July 10, 2010

Poipu housing market Kauai real estate

The Poipu housing market, a portion of the larger Kauai real estate market, showed some signs of possible improvement despite declining median prices. According to a report from a local business journal, both single family home sales and condominium sales were up drastically from year ago levels. The number of home sales rallied by a fully eighty percent, while condominium sales increased by almost forty percent. According to the Hawaii Information Service, 27 single family homes were sold on Kauai in the month of May, up from 15 sold in May 2009. The news was mixed, however, as the median price of these homes declined from $600,000 in May 2009 to $420,000 in May 2010. Five more condominiums were sold in May 2010, up from 13 in May 2009, while the average price fell a drastic 50% from year-ago levels. For the year so far, both homes for sale and condominiums for sale have seen median price losses of about 11%.

Poipu real estate condos for sale should also begin to benefit from a gradually recovering job market, which should in turn boost the overall economy of Hawaii. According to a June 11, 2010 report from Pacific Business News, “While Hawaii’s four counties will begin to see an economic recovery this year, real job growth won’t return until 2011, according to a new report. After suffering cumulative job losses of as much as 11 percent since 2007, Maui, Hawaii and Kauai counties will see smaller losses this year before registering gains of more than 1 percent in payroll jobs in 2011, according to the report by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization. Oahu, which saw smaller losses, will follow the same trend, with relatively flat growth this year followed by a gain of less than 1 percent in 2011. The Neighbor Islands suffered the largest losses in the visitor industry over the past two years, accounting for many of the jobs lost. However, all three counties should see growth in visitor arrivals ranging from 4.7 percent on the Big Island to 6.4 percent on Kauai to 7.4 percent on Maui, the report said. Despite that, visitor days for the Neighbor Islands will lag some 7 percent to 8 percent behind their peak values by 2012, while Oahu will rise to within a few percentage points of its 2007 peak values.”