Hawaii commercial real estate sales crashing

Hawaii’s commercial real estate market is on pace to have its worst year in more than a decade, as investors, like tourists, largely stay away.

A report released Friday said purchases of hotels, shopping centers, office buildings and other commercial property in the state nosedived after March and likely will remain weak through the end of the year.

The report by commercial real estate brokerage firm Colliers International said investors bought $507 million worth of commercial properties in Hawaii during the first half of this year, representing a roughly 60% downfall from $1.3 billion in the same period last year.

Colliers said a dearth of international investors and little interest in hotels, which typically represent some of the biggest commercial property purchases, were primary reasons for the dropoff.

“Typically Hawaii’s prime resort and retail properties garner a high level of interest, which in turn contribute to the number of both foreign and mega-deal transactions (sales over $100 million) that occur,” the report said. “However, through June, no mega-deal transactions and only three foreign transactions had been recorded for a paltry sum of $8.3 million.”

There were no hotel or resort property sales this year through June, the report also said.

The biggest sale in the first half of this year was King Kalakaua Plaza, a long-empty retail building that was bought in January for $75.5 million. The buyer, an affiliate of Athos Capital Partners, partnered with Marriott Vacations Worldwide to turn the four-story building once anchored by Niketown into a seven-story timeshare with construction starting next year.

Local investors did most of the commercial property shopping this year through June, the report noted.

Buyers included affiliates of Watumull Properties Corp., which purchased a former State Farm office building in Mililani Tech Park and a warehouse in Iwilei for a combined $40.9 million, and MW Group, which bought two retail properties in Iwilei for a combined $47 million.

Another notable sale was on Lanai, where five 2-acre residential lots in the Manele resort area were conveyed between two companies owned by billionaire Larry Ellison for $15 million. The acquiring entity plans to develop five estates on the lots.

Looking ahead, Colliers said Hawaii commercial property sales through the end of the year appear bleak in large part because damage to tourism and businesses in other parts of the local economy continues in response to an ongoing spike of COVID-19 mainly on Oahu.

“Hawaii is nearly five months into this pandemic, yet a resolution does not seem readily apparent,” the report said.

Colliers, which tracks commercial property sales over $1 million, forecasts that the value of commercial property purchases for all of this year will come in at around $1 billion.

Last years sales totaled $2.6 billion; a $1 billion total would be the lowest volume since $630 million in 2009 in the wake of the Great Recession.

In 2018, Hawaii had a record $5.2 billion in commercial real estate sales, including the $1.1 billion sale of Maui’s Grand Wailea hotel.