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Hey guys
i wanted to know if anyone can help when it comes to the realestate market. i know the realestate market nationwide is generally in a "buyers" favor. is that the current trend in oahu? is it a good market to buy a home rather than rent? can anyone recommend a good real estate company that does both rental as well as sales?
Prices haven't tanked like other places in the US. They've dropped maybe 15 - 25% from the peak. I suspect prices will drop another 10% or so and remain fairly stagnant. Demand for housing will always be high and availability of land will always be scarce on Hawaii. During the last housing bubble, my mom bought a house at the peak at around $310k back in 1993. The price of that house dropped to a low of around $260k around 2001, then started to shoot up to a peak of around $610k in 2008. That house is now worth around $450k. The value of that house pretty much followed the average trend of prices on Oahu. Prices are still unaffordable to the masses and mortgages are hard to come by. If interest rates begin to increase, prices will surely drop. It's really hard to know how things will be in the next few months or years. The economy is still unstable, and there is just a lot of uncertainty.
Hawaii Real Estate Central - Honolulu Board of REALTORS® is the best resource for real estate for sale because it lists the land tenure and maintenance/HOA of all properties unlike sites like Zillow, Movoto etc. Many condos on Oahu are sold as leasehold (LH). The gist of LH is that you buy the right to inhabit a unit from the owner for a limited period of time. You can sell the unit to another person before the lease is up, but the shorter the lease, the harder it is to sell. Once the lease is up, you have to return the unit back to the owner or renegotiate another lease. Some owners may also allow you to buy the unit as a fee simple unit for an additional fee. I'm sure my description of LH properties has some errors and hopefully someone else will be able to better explain what LH properties are.
Thanks for posting the link! I added it to my favorites. I like that I was able to select specific neighborhoods that we're interested in. The site also included rental properties, making it useful in comparing the costs of buying verses renting.
Just whatever you do, please don't buy anything until you've seen it and hopefully spent some time in the area. It is really hard on the folks who live here to have folks who would really actually prefer to live somewhere else buy a house sight unseen in our neighborhoods. We try to help them, but sometimes there's just no answer and it puts a big stress on the community.
There is still quite a bit of time before the real estate market starts going up again, so a six months rental somewhere will give you a good chance to check out the area before deciding which area fits you best.
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