West Hawaii Real Estate Market Update | Kona & South Kohala | May 2025

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, we wanted to give you a market update on video this month. Tell me if you think this is better than doing it in a written text format. Love to hear what you guys think on that.

[00:00:10]Want to cover what's going on. So, really what we're seeing is a pretty interesting market. Things were starting to pick up towards the end of the buying season, typically. Now that we're out of the pandemic cycle, you would see a lot of people coming out buying properties January, February, March, and a little bit into April. And those things would close 30 to 60 days later and you'd see the sales start recording. And we saw a lot of that. Actually, April was a really good month for us here in the office with a lot of closed sales. Uh I think it was our highest, our record for the number of sales in a given month in our history here in our office.

[00:00:45]But then the faucet just shut off and talking to a lot of people out there, they're seeing a lot of the same thing.

[00:00:51]So, there's two reasons that we're thinking that we have for that. One, the seasonality that we talked about. Uh but also the war in Iran seems to be driving a lot of negative consumer sentiment. Uh University of Michigan put out their consumer sentiment. It was at a 74-year low uh for the month of April. And so, we're seeing that, you know, when things like this are happening, gas prices obviously are going up. People are worried about future inflation. We may see future rate hikes even. There's talk of that coming back on the table. Uh people tend to pause and hold and wait to see what happens.

[00:01:25]After they get used to things, people who wanted to buy a house still want to buy a house and that doesn't change.

[00:01:30]People who were tired of their house and wanted to sell it still want to sell the house and that doesn't change. So, we are starting to see some re-engagement both on the sell side and particularly on the buy side. I'm not seeing a ton of contracts coming into the office uh comparatively, but we are and talking to our agents seeing more showings. So, people are starting to look at things, which tells me that they're thinking of re-engaging and actually making offers.

[00:01:57]And we're seeing a little bit here and there. It's just it's tapered off quite a bit as you might expect. Looking at the numbers real quick, I have them up in the screen in front of me. Our year-to-date numbers are going to be primarily down, and I think that's going to continue throughout the year. I don't think anything changing is going to make a big difference. Um I think we're kind of in for this right now for the remainder of the year, and we'll see what happens as time goes on.

[00:02:20]South Kohala residential unit sold is down about 7% so far this year year-to-date.

[00:02:26]The one bright spot in the market is the short-term vacation rental condo market up in South Kohala, which is primarily short-term vacation rental condos for their condo market. They're up 10 and 1/2% in units sold. North Kona residential sales down 11% in units sold, and condos down 6 and 1/2% in units sold. Uh price, that's what everyone's usually kind of focusing on.

[00:02:52]Median price for houses up in South Kohala down 8.31% year-to-date versus this point last year.

[00:03:00]Condos up 12.33%.

[00:03:03]So again, demand drives price. We all know this, supply and demand. So when you have high demand, prices are going to go up. When you have low demand, prices are going to go down. Uh North Kona residential median price is down 3.7% uh so far this year, and condo median price down 8.48% this year. Just so you know, the median price for a house year-to-date here in Kona is 1.3 million dollars. So that's just a nice easy number to remember. Uh and then up in South Kohala, the year-to-date median price is 1 million 100,250 dollars. I will say that last month's median price there was 950. As a we're starting to see the possibility that maybe this year it even dips below a million. It's possible.

[00:03:55]Um it would have to go down a good bit more, but it's something that's on the table now. The residential market up in South Kohala tends to be a little bit more of working folks working at the hotels, working in the construction industry, and we might see a little bit of insecurity with those folks wanting to write a contract for a 30-year mortgage at a million bucks. So, you might see even less demand up there.

[00:04:19]If you had been looking to buy in the last few years and you were worried about while prices are going up, well, prices have stabilized and come down.

[00:04:28]Now, the question is are you still wanting to take advantage of it or not? If people said, "Hey, I'm waiting for prices to come down." Well, now they're coming down. So, this could be the market for you. If you have any specific questions, as always, just reach out to me. I'll be happy to help.

[00:04:42]Thanks, guys. Aloha.