A buyer from Arizona who paid nearly $18 million for a home at Hualalai Resort last April helped boost the average price of residential real estate sold at resorts statewide last year to notch a second consecutive annual gain. Yet this segment of Hawaii’s housing market remained a bit wobbly and far shy of old records.
The Arizona buyer along with many other visitors, investors and local residents paid an average $1.23 million for residential property at Hawaii resorts last year, according to a new report.
Last year’s average was a five-year high and topped the 2013 average of $1.16 million.
Still, the industry has yet to come close to rivaling the average sale price record set in 2008 at $1.6 million.
Furthermore, sales volume last year dropped 10 percent to 1,316 transactions from 1,447 the year before.
Ricky Cassiday, a local housing market researcher who produced the report, said the unevenness in the market last year got in the way of what looked like the start of a solid rebound in 2013 when both prices and sales volume rose for the first time in eight years.
"The recovery continues to improve, at least if measured by prices," he said in the report. "If sales are taken into account, then the recovery looks a bit tepid."
Last year’s significant sale volume drop offset the slightly higher average price to pull down total revenue for all sales by about $50 million to $1.625 billion from $1.675 billion the year before. The revenue record was about $2.9 billion in 2005.
Cassiday’s report counts sales of new and previously owned single-family homes, condominiums and residential lots at master-planned resorts such as Ko Olina on Oahu, Wailea on Maui, Princeville on Kauai and Hualalai on Hawaii island.
One major area that contributed to the slip in sales last year was the resale market, which accounts for the majority of sales. There were about 975 resales last year, down from about 1,125 the year before.
The number of new resort homes sold by developers rose to 205 last year from 192 the year before.
In recent years, developers had been hard-pressed to obtain financing to build new resort homes, which limited sales even as buyer demand was returning. The peak in new residential property sales at resorts was in 2006, when developers sold close to 1,000 units.
Cassiday said more developers are busy at resorts including Maui’s Makena and Wailea, and the Garden Isle’s Princeville and Kauai Lagoons.
One project that was particularly active last year was Montage Residences Kapalua Bay on Maui, where Lantern Asset Management announced in January that it had sold $42.5 million in oceanfront condos at the resort over the prior four months.
Texas-based Lantern acquired unsold condos at the Maui resort from another developer in a foreclosure sale in 2013. Homes at Montage Residences still available earlier this year started at $3.4 million.
Cassiday said the high end of resort homes was more steady than the low end last year. There were 194 sales at or above $2 million, which was one more than the year before and considerably more than each of the four years before that. At the low end there were 579 sales under $750,000. That was 80 fewer than the year before.
"The high end seems to be driving the market for now," Cassiday said in the report, adding that buyers at the lower end seem to be less confident and sitting on the sidelines.
By island, the most sales occurred on Maui. There were 451 sales on the Valley Isle, followed by 394 on Kauai, 389 on Hawaii island and 92 on Oahu.
The most expensive single purchase was the house at Hualalai that sold for $17.9 million. A company affiliated with Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons bought the 11,071-square-foot house, which is on a 1.6-acre lot amid a golf course and includes two swimming pools, a detached guesthouse, a gym and a wine cave with room for 3,000 bottles.
The average price on Hawaii island was $1.4 million. Maui’s average was $1.6 million. On Kauai the average was $805,314, and Oahu’s average was $680,743.
