October 11th, 2009
Oahu Real Estate Market Stats For September 2009
The summer market is coming to an end, yet the market appears to be bouncing right along. In fact, this months numbers were an excellent sign of improvement. The overall picture right now is the number of sales for Single Family Homes (SFHs) is down 16% Year-To-Date (YTD) compared to the same time last year. The number of sales started off the year down 46.5% and has improved to be down only 16%. Inventory is also down 16% as well, helping keep our market in balance. We are at inventory levels now that you have to go back to 2006 to see. Prices are still down 8% YTD for SFHs and 7% YTD for Condos.
If you would like to view September’s entire 20 page report, click on September Stats. You can view all previous monthly and quarterly stats at THE Resource Center.
- Oahu Home Sales, Prices Up (Honolulu Advertiser)
- Home Prices And Sales Rise (Star Bulletin)
- Oahu September Home Sales, Prices Up (PBN)
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of REALTORS®, provided the following commentary on Oahu’s housing market:
Home sales in 2009, to-date, were essentially at a 10-year low. One reason for the much lower sales can be explained by stricter mortgage underwriting guidelines. In addition, Hawaii suffers from the credit freeze that is taking place in the jumbo market and for second home purchases. However, the biggest reason for such low sales activity is likely due to fear of further home price declines.
Consumer psychology appears to be decisively turning for the better as the housing market has been showing signs of bottoming, if it is not already past a bottom point. Affordability conditions are now at multi-year highs thanks to lower home prices and very low mortgage rates on conforming mortgages.
The first-time homebuyer tax credit is also helping. It is no surprise, therefore, that home sales have begun to rise nationally for 5 straight months. The increases were beyond the normal seasonal uptick in spring and summer.”
Market Stats:
Sales: Year-To-Date (Y-T-D) Single Family Home (SFH) sales are down 16% from the same time last year. September 2009 number of sales (244) are down by 3 from August of 09 (247) and up over September 2008 sales (215). Y-T-D Condo sales are off 26.3% from the same same 9 months last year. Condo sales for September 09 were 345, down from 351 in August of 09 and up from 305 in September 08.
Prices are Up and Down?: Y-T-D prices of Single Family Homes are down 8% for the entire island. September 2009 prices ($600,000) are up from August 2009’s price ($566,000), and up from the September 2008 median home price ($590,000). Y-T-D condo prices are down 7.7% from the same 9 months of 2008 for the entire island. September 2009 condo prices ($305,000) are up from August 2009’s price ($290,000), and up from the September 2008’s median condo price of $296,000.
Sales Speed: The Median Number of Days On Market (DOM) or how long it takes a home to be sold once it is brought on the market, increased slightly to 54 days, up from 48 days in August 09 and roughly the same as September 08 (55 days). The median number of DOM for condos was 51 days, the same number as in August 09 and in September 08.
The number of new listings brought on the market decreased again in September to 341 new listings. This is down from 385 new listings that came on the market in August 09 and down from 525 new listings in September 08. For condos there were 541 new listings, down from 565 in Aug 09 and down from 629 in Sept 08.
Months of Inventory Remaining (MOIR): This basically means, If we didn’t bring anymore homes on the market, how long would it take us to sell all of the inventory? For SFH’s it is down to 5.3 months compared to 8.1 MOIR for September 08! For condos the MOIR is down to 5.4 months, down from 7.7 MOIR for September 08. A balanced market is 6-7 months of inventory remaining.
The exceptions: The exceptions to all this is the $1.0million SFH price range. This price range has sped up significantly, but still has a fair amount of inventory at 16.3 months of inventory remaining. For the $500K condo market there is 8 MOIR.
Posted by scott on October 11th, 2009 in Oahu Real Estate Market Stats, Real Estate | No Comments »