Prudential offers its own home sales statistics

The firm uses a different methodology than the local board of Realtors

Prudential Locations LLC debuted a new monthly residential real estate report yesterday, using an approach that aims to smooth out short-term variations in the market.

Prudential's Oahu Real Estate Report includes detailed information for 15 specific neighborhoods ranging from the North Shore to Kaimuki, Manoa, Salt Lake and Makakilo.

Prudential's research department has been collecting and analyzing data on the residential real estate market since 1979. The monthly reports are based on data from the Honolulu Board of Realtors' multiple listing service, according to Scott Higashi, Prudential's executive vice president of sales. The board of Realtors has long released its own monthly Oahu home sales reports.

But Prudential uses a different methodology and breakdown of neighborhoods, Higashi said.

Besides monthly median prices and sales, Prudential is offering data for a rolling three-month period, which it says gives a more accurate picture than month-to-month comparisons of the direction prices are heading.

"We really want to make sure we keep people up to date on what's going on in the marketplace, both from a sales and price perspective," Higashi said. "We feel that giving people a quarterly snapshot is a good way to track trends."

The inaugural report found that Central and Leeward Oahu homes are recording higher prices, while prices in East Oahu neighborhoods are coming down. Condominium prices, meanwhile, continue to increase islandwide and have the potential to appreciate even more.

Central and Leeward Oahu neighborhoods, such as Pearl City-Aiea, Ewa and Makakilo, recorded higher prices in the three months ending in August, according to the report.

Those regions are now catching up with the higher-priced neighborhoods of Kahala, Hawaii Kai and Kailua, which are now slowing down.

These trends were evident in Prudential's tracking of the period from June to August this year and last year. Median prices trended upwards in the following neighborhoods:

Median prices in East Oahu, on the other hand, fell during the period between June and August in the following neighborhoods:

Condominiums near downtown Honolulu recorded the highest levels of price appreciation during the last three months.

The Ala Moana neighborhood's median condo price increased about 49.3 percent, according to Prudential, higher than any of the Central or Leeward Oahu neighborhoods. The median home price in the Kapiolani and University area jumped 22.3 percent.

Overall condo sales, however, dropped about 26 percent between June to August of last year and the same three-month period this year.