Looking for assistance with buying a home? 

For a second year in a row, the state is making more federal mortgage tax credits available to people with low or moderate incomes in an effort to reduce the cost of buying a home amid a more restrictive financing market.

The Hawai’i Housing Finance and Development Corp. yesterday said it’s accepting applications for $20 million in credits, a record amount that’s up from $15 million in credits given last year.

The tax credit, called the Mortgage Credit Certificate, was created by Congress in 1984 and has been available and administered here by the state since 1989.

Another option is the Hula Mae Program.

Want to know if you qualify? Just contact me and I can help.

I will throw a few articles that came up this past week out at you.

For Hawaii, the loss of Aloha Airlines and ATA, means fewer airline seats available for visitors to arrive on. 15% to be exact.  Brewbakermentioned that the other airlines in the industry may make up for their loss, but in the short-term there will be a small effect.  that coupled with the higher than expected inflation recently, leading to minimal economic growth this year, or no growth.

There was an interesting article about the value of the dollar recently than is worthy of reading, especially since Hawaii is a hot-spot for foreign investors.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson speaks in the article titled Worst of U.S. Credit Crisis May Be Over.

A good sign of the economy can be tracked back to retail vacancy rates, which is highlighted here.

Do you want an emotional roll-coaster ride of ups and downs and a headache due to confusion? All you have to do is listen to or read the various reports on this months housing statistics.  They are all over the place with their reporting.

Why do I say this?  Well, the Honolulu Advertiser reported in their headline: Oahu Median Home Prices Down 3.9% in April.  I heard another report on the radio that said, “Home Prices Are Up $11,000 from last month.”  Now that doesn’t make since, does it?

The Honolulu Advertiser compared the Median Price this month to the Median Price in April of 2007 which was $665,00. 

The Radio was comparing Median Home Prices of this month to last month.

So which is more accurate? Neither.  Comparing one month to another month in separate years, is obviously not as accurate as comparing several consecutive months of data in two separate years.  What I like to look at is the “Year-To-Date” numbers.  What has gone on from the beginning of the 2008 to present compared to the same time in 2007.  Here are the Statistics for April 2008.

On page 3 of 20 we have the Year-To-Date numbers: The median sales price for a single family home on Oahu Year-To-Date is $625,000 compared to the same time last year which was $630,000.  That is a .8% decline. 

The number of sales is a different story as single family home sales are off by 23%.

For condos The Year-To-Date median sales price is up 2.2% to $329,000, however the number of sales are off by 24.7%.

On page 7 of 20 the median number of days-on-market was 43 days for SFH’s and 33 for condos.  Those are very good numbers. Better than I had expected.

On page 14 of 20 we have the inventory of active listings.  We see SFH inventory increased slightly and condos did so as well.

The big number is the Months-of-Inventory-Remaining. This. of course, is if we didn’t bring anymore properties on the market, how long would it take to sell all of the inventory.  Keep in mind 6-7 months of inventory is a balanced market.  Since our numbers of sales increased last month and this month, the months of inventory remaining dropped back down to the balanced market level.  For SFH there are 6.9 months of inventory remaining and for condos there are 6.7 months of inventory remaining.

You can also read Harvey Shapiro’s Article on this months stats.

Median prices paid for Oahu properties in April were $639,000 for single family homes and $327,000 for condominiums.  Note that these prices have been quite stable, unlike many Mainland markets, particularly in California. The medians for the entire first four months of 2008 are $625,000 and $329,000, almost the same as the same time period in 2007.

To view all past market stats go to The Resource Center.