Oahu home sale price just shy of $1 million in July

Oahu’s housing market continued its upward march this year toward a $1 million median home sale price, coming oh-so-close in July.

The Honolulu Board of Realtors reported Friday that single-family houses sold for a record median $992,500 in July, a whopping 22% increase from $815,000 a year earlier.

The record, $7,500 shy of the $1 million mark, represents the sixth time in seven months this year that the median price reached a new high.

Local economists and real estate agents have been saying for much of this year that supply being exceeded by demand — largely driven by people seeking to improve their conditions for working from home amid the coronavirus pandemic, along with an influx of people moving here from the mainland — is causing the run-up in prices as buyers compete for a relatively low number of homes on the market.

“We just don’t have enough inventory to sell,” Shannon Heaven, president of the Honolulu Board of Realtors and an agent with Property Profiles, said in a video posted by the trade organization. “There’s a high demand, a pent-up demand, of buyers, and with that it’s just going to keep driving up the prices because there’s so much competition.”

The extraordinary run-up in the median price, which is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less, began in January with a 15% boost to $883,000 from the same month in 2020.

From there the median sale price surged further to records of $917,500 in February, $950,000 in March, $978,000 in May and then $979,000 in June.

Purchase volume really began to take off in March with a 19% jump, followed by year-over-year gains roughly between 50% and 60% in April, May and June.

Last month there were 404 single-family home sales, a 12% increase over 361 sales a year earlier.

Oahu’s condominium market, where more inventory exists and prices are more affordable, has attracted an even bigger rise in sale volume.

There were 671 condo sales in July, up 58% from 426 in the same month in 2020. In the months since February, year-over-year condo sale volume gains have ranged roughly from 40% to 135%.

Because condo supply and demand is more balanced compared with the single-family home market, median price gains have been more moderate for condos this year. However, in July the median condo sale price broke a 2-year-old record by rising 8% to $475,000 from $440,000 a year earlier.

The prior condo price record was $461,500 in July 2019.

“For condos the metro area is just exploding,” Heaven said.

Some of the higher volume for condo sales, according to industry observers, has come from investors selling units that were in the rental market, which has been hurt by local tenants falling behind on rent and fewer visitor arrivals amid fallout from the pandemic.

Developers also have been busy building new condo towers, which is expanding inventory much more than relatively limited new single-family home construction.

Sales in the report are only for previously owned homes and reflect closed purchases that typically follow sales contracts that were signed one to three months earlier.