't meet an oncoming car.  No flats allowed.

Oops, Maui-style traffic jam!  The car on the right is backing up as there is no room to pass on this cliffside road.

 Aloha!

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Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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Entering Old Kahakuloa Village

 Fine dining and the ONLY dining near Old Kahakuloa Village

 Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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I had a delightful experience today when I "stumbled across" a tour of the Hindu temple being build above Kapaa on our little island of Kauai.  Granite slabs are being hand-chisled in India and shipped 10,000 miles to Kauai for the construction which has been ongoing since 1991.  The gold leaf dome overlays are stunning in the bright Kauai sunshine.

 Aloha!

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Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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A new type of air conditioning system is planned for downtown Honolulu that will be a major energy saver.  A local company has plans to install underground pipes running from the ocean into downtown Honolulu so that sea water can be used for cooling instead of refrigeration systems.  The system is slated to be operational by 2011 with savings of around 75% on the electric bill.  With Hawaii's cost of electricity being 3 times the national average, this is a very big deal.

Some challenges remain such as getting past potential public opposition which is always a possibility when change is happening.  The Environmental Impact Statement is due to be filed this month.  Source of this information is our local publication Pacific Business News.

Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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Annapolis Maryland photo from my recent visit to see my new grandchild, Zoe.  In the Summer, there is nary a vacant spot along the seawall.  It's still quite picturesque without them.

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Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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A snapshot of Kauai real estate listing inventory is shown below.  At what I hope is the bottom of our market, it will serve as a basis of comparison for future updates.

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Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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Some areas of the nation are seeing short and REO sales in such large numbers that they are the majority of all sales, I recently published a chart for Kauai showing distressed sales are only 1/4 of the market there.  On Maui they are a little higher at almost 1/3 of overall sales in the month of September.  That is still substantially less than the worst areas of the country.  What remains to be seen is whether we have escaped the worst or whether it just hasn't arrived yet.  I have joined the Keller Williams Realty short sale and REO team so as to be prepared in case it's the latter while hoping that it isn't.

Data below is based on agent reports for September which are not audited for accuracy.

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Some areas of the nation are seeing short and REO sales in such large numbers that they are the majority of all sales, On Kauai they were only about 1/4 of our overall sales in the month of September.  What remains to be seen is whether we have escaped the worst or whether it just hasn't arrived yet.  I have joined the Keller Williams Realty short sale and REO team so as to be prepared in case it's the latter while hoping that it isn't.

Data below is based on agent reports for September which are not audited for accuracy.

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Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

Visit www.KauaiRocks.com for Hawaii real estate information

Kauai residential sales price points continue to move out of the lowest bands with the increase going to the $500K to $750K band.  This suggests that our market is recovering from bargain basement prices early in the year when 2/3 of sales were below $500K.  We're still a long way from what we were seeing at the peak of the market in 2006 when less than 1/4 of sales were less than $500K.  One day we shall return to those price ponts but I'm not prescient enough to say when that will be.  Hopefully there will be many who will be buying homes before that happens.

Currently (2009 Price Points Through September)

Previously (2009 Price Points Through February)

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Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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Having published data on Kauai "seasonal" closings averaged over the last 8 years, I though it would be interesting to see if current market conditions have caused any variation.  As in the other chart, our "slow" season for closings continued to be the Winter months for 2008. 

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As one of the few states where "season" is based more on tourism than on climate, it's interesting to note that our 4 slowest months are the Winter months of November through February.  This mirrors what I have heard about the mainland market but perhaps with somewhat less prounounced differences.  The "Wagonwheel" chart below shows our closings by month averaged over the years of 2000 through 2008.  Our biggest month is March which may be due to year-end visitors who decide to buy while they are here.  The chart follows...

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Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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Looking at data back to 2000 shows that Kauai sales took a huge tumble indeed beginning in 2006.  But that fishhook upturn in 2009 is looking an awful lot like a new trend!  Stay tuned for the next few months to find out for sure.

Aloha!

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Kauai home sales statistics have been released for the month of September 2009. The figures are island-wide comparisons of current sales versus year ago periods. Monthly values fluctuate widely and I've always preferred to use year-to-date data to average out the fluctuations. Both are presented below.

It's important to keep in mind that the data reflects what is actually selling and not necessarily a change in value of a particular property. In my experience investor purchases tend to be in higher-priced resort areas whereas owner-occupant purchases tend to be more focused in value-priced areas. My buyer clients today are much more heavily weighted toward owner-occupant than in previous years when investors dominated. More sales in value-priced areas and fewer in higher-priced resort areas will drive median sales prices down. Of course the number of sales speak for themselves although here again, an absence of investor sales will drive the numbers down.

Number of Sales

 Median Sales Price

Additional breakdown of this information is available to my clients upon request.

Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

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I doubt that too many remember using these kind of phones.  They were wall-mounted and had 2 large dry-cell batteries inside.  The hand crank alerted the local switchboard operator that you wanted to make a call.  She sat in front of a switchboard with cables everywhere and plugged them into the correct sockets so that you could talk to another party.  I'd say my Blackberry is one giant leap for man (or is it mankind?).

Our operator was Floy.  She was the only one so worked 6 days a week.  Calls were not allowed after 8 PM or on Sunday as she needed a little time off to eat and sleep and such.  I even remember our phone number which was 45R4 and it would ring 4 times so that we knew it was for us and not someone else on the party line.  In retrospect, I'd guess the number probably stood for line 45, ring 4 times.

What fun!

Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

Visit www.KauaiRocks.com for Hawaii real estate information 

Having once managed an engineering data department, I'm accustomed to pouring through numbers and presenting data in charts for easy visualization of market activity.  Today I'm relying on a less rigorous measure of market activity here on Kauai.  When I reviewed our MLS daily summary, I was amazed at how different it looks from just a few months ago.  Today we had a whopping 7 sales closed and 2 contingent contracts.  Just a few months ago we were lucky to have 1 sale and often had none.  Back then, most daily reports were not much more than price changes down.  Today, that category made up only 1/3 of our activity. 

Clearly buyers are buying once again and more and more signs are pointing to a recovery.

Aloha!

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

Visit www.KauaiRocks.com for Hawaii real estate information 

Earlier today I posted my real estate inventory chart for the entire island of Kauai.  Although that chart showed Kauai's real estate inventory has been decreasing for over a year, Poipu on Kauai's South Shore has lagged behind.  Finally there are signs of improvement here as well.  Admittedly it was hard to get the yellow curve fit to bend at the upper right so it's still a bit early to say inventory here has peaked.  Nevertheless, it's a positive sign especially when considering the overall improvement in Kauai.

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For techies, the yellow curve superimposed on the chart is an Excel 5th-order polynomial curve fit.

Aloha,

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

Visit www.KauaiRocks.com for Hawaii real estate information

With over a year of of decreasing inventory, it's clear that Kauai's real estate inventory is continuing to recover from August 2008 highs.  It's rarely possible to discern trends until sufficient time has elapsed to look back and see where we have been.  For Kauai, the inventory buildup began in the Fall of 2005 and continued to build for 3 years.  Now the number of active listings has been decreasing for a full year.  This is a positive sign for stressed-out sellers.  While I expect some time to elapse before prices also begin a recovery, now may be the "sweet spot" for buyers especially since many predict that mortgage rates will soon begin to increase. 

For techies, the smooth yellow curve superimposed on the chart is an Excel 3rd-order polynomial curve fit.

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Aloha,

Search Kauai/Big Island | Search Maui | Email | About Me | Visit Website | Phone/Text (808) 651-4550

Engineering Hawaii Dreams Today--Helping Buyers Find Dream Homes & Sellers Find Buyers

Visit www.KauaiRocks.com for Hawaii real estate information