With purchases at $1.1B in the first nine months of 2011, a new report anticipates a 7.8% rise

Buyers of residential real estate at Hawaii vacation resorts spent $1.1 billion during the first nine months of last year, according to a new report.

That sounds like a lot, but the amount is down from about $1.3 billion in the same period the year before, which marked a rebound from four consecutive years of declines.

Report author Ricky Cassiday, a local housing market consultant, said he expects the number of full-year sales will be 7.8 percent below the previous year’s, or close to 1,380 sales for a total $1.5 billion last year compared with about 1,500 sales for $1.7 billion in 2010.

The projected decline for 2011 follows a 43 percent increase in 2010 that was preceded by four straight years downward to a decade-low in 2009.

If Cassiday’s 2011 estimate is accurate, vacation home property sales would still be at a relatively healthy post-rebound level.

“OVERALL SALES being down only 7.8 percent is still pretty good — not within spitting range of (2010’s) revival, but nowhere near where the market was when it bottomed in 2008 and 2009,” he said in the report. “Indeed, most other resort or luxury markets in the nation and abroad would be happy to be in this condition.”

The report covers sales of new and previously owned condominiums, single-family homes and house lots statewide at master-planned resorts such as Hualalai, Princeville, Wailea and Ko Olina.

According to Cassiday’s data, the average price for resort home property last year through September was $1.06 million, down from $1.1 million in 2010. The recent high was $1.57 million in 2008.

The economic downturn and slow recovery in the last few years have made lower-priced resort home property more attractive to buyers. Cassiday’s report said most sales were between $250,000 and $500,000 last year. In previous years more sales occurred in the $500,000-to$750,000 range, closely followed by sales between $750,000 and $1 million.

Still, last year had its share of ultrapricey sales. The highest sale was a $27 million estate in Makena on Maui. The Wall Street Journal reported that the 1.7acre oceanfront property was bought by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.

The Journal also reported that actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith sold a home on seven acres in Hanalei, Kauai, last year for $20 million.

Overall, resort home sale prices have been affected by more foreclosures. Cassiday’s report said 23 percent of sales last year through September were forced by lenders. That was up from 14 percent for the same period in 2010, 9 percent in 2009 and 2 percent in 2008.

ANOTHER FACTOR in the broad market is a relative dearth of new home sales, as developers responded to weak demand by curtailing building new, and often more expensive, residences.

Cassiday said sales by developers represented about 10 percent of all resort home sales last year, which is near the historic low and compares with a peak just over 50 percent in 2006.

There has been some movement by developers to return to the market. One example is Kukui‘ula on Kauai. The developer, a partnership led by Honolulu-based Alexander & Baldwin, suspended sales efforts in 2009. A slow restart in 2010 produced few sales since then, but A&B more recently ramped up advertising and expects better sales this year.