Isle home sales
up 14.3% in ’99

Condo purchases gained 25.3%
over the previous year

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Sales of existing homes on Oahu in December kept up the strong pace they had shown all year, aided by slightly lower prices, according to figures issued today by the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

The busy month pushed resales of single-family homes for the full year up 14.3 percent over 1998 and last year's condominium resales were up 25.3 percent compared with 1998.

"December capped a year of substantial growth in the residential real estate market," said Peter Freeman, president and chief executive of the 3,500 member real estate trade association.

He said it was the 30th consecutive month in which total resales of houses and apartments exceeded the year-earlier level.

"The dollar volume of housing resales in 1999 was just shy of $1.6 billion. That was an increase of 18.5 percent, almost a quarter billion dollars, from the resales generated in the housing market in 1998," Freeman said.

The number of single-family homes changing hands last month was down slightly from the December 1998 level, at a total of 267, a dip of 0.7 percent from 269.

However, the sales volume for December 1998 had been the highest for any December since 1987 and last month's performance was a solid leap forward from 230 single-family home sales in November.

The 291 condominium resales last month were up 11.5 percent from 261 in December 1998.

December prices were down for both houses and apartments. The median among the single-family homes changing hands last month was $281,000, down 4.7 percent from the $295,000 December 1998 median, the level at which half the properties sold for more and half for less.

Last month's condominium median price was $122,000, down 3.2 percent from $126,000 in the previous December.

For all of last year, 2,853 single-family homes changed hands, compared with 2,495 in 1998. Last year's resales of condominium units totaled 3,298, up from 2,632 in the previous year.

The Board of Realtors gathers its sales volume and price numbers from transactions reported through its computerized Multiple Listing Service. It does not include sales of newly built homes.