Home prices
keep climbing

The median price for a
single-family home on Oahu
rises 17.3 percent to
$360,000 in August

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By Lyn Danninger
ldanninger@starbulletin.com

Surging demand in Oahu's real estate resale market continued to push up sale prices for single-family homes August, according to figures released yesterday by the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

While the volume of single-family home resales for the month remained flat, with 342 homes sold, prices continued to rise, reflecting strong demand and a growing pattern of multiple offers for many of the properties, real estate professionals say.

The median sales price paid for a single-family home in August was $360,000, a 17.3 percent increase from the same month last year when the median sales price reached $307,000, and a12.5 percent increase from the July's median sales price of $320,000.

While a tight housing inventory has boosted prices, more homes are slowly entering the market, said Herb Conley, managing director of Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties. Even with more properties available, Conley doesn't think the change will have much of an effect on home prices.

"Inventory has increased just slightly in the last couple of months, so more people are thinking about selling, but it is still at the lowest point since 1990," he said.

There is still a way to go before the median sales price paid for a single-family home on Oahu approaches the record of $391,000 set in August 1990. But the number of residential sales in both single-family homes and condominiums on Oahu in the past 12 months -- now close to 8,500 -- is higher than at any point since the end of 1990, according to Harvey Shapiro, research economist with the Realtors board.

Strong demand for condominiums continued in August when 557 condominiums changed hands -- an increase of 26 percent from a year ago. The $150,000 median price for a condominium is still well ahead of $129,000 for the same time last year, but is down slightly from July's median of $157,000.

Conley predicts continuing demand through the remainder of the year.

"It should stay strong through the end of the year. I don't see that anything will change that," he said. "Inventory will probably free up a bit more and prices will continue to edge up but I don't see any big jumps."