Saying that Oahu home sale prices have broken a record has become sort of like, well, a broken record.
The median price for condominiums sold on the island last month set a record at $389,500, according to a report from the Honolulu Board of Realtors released for publication today.
The old record stood for just five months. The previous high for condos was $386,250 in December. April’s median condo price was 5.1 percent higher than $370,475 in April 2015.
This is the second home price record set this year, following a peak for the median single-family home price in January at $733,500. Last month the median single-family price was $720,000, up 6.7 percent from $674,900 a year earlier.
“The market remains strong,” Kalama Kim, the board’s president and principal broker at Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties, said in a statement.
Oahu’s housing market has hit new peaks for the monthly median sale price 10 times since 2014 for either condos or single-family homes.
Annually, record median prices for both condos and single-family homes have been set in each of the last three years — and are on track to do it again this year.
For the first four months of this year, the median single-family home sale price is up 6.7 percent to $720,000 from $675,000 in the same period last year. Condos have sold for a median $380,500 this year through April, up 4.1 percent from $365,500 a year earlier.
The median price is a point at which half the sales were at a higher price and half at a lower price. All the sales counted by the board are resales, and exclude new homes sold by developers.
In terms of sale volume, the number of transactions are up about 12 percent this year through April. However, last month alone sales were flat or close to flat from a year earlier.
There were 301 single-family home sales last month, unchanged from a year earlier. Condo sales ticked up 1.3 percent to 460 last month from 454 a year earlier.
The Honolulu Board of Realtors said buyers are moving fast to compete for relatively limited inventory. The median time for a seller to accept an offer after listing a property was 15 days for single-family homes and 19 days for condos.
“The market continues to march forward at a very fast pace,” Kim said.
Over the last two years, this time frame has ranged between 15 and 31 days for single-family homes and between 19 and 29 days for condos.
One positive change last month, from the point of view of prospective buyers, was a surge in the number of homes listed for sale. The inventory of home listings rebounded from more-than-two-year lows in March — 844 single-family homes and 1,342 condos — to 1,171 and 1,792 units, respectively. Still, the inventory levels in April were lower than most months over the last two years.
Local economists have said that low interest rates, job growth and population growth are driving home-buying demand that is outstripping production.
The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism issued a report last year projecting that about 65,000 new homes statewide would be needed to keep pace with population growth over 10 years, or 6,500 annually. Yet closer to 3,000 homes a year have been built in recent years. Most of the new housing — more than 25,000 homes — would be needed on Oahu.
The result of the supply-demand imbalance is rising prices that are expected to continue.
The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization projected in a February report that median Oahu home prices will set new records this year just shy of $400,000 for condos and close to $750,000 for single-family homes.