The price of a Hawaii vacation home was a little cheaper last year — but not by much.
A market analysis shows that buyers paid an average of $1.07 million for residential real estate at resorts across the state last year, or about $40,000 less than the $1.11 million average the year before.
The analysis by local market researcher Ricky Cassiday showed that the decline, though slight, was the third consecutive year that the average price fell since peaking at $1.57 million in 2008.
Cassiday’s report covers sales of new and previously owned condominiums, single-family homes and house lots statewide at master-planned resorts such as Wailea, Mauna Lani, Princeville and Ko Olina.
The price drop has largely been the result of buyers migrating from more expensive properties to more affordable properties, Cassiday’s report shows.
For instance, last year the biggest concentration of properties sold for between $250,000 and $500,000. There were 433 such sales last year, which was up from 396 sales in the same price range in 2010 and about four times as many as there were in 2008.
Fewer high-end properties sold last year: There were 84 sales over $3 million, down from 113 in 2010 and a peak of 162 in 2007.
In all, nearly $1.4 billion of resort home property was sold last year, down from $1.7 billion the year before.
The total number of resort homes sold in 2011 was down 13.6 percent to 1,293. Sales hit a decade low of 1,044 in 2009.
Cassiday said the volume of sales remains up 30 percent from that bottom, and that Hawaii’s resort home market is holding up well compared with other resort destinations.
"Relative to other high-end resort markets domestically, this is a good market to be in," he said in the report.
Most sales — 906 of the 1,293 — involved condos. There also were 282 single-family home sales and 105 house lot sales.
Condos sold for an average price of $745,124, which included 767 sales of existing condos for $700,931 on average and 139 new condos for $988,980 on average.
Single-family homes sold for an average of $2.1 million, which included 234 existing homes for $1.7 million on average and 48 new homes for $4.3 million on average.
Home lots sold for an average of $1.1 million.
By island, the most sales and highest prices occurred on Maui, where there were 475 sales for an average of $1.3 million.
On Hawaii island there were 417 resort home sales for an average $1.1 million.
There were 304 resort home sales on Kauai for $698,010 on average.
Oahu had 97 sales for an average of $533,957.
